Ask the Expert: Cisco TelePresence for the Enterprise

[ciscomoderator]

Welcome to the Cisco® Support Community Ask the Expert conversation.  This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions about Cisco Telepresence® for the enterprise. 

Cisco experts Jaret, Fernando, and Fred will be covering all Cisco TelePresence products.  Topics include Cisco TelePresence endpoints and TelePresence infrastructure such as the Cisco TelePresence Video Communication Server (VCS), Cisco Expressway Series, Cisco Unified Communication Manager (CallManager), Cisco TelePresence Servers (MSE 8710, on Virtual Machine, etc.), MCU (MSE 8510, etc.), Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (TMS), and all other Cisco TelePresence related devices.

Jaret Osborne is an 8-year Cisco Advanced Services veteran.  In his Advanced Services tour, Jaret has covered all aspects of Cisco Unified Communications and TelePresence products, including both enterprise and service provider verticals. Most recently Jaret has been working with global service providers supporting their Cisco TelePresence as a Service offerings while also incubating new cloud services at Cisco.

Fernando Rivas is a Cisco Advanced Services NCE, starting in the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC), 2007, on the Collaboration Technology Team mastering the Cisco Unified Communication  technologies and specialized in call control CUCM,VCS) and  conferencing (MeetingPlace, Telepresence). In 2011, he joined Cisco Advanced Services as a member of the Cisco Collaboration team and participated in several Cisco TelePresence and video-related technologies deployments. Currently he is a member of the Video Cloud Technology Team, supporting video exchanges in several and architecting new private video cloud solutions for large enterprises. Fernando holds a routing and switching CCIE® certification (22975).

Fred Mollenkopf  is a Cisco Advanced Services Network consulting engineer working at Cisco for the last 7 years. Fred has led some of the largest Cisco Unified Communication and Collaboration deployments done for Cisco customers and partners. Over 15 years’ experience in data networking with a specialization in Cisco Unified Communications in 2004. Currently he is a member of the SP Video Advanced Services Team, supporting SP video exchanges and the Cisco Telepresence solutions.  Fred maintains an active CCIE® in Voice (17521).

Remember to use the rating system to let Jaret, Fernando, and Fred know if you have received an adequate response. 

Because of the volume expected during this event, Jaret, Fred, and Fernando might not be able to answer every question. Remember that you can continue the conversation in the Collaboration, Voice and Video Community, under the sub-community TelePresence, shortly after the event. This event lasts through August 15, 2014. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other Cisco Support Community members.

[jaosborn]

Update to number 1....  Tested this in the lab, apparently the layout option does not apply to meetings on the 8710.  You will need to use the options available on the 8710 directly.

Regards,

Jaret

[stoian.adrian]

Ok. Thanks a lot for your replies.

One more question: when we were scheduling conferences with TMS and MCU there was an option in TMS next to each participant to mute microphone on join. This way when someone joined it was automatically muted.

Now when we do the same with Telepresence Server this option is greyed out.

Do you know if there is any way to activate this on Telepresence Server?

[Wayne DeNardi]

It may not be possble to do that with the TelePresence Server like you can on the MCUs... it may be a further thing to add to the difference between MCU and TelePresence Server lists.

[jaosborn]

I agree with Wayne.

There are always new improvements with the products and I suspect eventually the features you are looking for will be available.  There is a move for widespread scheduling support for Conductor in TMS (not "officially" recomended now) with Conductor controlling TS resources via flex API (more robust set of features available compared to locally managed mode on the TS).  There should be more available in this regard first part of 2015.

[AFRLHQVTC AFRLHQVTC]

Hey guys.

     We have been running a TMS install with a MSE8000 running 8510p blades for a couple years now.  We have noticed with each TMS upgrade our web snapshots in TMS are not refreshing and showing stale data more and more often.  Also the time lag difference between when a participant leaves/joins or a setting is changed on the MCU doesnt reflect right away in TMS.  Are there any tweaks we could try to get TMS to update data faster from the MCU, or is this a common issue?

TMS 14.2.0
MCU: MSE 8000 with Codian 8510 blades SW 4.4 (3.67)
 

Thanks!

[Patrick Sparkman]

I've noticed this as well, both the delayed CCC data about participants and snapshots.  I don't know if you are, but we're running Conductor with our 8510s.  I have a TAC case open at the moment in regards to the TMS conference control center snapshots.

We're running TMS 14.3.2 and MCU 4.5 (was 4.4).

[jaosborn]

I found your TAC case and unfortunately, there have not been any useful updates.  Can you also try clearing the Temp Internet files?

-Jaret

[Patrick Sparkman]

That's one of the first things I tried myself, I had found the same discussion in the forums prior to opening the case.

[AFRLHQVTC AFRLHQVTC]

I use the latest build of firefox with clear history on close turned on, but went ahead and manually cleared everything as well.  I deleted the java cache as mentioned in the linked forum and now CCC won't load at all....guessing I will need to reinstall Java now.

What browsers and version of java is everyone using?  Our support team here uses a mix of IE9, Chrome and Firefox.

IE9: Performs the worst.
Chrome and Firefox are about the same.

Currently have java 7 update55 installed.

Is there a recommended java version for TMS14?
 

[jaosborn]

Hi -

I'm not exactly sure what could cause this problem, but I found another forum where someone was talking about this...  Have you tried to clear your Temporary Internet Files?

https://supportforums.cisco.com/discussion/12103311/intermittent-participant-snapshot-conf-control-center

-Jaret

[Patrick Sparkman]

I've tried that myself, and it didn't work for me.  CCC would just show the first snapshot that it received, and when it refreshes, the snapshot wouldn't update.  In my issue, we did a Wireshark on the TMS server, and the only times it would request or send snapshot data to the user's browser was if I manually change the snapshot source within CCC.  It may or may not be related, but figured I'd let you know, that case is still active, currently pending TAC to look over the logs and packet capture.

[kumar2671]

Hi Patrick
Question for Cisco expressway
Could you please help me on how to convert domain
As when I dial outside , they my internal domain

Do I need to apply transformation on expc or e

[Patrick Sparkman]

You'll need to use a CPL script to rewrite the inbound/outbound domains, there is an example in Jaret's reply within this thread where I ask the same question.

[Wayne DeNardi]

As far as I am aware, TMS uses the TMS Database Scanner Service to request MCU CDRs at regular intevals... I do not believe the time between polls to the MCU by TMS is configurable.  One of the TMS experts (ie Kjetil Ree) may be able to provide more details. 

Wayne
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[Patrick Sparkman]

Hello -

Question regarding VCS CPL.

Since the forums migration, it seems all of the CPL examples people have posted are either missing or not displaying in there entirety, and the VCS admin guide doesn't show an example for "source-url-for-message".

Example:

1. source-a@domain calls endpoint@domain
2. VCS CPL changes source-a@domain to look like it's coming from source-b@domain
3. endpoint@domain sees the incoming call as source-b@domain

Is it's possible to simply rewrite the calling source address using "source-url-for-message", if so can you provide an example?

Thanks