Call Pickup Differences in CCME & UCM 6.x

[Brian Carscadden]

We have a client that migrated from CCME to UCM 6.x. They said in CCME they used Call Pickup to retrieve a calln on hold from another person's IP phone. I'm not familiar with this functionality and am looking for a UCM 6.x alternative. I am familiar with basic Call Pickup groups in UCM 6.x, but it doesn't seem to offer the same functionality.

[Tommer Catlin]

you can pickup a call from another phone if they are in the same pickup group

[Brian Carscadden]

After the call is put on hold?

[Tommer Catlin]

If the call is put on hold, it's not in the call pickup group. You have to "Park" the call. It will then display and pickup number. Someone in the call pickup group can then pick up the phone, dial that number and be connected to the "parked" call.

make sense?

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Brian,

Hope all is well :) I think the customer is actually referring to is Call Park. Have a look at how Park works with CME, it sounds to me like what they are describing to you;

Call park allows a phone user to place a call on hold at a special ephone-dn that is used as a temporary parking spot from which the call can be retrieved by anyone on the system. In contrast, a call that is placed on hold using the Hold button or Hold soft key can be retrieved only from the extension that placed the call on hold. The special ephone-dn at which a call is parked is known as a call-park slot. A call-park slot is a floating extension, or ephone-dn that is not bound to a physical phone, to which calls are sent to be held.

After at least one call-park slot has been defined and the Cisco Unified CME phones have been restarted, phone users are able to park calls using the Park soft key. Users who attempt to park a call at a busy slot hear a busy tone.

A caller who is parked in a park slot hears the music-on-hold (MOH) audio stream if the call uses the G.711 codec or if the call uses G.729 with transcoding, a feature that is available in Cisco CME 3.2 and later versions; otherwise, callers hear a tone on hold.

A phone user who has parked a call can retrieve the call using the PickUp soft key and an asterisk (*). Phone users other than the one who parked the call can retrieve the call by pressing the PickUp soft key and the extension number of the call-park slot, which is available on their phone displays.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucme/admin/configuration/guide/cmepark.html

So we probably need to look at setting up Call Park or Directed Call Park on their new CCM 6.x system :)

Hope this helps!

Rob

[Brian Carscadden]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the reply. I'm familiar with Call Park and what we all understand as Call Pickup. This client was explaining something that sounded completely foreign - hitting Call Pickup when a call is on hold on another phone and being able to retrieve it. They swore it was something they had. Turns out after being quite puzzled I asked them to clarify and then they said something to the effect that "maybe it was their old phone system" that had the feature.

[Brian Carscadden]

Plot thickens ... they say they were definitely able to pull a call from a hold state by pressing PICKUP xxxx (where xxxx is the extension of another phone with a call on hold). If anyone can tell me if UCM 6.x has an option for something like this ... and if you're familiar with the CCME feature, please point me to docs. Thanks!

[Brian Carscadden]

I stumbled across a feature in CCME called "Call Pickup On Hold" but can't find the UCM6.x equivalent.

[egrinkin1]

That does sound really cool, but I've never seen it in CUCM at all (4 yrs and counting admin CM 3.3 - 6.0.1). I'm keeping an eye on this thread as this would be really cool to use.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Hi, I've tried that with CME 4.1 and it works, you can "steal" an held call as described above.

Can be useful I think.

[Brian Carscadden]

Thanks for the confirmation. I've never used it myself. I have a case open with Cisco to clarify if it is/isn't available in CUCM6.x. I'm thinking no.

[Brian Carscadden]

Here's the feature description from the CCME docs:

Directed Call Pickup-Call pickup, explicit ringing extension. Any local phone user can pick up a call that is on hold on another extension in Cisco Unified CME. Phone user does not need to belong to a pickup group to use this method. This is a default behavior.

TAC is recommending Directed Call Park in UCM 6.x but the functionality is entirely different. The users would be better suited to just transfer the call.

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Brian,

First off, sorry for leading you in the wrong direction with my reference to how CME Call Park works :) I didn't mean to indicate that you were not aware of "Park", just how it worked differently in CME (MY BAD!) Secondly, thanks for posting up this good info. 5 points from this end for following up on this post (this will help others who may have the same question!)

Take care,

Rob

[gogasca]

My co-worker here is SJ got that case and we were discussing it, now in 6.1 and lower we dont have that feature...Im checking with the guys that are taking ccm 7.0 training and we will let you know...