DIAL-IN from external to Telepresence MCU conference

[thorstenn]

Hi,

Design:

- Telepresence Endpoints (CTS,MC,EX) registered on CUCM 8.6

- MCU 53xx connected via SIP to VCS-C

- MCU added to TMS 14.1.1

- Scheduling via TMSEX

- VCS-E is also configured

I have now configured a meeting via outlook and the conference started sucessfully on MCU.

What i now want is a dial in from an external mobile or another phone. So i mean only Audio.

For conference scheduling i use an extensions which is only reachable from inside the company. I have now tried to make an translation pattern on CUCM to the internal conference number. But if i try to dial in from outside to the Translation Pattern i see on the VCS-C a "busy" because there are no more audi ports on MCU device. Is the only way now to go to MCU and edit the existing conference to make more audio or video ports available? I tested it and i was able to call from external into the conference.

Because the requirement is that we sometimes want to forward the TMS outlook email to an external with an automated created dial in number for this conference. Is this possible to create such a number and put it in  the TMS email to forward to externals?

Hope its clear enoughe what i want. :-)

CHeers

T

[Nick Halbert-Lillyman]

I'm not sure I understand your issues with dialling in, however you may be able to achieve the desired result by editing the email templates in TMS.

We had a similar issue, where we would book a conference on our MCU and TMS would only generate the internally reachable E164 or URI in the email, e.g. "Numeric ID: 9999" when someone from external would need to dial "2222 9999" to get into that conference.

We went into the email template settings of TMS and changed part of the email script from something like:

Numeric ID: [NUMERIC_ID]

To:

Numeric ID: 2222[NUMERIC_ID]

Where [NUMERIC_ID] is the variable for the automatically generated internal conference dial-in number.

Note that I don't remember the exact syntax but it's fairly easy to work out once you see the template.  This would mean that in the email sent out for the conference above, it would list "Numeric ID: 2229999".  Note you can also change the text portion of "Numeric ID" to something more descriptive such as "dial in number".

This plan of course relies on your internal extensions matching the last part of the external dial-in number.

[thorstenn]

Ok let me explain a little bit more.

For automatic created conference i use 6118X this number is not reachable from outside. And the problem is also that if i use a translation pattern from CUCM the conference is busy because no audio ports are available.

How could i now easily make this automatic created conference reachable rom outside? Could i use such a number which is reachable from outside, call this number put in the conference number and pin and than join the conference?

Update:

I played around with Auto Attendant. Maybe this is an solution for me (i dont know yet ).

BUT is my understanding right, that if i schedule a meeting with for example three internal endpoints, the only two ways to add later for example a mobile device to the conference:

1. dial from one internal endpoint the mobile number and add the mobile to the conference ?

2. or to modify on MCU the audio ports so that the mobile can join the conference via Auto Attandant?

[Patrick Sparkman]

It sounds to me like you're reserving the media ports on the MCU for only scheduled conferences, which will not allow ad-hoc participants like you want.  Check on your MCU, Settings > Media port reservation.

[thorstenn]

Ok. So its not possible to add ad-hoc participants to a auto generated conference. But is it possible to add from beginning external participants to the conference via outlook scheduling ?

Is it possible to add by default to every automatic conference 1 or 2 audio ports ?

[Nick Halbert-Lillyman]

OK, now I get your issue.  You can't add external dial in participants to conference via outlook, as TMSXE/outlook need to have a pre-existing entry for an endpoint (external or otherwise) in order for you to schedule that endpoint and thus reserve audio ports.

A couple of ways around this;

You can try using installing the TMS outlook form which will allow more granular scheduling from outlook, including reserving space for audio participants, but will also require a degree of cooperation from your SOE/Exchange team.

Another way which is a little more messy is to add 10 or so "dummy" systems as external/rooms in TMS and exchange, such as "audio 1" and "audio 2".  If you are scheduling your conferences as "dial in" , any additional external audio participants should just end up reserving a resource on your MCU.

There is probably a more simple solution than my suggestions above however

[thorstenn]

Hi Nick,

thanks. I already tried the form but it looks like this is not working. I don`t know how i could reserve space for audio participants. See here the screen:

the external field is greyed out.

For your other suggestion i thought also about this but i think this is not a suitable solution. If there is a way to schedule some audi ports with the outlook form this would be ok.