CSCvn80165 - MWI indication not visible when CFA is enabled in non-primary lines for 8841/51/61 phones.

[Larry Gyrion]

This issue affects our organization.  The MWI indication visibility is crucial as we use this on multiple secondary lines that are CFA on the 88xx phone handsets.   With the new hardware revision V08 and above we cannot rollback firmware to prior to 11.7.   We have tried all available firmware releases as of 01/01/2019 to no avail to a resolution.

With the ultimate retirement EoL of the 7962 phones we are very dependent on this issue being resolved.

[Larry Gyrion]

cisco update says: Firmware release 11.7(1) introduces an improved user experience with new badged icons.
The Call Forward All icon would have precedence over the VM icon. This was the design of the UI and does not represent a defect.

What kind of improved user experience is this that it takes away from our user experience...  These phones replaced the 79xx series phones and it did work in the original 8841 models we first received, and now all of a sudden Cisco decided that an improved user experience is to take away a very highly used experience....  In our organization we utilize MWI indications on secondary lines to allow patients to directly leave a message for various no-life threating medical needs to where our nursing staff can see visually when a message is left on a dedicated voicemail line.    It seems that they got this backwards the presedence should be that the MWI indication should overrule the forwarded indication.    In the original firmware for this model phone we were able to see both the forward and the MWI.  Cisco this causes us a severe issue with being able to continue with our migration plan to the newer model phone handsets.   A complete rebuild of existing Message Waiting Indicator lines by burning a second extension for each line and having to reprogram existing buttons for both the existing phones we have in place and to replacement hardware.  This also add the restriction that we cannot use any type of migration tool as existing features will not work on the new product....   Please return the ability to this feature.

[KenMeeuwse]

This is a major problem for us as well and it represents a downgrade from functionality that works on the 7800 series (7841).

On a Line 2 or higher on 7841, the line can visually represent that it is Forward Active AND has a MWI icon indication at the same time.

This (not) "improved" icon experience on 8851 now "hides" the MWI indication on secondary Lines when those secondary lines have Forward All active. This is also true of the Primary Line.  When Forward All is active, the icon stops alternating between Number of Calls logged and MWI ... and goes to a Fixed "Forward active" icon.

The only remaining indication for the primary line user is the Red Lamp on the handset for that primary line. And no indication on secondary lines of MWI.

If there is a "priority" value associated with the Forward active icon, it should be set to a same priority value as MWI and/or Call Log count ... so that the user can see that MWI is active on that particular line - primary or secondary.

Also note that there is Text-based information under the line label that already indicates that Forward is active on the Line ... so why introduce a FIXED Fwd Icon to the left of the line label that "buries" the MWI indication??

Getting sick of the Business Unit making arbitrary decisions as to what is "working as designed" when the USER EXPERIENCE has degraded from what was functional before.

Please listen to your customers!

[Larry Gyrion]

I had brought this issue to Cisco and their "Feature enhancement" is still not fixed in the latest firmware updates.  The workaround that I am having to use is to rebuilt the lines using a second extension.  A fhantom number assisted to be the primary number in Unity for the MWI and add the second extension as an alternative number in Unity, only assign the alternative number to the respective handsets....  The Phantom number can be assigned to a CTI route point to avoid using those valuable Cisco Licenses on a fake phone.

Currently I have phones that I force older firmware to the older 88xx series devices...  As we very slowly progress to toward the deprecation dates of the 79xx series devices this does become more impactful Cisco.... 

I ask everyone who is experiencing this to respond and let Cisco clearly know we need Cisco to listen to our needs rather than bring out these degraded Feature enhancements such as this....