UCCX IVR License-annoying

[YAARUB F. MILAD]

Hi, 

Premium license is so annoying. cisco tells you it is 1:2 yet I think it is not.

I have a call center licensed for 100 seats which should mean 200 IVR ports but the license utilization tells me otherwise. it shows that the total number of inbound IVR does not exceed 100 while the inbound seats range from  11 to 60 leaving around 40 IVR ports unused. which contradicts what we understand from cisco's documentation. what I understood from cisco's license docs is that it utilizes unused ports for example in my case it should use 140 IVR ports when there are 60 seats utilized.

I need a clear answer for this its causing trouble with a client 

[Mike_Brezicky]

With CCX Premium, you get 2 IVR ports for every 1 agent license. If you look at System > Licensing Information > Display License, it should hsow the accurate count. 1 agent on a call does not eman 2 ports are in use.
For IVR ports, This means that you can have up to 200 concurrent calls being processed by CCX IVR engine, such as listening to greetings or waiting in queue.

If you have peaked at 60 inbound agents, and never exceeded 100 IVR ports, what problem is it causing. The actual usage is not 1:2. You can have all 60 seats in use / on a call, and only 20 other IVR ports in use because there are only 20 calls in queue. That would not break 100 ports in use.

[YAARUB F. MILAD]

Thank you for replying 

The number of call hitting the IVR currently is very high we are sure we can utilize them all all day

the question is what is the case if we have inbound 60 seats utilized and the other 140 IVR ports available for the massive amount of calls we receive. and we have 100 seat *2 (200IVR ports) will the system utilize 140 IVR ports or 100

this is confusing. I would highly appreciate the help 

[Anthony Holloway · Accepted solution]

In order to understand this, you're going to have to separate a few ideas from one another.

This all has to do with Premium, as Enhanced and Standard work differently.

#1 - Licensed Limits
When you want to login an Agent, there needs to be a license available for them to login, else they'll not be able to login. Simple. So, you purchase 1 license (aka Seat), upload it to the server, and login this Agent. At the same time, you also just licensed 2 IVR ports with that single Agent license. So, in theory, the solution is supporting 3 total calls now: 1 caller speaking to the logged in Agent, and 2 callers waiting in queue to speak to the logged in Agent. The 4th call that comes into the system, will be rejected, due to a license violation. Cisco strictly enforces the licensing on UCCX, so you must always respect it.

#2 - Server Capacity
There are only 3 sizes of servers to deploy:

1. Small: 100 Agents & 100 Ports
2. Medium: 300 Agents & 300 Ports
3. Large: 400 Agents & 400 Ports

You may already notice a problem here, which is, if the licensing model is 1:2 for Agent:Port, then if you license any of these systems for 50% of the total Agent limit, then you've hit 100% of the port limit. E.g., Purchasing 50 Seats on a small system, will license 100 Ports. Then, if you apply just 1 more seat license to the system, you will not be able to use 101 ports. You effectively lose money by licensing the system any higher than 50% of the total capacity.

You can change the size of your system, but you must meet the correct hardware specs for that system, and it does require you to backup, reinstall, and restore the system to do so.  You cannot just "add more CPUs and RAM" to an already installed system.  Also, if you're running something called a Business Edition 6000, you can only run the small system size.

#3 - Configuration
Configuring Agents is probably straight forward to you. You build a phone in CUCM, create their user account, train them, etc. However, what you might not be aware of is that you also need to configure the Ports themselves, which are CTI Ports in CUCM, but built from the UCCX AppAdmin GUI as Call Control Groups (CCG). If you license your small server for 50 Seats, and expect to be able to use 100 Ports, but only configured 30 CTI Ports, then technically your limit is 30 ports, not 100. Conversely, you could configure 130 CTI ports, but the licensing police will only allow you to use 100 at a time, thus you gain little, if any benefit from configuring more ports than you're licensed for.

One more item related to configuration is an arbitrary session limit on Applications and Triggers. If you have a small server with 50 licenses, and 100 CTI ports configured, but your Application has a session limit of 10, then you'll only be able to process 10 calls at a time. The 11th call will be rejected. Likewise, your Triggers have session limits you can set on them too. So a Trigger on that 10 session app I just mentioned, if it then has a 5 session limit, then 5 calls is your max, the 6th will be rejected.

All three of these factors are checked when the system is trying to answer a call. I don't specifically no the order in which it attempts to check these items, but I'd imagine it's something like this:

1) CUCM presents the call to a CTI Route Point (aka UCCX Trigger)
2) UCCX checks if the Trigger has spare sessions, else reject the call
3) UCCX checks if the Application has spare sessions, else reject the call
4) UCCX checks if there is an available CTI port in the CCG assocaited to the Trigger, else reject the call
5) UCCX checks if there is an available license on the system, else reject the call
6) UCCX answers the call

Note that I didn't write a check for UCCX to see if the hardware size is maxed out, because technically this is already handled by the licenses. I.e., You cannot license a small system for 101 ports, so checking if the system size is being over tasked, is done by a simple check on the license usage.

So, we know you have 60 seats and thus are entitled to 120 ports, but what size system do you have installed, and how many CTI Ports are in your CCG associated to your trigger, and then how many sessions are on that trigger, followed by how many sessions on your Application?

If you were to fill out this table, then the smallest number in the table is your limit:

Area of Limitation	Value
Server Size	100 (example value)
IVR Port Licenses	120 (your value)
Size of CCG	75 (example value)
Application Session Count	50 (example value)
Trigger Session Count	50 (example value)
Maximum Concurrent Calls Possible	50 (this leaves 70 IVR port licenses unused)

This can get really complicated with multiple CCGs, or Applications with different session counts, and finally multiple triggers on the same Application, each with different trigger counts.

EDIT: For enhanced and standard, you basically don't license the IVR ports at all, and the only limit is the system size.  Another way to think of it, is that you get 100% of the IVR port licenses your system size can handle for free.  Everything else should be the same for as it is for Premium.

[YAARUB F. MILAD]

This was pretty helpful, we have a license of 130 seats hence logically 260 IVR ports however,  the used OVA is the 100 Small one so thats why the license information page does not multiply our seat license on the licensed IVR port count it only show 100 IVR ports. 

one more question how do we check the trigger and application limits is that on the script or the UCCX gui

[Anthony Holloway]

You can see these on the AppAdmin GUI in UCCX.

[Mike_Brezicky]

Session counts are set in the GUI. These can be modified any time.
Application Management (Maximum number of Sessions)
Call Control Group (CTI Ports)
I dont think triggers let you set individual counts in CCX

[Anthony Holloway]

Tirggers have session too. 

[vijendra Saravanamuthu]

hi Anthony, @Anthony Holloway 

lets say we deploy a 100 agent OVA, purchase 10 premium seats, so we have 20 adv IVR ports and 80 basic IVR. these adv IVR ports are used for database integration, java, email notification etc vs basic IVR which is only for prompt play, menu option , digit collection as per cisco guides. now lets say we have script that does email notification which notifies supervisor/manager when no agents logged in during business hours or lets say we do DB dip into SQL.  if there is a 21st call comes in (while 20 waiting in the queue)...would it be a problem to execute that script and even to go thru email step/DB?  i would assume the 21st port has to be basic IVR which doesnt support those steps.

thanks. 

vijay

[Anthony Holloway]

Hi Vijendra,

I wasn't aware you could mix adv and basic IVR ports on the same system.  Can you link me to some document which shows this, or share a screenshot of your license page in UCCX?

[vijendra Saravanamuthu]

hi Anthony,

umm..not sure if i can find a supporting document, but i thought if you deploy a 100 seat ova template, it gives you 100 basic IVR ports max. installing a 10 seats premium , makes 20 of those 100 IVR into adv IVR and leaves the rest (80) as basic IVR.  i didn't think it will give you 20 adv IVR ports and the rest 80 is no longer in service unless we install more seats.

anyways, 

with ver 12.x , the FLEX license allows you to mix standard agents and premium agents.  supervisors, or agents who uses email/chat queueing need premium seats.  voice agents can use standard. i am not sure if the 1:2 ratio for premium is still in play.

thanks.

[Vaijanath Sonvane]

Hi Vijendra,

Yes, with 12.x Flex licensing you can mix Standard and Premium Agents. You get 2 IVR ports per agent.

[Roger Kallberg]

AFAIK the OVA just defines what you maximum can have on the system, it does not give you the 100 IVR licenses. That's a completely separate thing that you do once you have installed the system on the VM that is created with the OVA.

As @Vaijanath Sonvane wrote with Flex and Smart Licensing you can mix the type of agents and it also gives you the benefit of pooling the licenses for agents. With this if you have multiple CCX systems that operate during different hours you can lower the number of licenses as it's based on concurrent use.

[KY_]

Hi All

I m confusing UCCX ivr license information for our uccx license so  we have 350 cti ports that we have configured on cucm but we have  following qty in our system. so basicly how many cit port should we have totaly ? does ivr port mean cti port or cti route point ?

We are not using agent in our system we only using ivr for AA.

License info;

Configured Licenses:

Package: Cisco Unified CCX Enhanced

Total IVR Port(s): 300

Cisco Unified CCX Enhanced Seat(s): 5

Cisco Unified CCX Maximum Agents: 400

Server specs information;

VMware Installation:
2 vCPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 0 @ 2.70GHz
Disk 1: 146GB, Partitions aligned
Disk 2: 146GB, Partitions aligned
8192 Mbytes RAM

ı  know that you have explained above 1 seat = 2 ivr port if that mean i should have 310 ivr ports as i understand ocrrect 5 seat will make 10 ivr ports and other hand we addionaly have 300 ivrt port so what exactly am i misunderstanding ?

Thanks

[djl]

The 2 Advanced IVR ports per seat license is for Premium Licensing. Per your license info you're running the 'Enhanced' license and in that case you get all the Basic IVR ports your deployment will support.

As Elliot mentioned, if you have the free resources on your server could expand to the 400 agent template for additional ports.  That said, when I have done this in the past it did require a fresh install / backup and restore. Granted, that was in the UCCX 9 days, so that may have changed, but something to verify.

You are also able to oversubscribe the CTI ports, but your maximum calls sitting on CTI Ports will be limited by the server capacity.  As an example:  I have 35 Call Control Groups totaling ~900 CTI ports, but I'm only licensed for 316 Advanced IVR Ports.  Why, you might ask? MoH.

DJ