Cisco 7800/8800/Jabber and feature comparison: on-premises vs MRA

[raziel78kain]

Hello,

we have some Cisco UC 10.x/11.x infrastructures (CUCM, CUP, CUC, CUCCX, ...), and we would like to add the Expressway nodes to get MRA.

We would like to know a feature comparison between the classic on-premises scenario and the new MRA scenario, especially related to the Cisco IP Phones 7800 and 8800 series and the various editions of the Cisco Jabber.

In other words, which features continue to work over MRA and which not?

TIA and regards.

[Aseem Anand]

Hi,

You may refer to the release notes for the feature comparison:

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/release_note/Cisco-Expressway-Release-Note-X8-7.pdf

Refer to the section below:

Unsupported Endpoint Features When Using Mobile and Remote Access

Aseem

( Please rate if useful )

[raziel78kain]

Hello Aseem,

thank you for you answer.

Is there anything specific for CUCCX?

Regards.

[Aseem Anand]

Hi,

I am not aware of anything with respect to UCCX in MRA. I would suggest to wait for others to comment.

Aseem

[Deepak Rawat]

There is no specific list of compatible phones for MRA in respect to UCCX. Below is the Compatibility Matrix for UCCX 10.6(1) and the list of phones it shows is only from CAD/Finesse/IPPA perspective and not from MRA perspective

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Unified_CCX_Software_Compatibility_Matrix_for_10.6(1)#Endpoint_Devices

That being said, if you want to know whether you can register phones with MRA and then if CAD/Finesse will work or not then from a logical point of view, I do not see a reason why it will not since during the login process, UCCX only checks if the end point is registered or not, it does not check how it had been registered whether over MRA or inside the network. However from a TAC support perspective, it will be good if you can open a PDI case and get it verified that way. Before opening a PDI case, please go through the Overview document in order to check if your Company holds the required entitlement.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/partners/tools/planning-design-implementation-technical-advisor.html

Regards

Deepak

[Evgeny Izetov]

I confirmed it with Cisco TAC some time ago that MRA phones can't be used with UCCX at all due to them not supporting anything with CTI. This also means no Extension Mobility.

[Deepak Rawat]

Thanks for sharing this great information Evgeny [+5]

Regards

Deepak

[raziel78kain]

Hello Evgeny,

in this regard, what's your opinion about the following sentence (taken from the latest Release Notes, http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/release_note/Cisco-Expressway-Release-Note-X8-8-2.pdf), then?

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Jabber SDK, Jabber for Mac, and Jabber for Windows are not capable of deskphone control when they are connected over MRA, because the CTI-QBE protocol is not traversed by the Expressway pair. When these Jabber applications, or other CTI applications, can connect to CUCM CTIManager (on-premises or VPN) then they can deskphone control endpoints and clients that are connected over MRA.

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Thanks and regards.

[Evgeny Izetov]

It looks like you can deskphone control an MRA device.

When I posed the question to TAC I asked about EM and this was their answer:

the extension mobility is not supported as of now on MRA deployments, for DX units it is documented on bug CSCuy61734 but for 77xx/88xx it is a feature that is not yet on the roadmap from what we have been communicated.

I then also confirmed that there's no support for UCCX.

[raziel78kain]

Hello,

based on the release notes (in particular, in the release notes for X.8.7.3), the deskphone control has been added on April/May 2016:

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/release_note/Cisco-Expressway-Release-Note-X8-7-3.pdf

Since the CAD (which of course must be on-premises or in VPN) can do deskphone control, I don't understand why it should not work if the phone is over MRA...

In this regard, just to better understand if the things are actually changed in the meantime abiut this support, could you tell us how old is your contact with the Cisco TAC, please?

Thanks and regards.

[Evgeny Izetov]

The contact was in August, but I would definitely check and confirm with them again, and please let us know the answer.

[raziel78kain]

Hello Evgeny,

thanks for your interest.

Please let us know what's your contact's opinion about the sentence above taken from the latest release notes.

Regards.

[Evgeny Izetov]

I don't have a special contact in TAC. I just opened a case back then because I needed to know the answer for a project I was working on. See if you can open a case and ask them. If not, maybe somebody else will chime in.