Help button on phones not working

[karthikvish2000]

When help button is pressed "host not found" error is encountered.

I have checked in enterprise parameters that the information URL is :http://<CUCM PUB IP address>:8080/ccmcip/GetTelecasterHelpText.jsp

Appreciate assistance with this issue.

Thanks.

[William Bell · Accepted solution]

Have you confirmed that you don't have any ACLs or FW filters in between the phone and the CUCM that would block TCP port 8080?

Regards,

Bill

[karthikvish2000]

There is nothing in between the phones and the CUCM.

On the same note we had a similar issue with accessing Corporate directory and personal directory. We fixed the issue by applying a workaround wherein we changed the URL in: IP Phone services>Corporate directory from Application:Cisco/XXXX to http://x.x.x.x:8080/ccmcip/xmldirectoryinout.jsp for corporate diecrectory and http://x.x.x.x:8080/ccmpd/pdCheckLogin.do?name=undefined for personal directory. Corp direcrory and personal directory are working fine after this work around.

But something is broken in the CUCM which prevents it from functioning correctly with the default alias of Application:Cisco/XXXX. I am suspecting a similar cause for the information services as well.

Your thoughts on this please?

[William Bell · Accepted solution]

I am not sure what caused your issue with the application URLs for the Corporate and Personal directory. My initial impression is that your the "Services Provisioning" parameter is set to External URL. This can be set on the phone, Common Phone Profile, or Enterprise Parameter level. When set to external, the phone must use the service URLs set at the Enterprise or Device level. Something isn't adding up here.

At this point, I would be inclined to pull a network trace. You can do this with a PC attached to the phone (if the phone is configured to span traffic to the PC port) via a network span, or from the CUCM itself.

Capturing traces from CUCM:

http://www.netcraftsmen.net/component/content/article/70-unified-communications/295-cisco-unified-communication-appliance-cli-power.html

info on Service Provisioning parameter:

http://www.netcraftsmen.net/component/content/article/70-unified-communications/714-how-to-disable-corporate-directory-in-cucm-7x.html

HTH.

Regards,

Bill

[Phillip Ratliff]

What CUCM version?

If it's 8.0 or later check to see if your phone has an ITL or CTL file installed.  If there is one present, try deleting it to see if this resolves the problem.

Edit: Didn't realize this was posted yet.  Check out this excellent document on the new security by default feature in CUCM 8.  SBD can impact the phone's ability to get a valid configuration file from CUCM which can result in issues with services URLs.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-17679

[karthikvish2000]

This is CUCM 8.5(1).

Yes, there is an ITL in the phone which I am unable to delete.

It reappears as soon as I delete it.

Thanks.

[karthikvish2000]

Also, when I copy and paste the URL: http://x.x.x.x:8080/ccmcip/GetTelecasterHelpText.jsp in a browser I get:

"An Error occurred and was logged."

Do I need to raise a TAC case and/or is there a temporary workaround. Help would be a heavily used feature during the first few weeks after deployment. Appreciate your help.

thanks.

[ryan_oconnell]

We are having the exact same problem with CUCM 8.0.3 did you find the answer to your problem?

[karthikvish2000]

I will keep you posted if the issue is resolved.

[karthikvish2000]

Hi Ryan,

Please see post.

HTH.

[karthikvish2000]

thanks William.

I will enable network traces and will let you know what is happening.

[Sreeju S Kumar]

Hi Karthik,

  In the enterprise parameters http://:8080/ccmcip/GetTelecasterHelpText.jsp. In this place did you provide the ip-address of your CUCM in the place of (CUCM PUB IP address). this will help if your CUCM is not integrated via DNS. If its integrated via DNs provide the name there.

[karthikvish2000]

Thanks all for the reply.

I did a network capture on the CUCM and found that the phone is not even sending a request. To further confirm that I did a packet capture from the phone on my PC and found that:

- When I press the help button the phone is sending out a DNS query to the DNS server asking for . and receives a Host not found reply from the DNS server.

- We dont use DNS in the IP Tel environment so obvoiusly the failed response from the DNS server is expected.

- But the question here is why is the phone trying to use the host name to access inforamtion services when the information services URL is http:/// ?

- Directories work fine and extension mobility works fine they all use the ip adress its just help.

Please let me know your thoughts.

[karthikvish2000]

I have manged to resolve the issue with the help button not working and also the issue with the directories not working. I was just a DNS issue but the actual sequence of events is quite interesting.

The issue was being caused by a combination of 2 factors:

1. Incorrect design

2. CUCM's new feature - SBD (security by default).

With the design, we chose to use hostnames in the server section in the system menu. This caused the phone services URLs (both secured and unsecured) to be populated with the PUBs hostname. We changed the secured and unsecured URLs to IP addresses but SBD automatically replaces the IP addresses of the secured URL with hostname of the PUB if the server has been configured with the hostname and not the ip address.

Even though we have not enabled security in the cluster SBD forces the phones to only receive the secured URLs (https) and not the unsecured ones. So, essentially the phones were only getting the hostname and not the IP address of the PUB. Everytime we tried to use the directory button or help button the phones sent out a DNS query which would fail as we have not enabled DNS in the IP Tel environment.

The issue was fixed by changing the server name from hostname to IP address and then updating the secure URLs with the PUBs IP address.

Hope this helps.

[Phillip Ratliff]

SBD by itself doesn't cause service URLs to be populated with the value in System->Server though it does result in https service URLs being available for endpoints to use.  The feature that got you was internal services provisioning.  This feature (by default) renders the Services URL value in Enterprise Parameters obsolete and results in the phones receiving their subscribed services in the tftp config file.  For the native ones (directories, voicemail, missed calls, etc) the host portion of the URL the phone uses is populated by the servers in the CM Group, which itself is populated with values from System->Server.

Internal servcies provisioning has been in CUCM since 6.x.  SBD has been present since 8.x.