How are outbound ports licensed in v12.5.1

[jonathanwalton]

A few years ago I built a simple UCCX application, that when called, would call our paging system, enter a string of digits for a paging group, and then play a prompt.  That allowed everyone in the paging group to receive a prerecorded message with the simple press of a button (speed dial to trigger) on a phone.

I built this in UCCX v11.6 premium.  In v11.6 I could see my license counts for agent, ports, and outbound ports.

I later upgraded UCCX to v12.5.1, and my application kept working fine, but when I look at my license information I see this: 

Configured Licenses:
Package: Cisco Unified CCX Premium
Total IVR Port(s): 6
Cisco Unified CCX Premium Seat(s): 3
High Availability : Enabled
Cisco Unified CCX Preview Outbound Dialer: Enabled
Cisco Unified CCX Maximum Agents: 100

I'm building a similar application on the same server for another site, using new triggers and new call control groups, but I can't get it to work.  I try using the old CCG, and it doesn't work, so now I'm thinking it's port related.  Everything is registered to CUCM correctly.  

My questions:

1.  How do I know if I'm still licensed for outbound ports?  Could I have lost those with the upgrade license?  If so, why would my app still work on v12 for the last year?

2. When configuring new Call Control Group I only see "inbound" ports as an option, but before I upgraded to v12.5.1 I would see the choice for inbound or outbound. Is this expected?

Thanks for any help.

[bill.king1]

Is your outbound license preview only (which is agent based), vs. outbound IVR based which it sounds like you have? This is an old post, but is this your issue?
https://community.cisco.com/t5/contact-center/how-can-i-check-if-there-are-outbound-license-configured-in-uccx/td-p/2727940

Here's another link from the guide as well.
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/crs/express_12_0/design/guide/uccx_b_solution-design-guide-1201/uccx_b_solution-design-guide-1201_chapter_011.html#reference_AF8CC600C014A992879DB5E9F39D97A6

[jonathanwalton]

Hi Bill, thanks for the response. 

My system says our outbound is preview only.  My understanding is preview only has to use agents for outbound calls and it doesn't use CTI ports.  This doesn't make sense as we don't use agents, never have.  We've always used CTI ports for the dialer and even monitor the ports when they're in use with BLF.

The only way this makes sense to me is that I had licensed outbound IVR on v11.6, and when I upgraded to v12.5.1 (July 2021), my new license didn't keep the outbound IVR ports, and I was switched to preview only.  But the system kept working using outbound IVR from July 2021, to last week?

I've opened a TAC case to look my lost outbound functionality.  I'm guessing they'll see I'm not licensed for what my application is trying to do, and I need to purchase outbound IVR licenses.

Any thoughts?

[jonathanwalton · Accepted solution]

I was able to fix my issue by restarting the engine on both of my HA systems.  I still can't create outbound port group, but my app makes outbound calls via "inbound" CTI port group.  My licensing situation is very similar to the original poster in your first link, which says preview outbound dialer is enabled.  Mark's comment at the end of that thread doesn't add up in my case as my app uses CTI ports.  Either way, I'm good to go and still just as confused as ever with Cisco licensing.