Device Location Tracking Services CUCM 11.5 Switches

[Tobias Bachetta]

Hi,

we just updated to CUCM 11.5 and I found this nice feature.

The doc says:

No configuration is required to enable Location Awareness for your wired infrastructure – the feature is enabled
automatically. As your wired phones register, signaling between the phone and Cisco Unified Communications
Manager updates the database dynamically with the switch infrastructure. You can view details on your company's
switch infrastructure in Cisco Unified CM Administration, including the list of phones that are connected to a specific switch.

Our wired infrastructure is Cisco only, Access Switches are 2960S/X, but how do I add them to the CUCM?

We have 5502 WLCs and adding them worked perfectly, all APs are in CUCM now.

I exported a single switch from Prime Infrastructure 3.1, and tried to import it, but that didn't work and gave this error:

(Record Number 1) 2004 ip_address is not a supported field.

Is this feature working with switches already or do I have to wait for CUCM 12? :)

[dakeller · Accepted solution]

Tobias, 

This is a really useful feature that was introduced in UCM 11.5.  Although the feature will support ANY endpoint that supports the feature, the feature must be developed on the endpoint or client to before UCM can display the information.  In 11.5, the only device to support the feature is the 7925/26 wireless phones.  The feature will be supported on the 78xx and 88xx phones, as well as the Jabber client, but neither of those products has developed the code to support the feature.  Please let your account team know that you want to see this feature on wired phones.  The phone team needs to hear from customers to prioritize the feature.  Last I heard from the phone team and the Jabber team is CYQ42016 is when support for the location services will be released....but this is a target date and not a committed date.  Only the phone and Jabber PM's can provide a commit date.

Although you can add switches into the UCM database, I would recommend waiting for the Cisco IP phones to support this feature before resorting to manually importing switches.  The location feature for wired switches will automatically create the switch entry in the infrastructure table.  Unfortunately, the wired phone team has not yet implemented the feature.  If you would still like to add the switches to your system, you need to make sure the BAT file has the correct header.  Sounds like the header line is incorrect.  The header for an infrastructure insert must be 
ACCESSPOINT OR SWITCH NAME,IPV4 ADDRESS,IPV6 ADDRESS,BSSID,DESCRIPTION.  I think you have ip_address instead of IPV4 ADDRESS.

Thanks, 
Dan Keller
Cisco Technical Marketing Engineer

[Tobias Bachetta]

Thank you Dan!

Is there a chance this feature comes also for 79xx? Most of our phones (596) are 7945, we only have a few 8841 (and many Jabber Clients).

I will wait then until the FW of the phones support this feature.

[dakeller]

Tobias, 

Unfortunately, no.  I had many discussions with the phone team over the course of a year to have the feature added to the wired 79xx phones, but the phone team chose not to add the feature and focus on the 78xx and 88xx implementations.  I'm not sure if you are aware, but there has been no development on the wired 79xx in well over 5 years.  I agree that this would be really (really) nice to have, but based on the 79xx's current phase of its life cycle, it's not going to happen. 

Thanks, 

Dan Keller

Cisco Technical Support Engineer

[Tobias Bachetta]

That's really sad :(

I think many still have 79XX phones and would like this feature.

And there is not really a reason to upgrade these phones. We are going to upgrade 7911 phones we rolled out at the beginning with 8841 phones, but the 7945 are still working fine with their colored display.

When Cisco would implement the feature to use a 88XX phone as an AccessPoint, that would be a reason to upgrade, but I didn't hear any news to this feature for a long time now.

[mikunz]

Hi Tobias,

if you are looking for a way to 

>>When an employee tells us the voice quality is bad, we can quickly see where the phone is attached and can start cable-diagnostic on that port

UPLINX Phone Inventory report (part of Report Tool, license $590) will provide all this information such as connected switch and port (through CDP or LLDP). Phone Inventory reports can be generated automatically/periodically and then be published to your Intranet web site so your help desk can quickly search for phones, switches, ports.

Please check out our trial version or contact us,

Best,

Mike / CTO UPLINX SOFTWARE

[Stephen Welsh]

Hi Tobias,

I'm curious about your use case for the new topology data?

This new feature looks very promising, especially if the data can be queried (i.e via SQL).

In the meantime if you are looking for physical endpoint topology information from CUCM 8.0 onward on all Cisco Phone models 79xx onward you should have a look at our MigrationFX product. It's Zero-Touch migration feature leverages cluster wide topology data, so all you have to do is swap an old phone for a new device an it uses the topology data to detect the old phone automatically and migrates all the settings/config to the new device.

The topology data MigrationFX gathers can be viewed in the admin interface, accessed via API or exported if you wish to use it with an external system.

Happy to discuss directly if you wish.

Kind Regards

Stephen Welsh

CTO

UnifiedFX

[Tobias Bachetta]

Hi Stephen,

we don't need this for migration. And CUCM can also migrate phones from one model to another and keep the configuration.

We would like this feature to know where phones are without logging into the switch and look up the cdp neighbours. When an employe tells us the voice quality is bad, we can quickly see where the phone is attached and can start cable-diagnostic on that port, for example.