Message Button Redundancy

[pieter.bos]

How do I configure the default voicemail service on the message button to fail over to a second node if the default node is down?

There is a nice document on phone services and redundancy describing everything from EM, IPMA, services URL, internal and external services ..... But nothing about the messages button.

Unity Connection can register with more than one Callmanager.

The ports can be configured with a device pool to use cm redundancy groups and the registration nicely fails over to the backup node.

The problem is that the users is unaware of failures of these individual components and they just access voicemail by pressing the message button on the phone.

By default there is no URL in the URL Messges  enterprise parameters.  As far as I can tell the default URL that gets used is: Application:Cisco/Voicemail

No where I can find any indication of how the phone knows where to send the request or how to influence the phone to send te request to a diffirent server if the primary server is down.

I tested all other components.  During a primary callmanager failure, I am still able to manually dial the pilot number and reach the Unity Connection server.  It is just the message button that I assume still points to the failed server that is not working.

At the moment it seems like the message button is dependant on the availability of the first node in the cluster.  If this node is down the message button does not work.

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Pieter,

Can you check these settings in CUC for the "Secondary" CUCM Node server config;

Step 32 On the Edit Servers page, do the following substeps if the Cisco Unified CM cluster has secondary servers. Otherwise, skip to Step 33.

##

a. Under Cisco Unified Communications Manager Servers, click Add.

##

b. Enter the following settings for the secondary Cisco Unified CM server and click Save.

#

#

Table 6-16     Settings for the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Servers 

# Field	# Setting
# Order	# Enter the order of priority for the Cisco Unified CM server. The   lowest  number is the primary Cisco Unified CM server, the higher   numbers are  the secondary servers.
# IP Address or Host Name	# Enter the IP address (or host name) of the secondary Cisco Unified CM server.
# Port	# Enter the TCP port of the Cisco Unified CM server that you are    integrating with Cisco Unity Connection. We recommend that you use the    default setting.
# TLS Port	# Enter the TLS port of the Cisco Unified CM server that you are    integrating with Cisco Unity Connection. We recommend that you use the    default setting.
# Server Type	# Click Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

http://www1.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/7x/integration/cucm_sccp/guide/cucintcucmskinny050.html

Cheers!

Rob

"And if I should fall behind
Wait for me" - Springsteen

[pieter.bos]

Rob

Thanks for your attempt, but wrong answer. Look carefully at my problem description. I tried to indicate all the redundancy I already configured. The problem does not lie with the CUC, but with Callmanager and the URL on the message button.

CUC/callmanager redundancy is tested and works. When dialing the pilot number directly in any failover scenario, CUC answers as per normal.

I NEED THE MESSAGE BUTTON TO POINT TO A DIFFERENT SERVER

[Chris Deren]

Are you using Visual Voicemail or standard TUI VM?

If standard all you need to ensure is that the VM pilot points to hunt pilot or SIP trunk that points to both UCXN servers.

If using VV you accomplish this via DNS as outlined in the documentation.

HTH,

Chris

[pieter.bos]

Chris

This issue is standard TUI voicemail for now. No SIP trunc in my case, I configured SKINNY integration, but it does not matter. The integration redundancy is working. As I said, when dialling the pilot point directly CUC answers. It is only when the 1st node in the cluster is down and the message button is pressed that the message URL is not working, because it is still pointing to this 1st node.

I NEED THE MESSAGE BUTTON TO POINT TO A DIFFERENT SERVER.

[Chris Deren]

What is not working for you?

The message service does not point to any URL, the way it works is when the button is pressed on the phone it directs the call to the Voicemail Pilot via VM Profile, so this about it like a speed dial. The VM pilot is a DN that redirects the call to either Hunt Pilot if SCCP is used or route pattern if SIP is used. Since you have SCCP lets focus on that, the hunt pilot is configured to point to voicemail hunt list which points to line group(s), if you have more than one voicemail servers then there will be separate line groups for each server, hence if one of the voicemail servers is down it uses the other.

There is no dependency on CUCM server within CUCM config except for the Hunt List association with CUCM Group, so the group assigned to the hunt list needs to include servers that are still operational, if all 3 servers are down then you can expect VM not to be invoked properly.

It is also important to ensusre the VM port group configuration in voicemail system points to the same CUCM servers that are referenced in this CUCM Group.

HTH, please rate all useful posts!

Chris

[pieter.bos]

Chris

I beg to differ.  The message button's function is a combination of the Voicemail service URL with the service typeMessages and the VM profile/pilot number.  This is when the service provisioning enterprise parameter is set to Internal. (default)

The default URL according to Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guide, Release 8.0(1) is Application:Cisco/Voicemail.  This is an internal application that gets called when the message button is pressed.

This XML service allows users to retrieve voice messages on the phone. By default, for phones with a Messages button/option, the voice mail option displays when a user presses the Messages button/option on the phone. By default, the service URL is Application:Cisco/Voicemail.

My redundancy issue is not with redundant Unity connection servers.  I am trying to maintain voicemail service when the publisher node is down. 

If the message button mearly was a speed-dial to the pilot number, the message button should still work when the publisher is down, as I can manually dial the pilot number without a problem.

According to the SRND the Corp Dir and Personal Dir services have built in redundancy:

With Services Provisioning set to Internal, the phone will receive its subscribed phone services from the phone's configuration file and store these (and their corresponding service URLs) in flash. This allows the phone to access the service URLs directly on a web server without first querying the Cisco CallManager IP Phone Service. With Services Provisioning set to Internal, the Corporate and Personal Directories default services also have an extra level of redundancy built into the phones. When these services are selected, the phone will attempt to send an HTTP message with the proper URL string to the Unified CM with which it is currently registered. Therefore, the Unified CM Group configuration of the phone's device pool provides redundancy for these services

This however does not work for the messages service.

I NEED THE MESSAGE BUTTON SERVICE TO POINT TO A DIFFERENT SERVER.

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Pieter,

I'm going to jump back in here for a moment I don't want to

put words in Chris's mouth, but I think what he may have meant

with his last response (+5 "C") is that you don't need to use the message

url to achieve what you really want...full redundancy.

We have tested all failover "redundancy" setups with Unity Connection and

CUCM with our SCCP integration and we don't use the message url in any way.

The Message Button works in all cases by simply using the relationship's that

Chris nicely mentioned.

If you needed to use the message url, it would fall into the "other" category

for building redundancy as it doesn't fall into either the Corporate or personal directory

area.

With Services Provisioning set to Internal, the  Corporate and Personal Directories default services also have an extra  level of redundancy built into the phones.

I hope this makes some sense.

Cheers!

Rob

"And if I should fall behind
Wait for me" - Springsteen