First of all, don’t let confuse with Cisco Unified Presence (CUP). That is altogether different server from Cisco for enhanced presence capabilities. CUCM native presence can be viewed as traditional BLF approach of giving couple of call status on phone buttons and call directories/lists.
Before going further, let’s be comfortable with some key words;
1. Watcher – Watcher is basically an entity who wants to see the status. In CUCM, phones are considered as watcher.
2. Presence Entity (PE) – An entity whose status is being monitored. In CUCM, directory numbers (DN) are considered as presence entity.
3. BLF – An acronym of Busy Lamp Field, used in legacy PBX to represent call status on phone buttons or speed dial buttons.
There are two different locations in phone where Watcher can see the presence status of Presence Entity (PE);
1. BLF Speed Dial buttons
2. Directories and Call Lists (Missed, Placed and Answered Calls)
BLF SD
BLF speed dials are controlled through ‘Subscribe Calling Search Space’ configured on phone page in CUCM. Subscribe CSS is similar to call Calling Search Space in terms of nature however you need to configure it separately to restrict phone to watch limited presence entities. If you want same level of presence restrictions as of calling restrictions, you can use the same CSS and assign to Subscribe CSS else you have a choice to configure separate CSS and assign to Subscribe CSS.
BLF speed dial will allow you to watch following status of PE;
1. Idle/Onhook
2. Busy/Offhook
3. Unavailable
Let’s understand with the help of configuration example.
In enterprise, generally managers want to watch the presence status of executives to keep eyes on their productivity and also want to know before call them whether executive is free or not. At the same time, executives should not be able to see the present status of managers. So in this example, we will configure the BLF SD only on managers phone as executive doesn’t need it and they should be happy with normal speed dial buttons.
Phone A is manager phone, it’s watcher in terms of presence capabilities.
1001/1002 are directory number associated with executives, it’s presence entities in terms of presence capabilities.
In the below example, we are keeping Subscribe CSS separate form call CSS and creating new CSS for Subscribe CSS to understand the configuration in better way.
1. Go to partition page and configure partition viz PT_Executive.
2. Go to DN page of 1001 and assign partition PT_Executive.
3. Repeat this step for DN 1002.
4. Go to Calling Search Space page and create new CSS viz CSS_Presence_Manager.
5. Assign partition PT_Executive to ‘CSS_Presence_Manager’ CSS.
6. Go to Phone A page and click on Modify Button Items.
7. Assign ‘BLF SD’ item to any two buttons of Phone A and save the configuration.
8. On Phone A page, move to ‘Subscribe Calling Search Space’ and assign ‘CSS_Presence_Manager’ here.
9. Save the configuration and reset the phone.
Now Phone A (managers phone) is ready to keep eyes on executives productivity viz when they are on phone or free.
PS:
To restrict executives to watch the presence status of managers, either assign their phones only speed dial buttons (w/o BLF) or configure Subscribe CSS accordingly.