Plan Phase Details Page

[Tana Franko]

Plan Phase

This phase can also last several weeks. High level architectural decisions are made during this phase: how many Cisco Unity servers? what is the general arrangement? how will it fit into the customer's current environment?

TECHNICAL TRACK

GOAL: Produce a Why Create a High Level Design. 

T2.1     Hold a projectWhy Do Planning Kick Off.

           T2.1.1     Confirm project and milestones dates.

           T2.1.2     Confirm project milestones, roles, and responsibilities.

           T2.1.3     Set a clear expectation as to what type of information the customer will provide during the Plan Phase Details Page.

           T2.1.4     Confirm site(s) and logistics.

T2.2     Create the Why Create a High Level Design -- a summary of everything that you plan to do, including your migration strategy and how you expect the design to look after Cisco Unity is deployed. If you have a phased-migration strategy, show how your voice messaging/unified messaging and electronic messaging infrastructure will look at the end of each phase.

           T2.2.1     Create a Why Create a High Level Design description.

           T2.2.2     Indicate the mailstore options and configurations that will be used with Cisco Unity.

           T2.2.3     Indicate how Cisco Unity will integrate with the existing phone systems.

           T2.2.4     Perform a Why Do a Feature Evaluation of Cisco Unity – with a goal of thoroughly understanding the available feature set, including features that you might not plan to use.

           T2.2.5     Perform a dependency assessment – understand the dependencies that Cisco Unity has on the existing messaging and voice infrastructure. If possible, investigate the dependencies in a lab setting.

           T2.2.6     Perform an impact analysis – how will Cisco Unity impact the current messaging and voice environment, and vice versa? You can perform focused before-and-after trend periods, or you can evaluate the current and past performance of your messaging systems. This includes understanding how often these systems are unavailable and also how often their dependencies are unavailable (this includes domain controllers, name-resolution hosts, network gear, and so on).

           T2.2.7     Review the Why Develop Preliminary Design Options.

                     T2.2.7.1     Phased cutover

                     T2.2.7.1.1     Document how deployment will look after each phase.

                     T2.2.7.2     Flash cutover

                     T2.2.7.2.1     Think about potential intermittent/split deployment options.

T2.3     CreateWhy Create Site Specific Diagrams.

           T2.3.1     For each site  (Include the messaging infrastructure in your diagram.) 

                     T2.3.1.1     Include each PBX, the number of voice ports and the integration method.

                     T2.3.1.2     Include your messaging servers and their dependency servers, such as domain controllers and name-resolution hosts. During your survey, confirm that each messaging system uses the name-resolution hosts and domain controllers/Global Catalog servers that you survey. Cisco Unity uses these same servers when deployed.

                     T2.3.1.3     Indicate the domain and Windows site that the messaging servers and other dependency servers are installed into. Even if you have a Domino installation, Cisco Unity needs to be installed into a Windows domain, even if it is for Cisco Unity only. So, you still need to either use existing Windows domains or create new ones for Cisco Unity, depending on how many locations you have.

                     T2.3.1.4     Indicate the subscriber density. Note the organization of the user population for each location and messaging system that Cisco Unity will serve. This is actually quite important when you grant permissions to the service accounts that Cisco Unity uses to service its subscribers. So, if you note that mail-enabled users on Exchange server A and server B at location X are organized in domain Y in OU containers C and D, you have the information that you need for the Cisco Unity server that will install into that same location.

           T2.3.2     Include the network infrastructure in your diagram.

                     T2.3.2.1     Indicate the LAN topology.

                     T2.3.2.2     Indicate the WAN topology.

                     T2.3.2.3     Indicate the Quality Of Service specifications.

                     T2.3.2.4     Indicate the placement and function of firewalls.

           T2.3.3     Indicate the physical placement of Cisco Unity and dependency servers.

                     T2.3.3.1     Note  infrastructure requirements (rack space, switch port space, power).

           T2.3.4     Indicate the voicemail networking methodology that will be used between Cisco Unity and legacy voice messaging servers, or between Cisco Unity sites.

T2.4     Conduct a Why Do a Gap Analysis between requirements and the customer's existing network hardware and software to determine which core infrastructure and technologies may be necessary to implement Cisco Unity.

           T2.4.1     Review the feature/functional analysis to verify that the solution will work for the customer.

           T2.4.2     Identify any gaps that require workarounds, and any critical paths to implementation.

           T2.4.3     Adjust the project timeline accordingly.

           T2.4.4     Prepare a system report, discusing gaps and alternatives to gaps; confirm that the customer understands the implications of the changes, including cost and/or functionality.

T2.5      Perform a Why Do a Security Analysis.

           T2.5.1     Obtain and review the customer's current security procedures and policies.

           T2.5.2     Assess and document the security procedure and policy requirements for the proposed solution. Document any issues and gaps and the plan to remediate them.

T2.6     Perform a Why Do a Budget Analysis.

           T2.6.1 Estimate hardware and software costs. Take into account capacity, any planned overprovisioning, and licensed features that may be deployed.

           T2.6.2     Estimate service costs for project management, installation and cut-overs.

           T2.6.3     Create a Bill of Materials.

T2.7 Perform Why Do Lab Trials as part of your feature evaluation of Cisco Unity. The important part of this effort is to put Cisco Unity in a semiproduction environment and test it under load or in different ways.

           T2.7.1     Verify interoperability.

                     T2.7.1.1     Determine whether Cisco Unity can integrate with each legacy PBX. Does Cisco Unity already have support for the PBX, or will you need to perform an out-of-box test procedure? For more information, refer to the Cisco Interoperability Portal.

                     T2.7.1.2     Determine the mechanism Cisco Unity will use to integrate with each legacy PBX, and how it differs from the current system integration.

                     T2.7.1.3     Determine if the PBX can support Cisco Unity.

                     T2.7.1.4     Determine the PBX hardware, software and programming requirements for interoperability with Cisco Unity.

                     T2.7.1.5     Determine the Cisco Unity configuration options required for interoperability with the PBX.

                     T2.7.1.6     Execute test plans to verify PBX interoperability.  If necessary, perform Out-of-Box Qualification testing.

           T2.7.2     Pilot Cisco Unity in production, if required. This should give you a very good idea of what your users expect and how the Cisco Unity system will behave in your production environment.

           T2.7.3     Review the results of your Why Do Lab Trials and out-of-box testing, and adjust the project timeline accordingly.

SUBSCRIBER PREP TRACK

GOAL: Begin the subscriber training process. 

S2.1     Create your Why Create a Communication Strategy for how you will communicate this change to your subscribers.

           S2.1.1     Identify a subscriber training plan.

                     S2.1.1.1     Who needs to be trained?

                     S2.1.1.2     What training is required?

                     S2.1.1.3     What training materials are available?

                     S2.1.1.4     What training materials need to be created?

                     S2.1.1.5     How will users be trained?

                     S2.1.1.6     Who will provide training?

           S2.1.2     Determine the Cisco Unity subscriber density.  

                     S2.1.2.1     Note the organization of the user population for each location and messaging system that Cisco Unity will serve.

                     S2.1.2.2     Review and clean up the existing database from each voice messaging server, in preparation for importing users into Cisco Unity.

S2.2     Review the Why Review Planning Outcomes, and adjust the project timeline accordingly.

S2.3     Perform an Why Do an Operational Readiness Assessment.

           S2.3.1     Obtain and review the customer's current operational procedures and policies.

           S2.3.2     Interview the appropriate operations personnel and key stakeholders to determine the "project handoff" policy. Gather information about the customer's current support infrastructure, including data network and telephony processes, network and network management documentation, and metric reports.

           S2.3.3     Document systems, processes, flow-through, tools, people, skills, and best practices for the customer's future reference.

           S2.3.4     Perform an Why Do an Operational Readiness Assessment Why Do a Gap Analysis.

S2.4     Compile the data needed for Why Prepare for Design Phase from your preparation and planning activities.

           S2.4.1     Include the outcomes of the feature/functional analysis.

           S2.4.2     Include the outcomes of the subscriber usage analysis.