Bob,
In response to your question "How does TMS determine which endpoint will initiate the call when "Route Phone Book Entries" is set to NO and "Use Flat H.323 Dialing Plan When Routing Call is set to Yes?"
These configurations settings actually have different purposes.
The "Route Phone Book Entries" setting is for handling how/what contact methods will be displayed on the endpoints in the phonebook that are receiving their phonebook from TMS.
This setting applies to the phone books specified in Cisco System Phone Books.
- Yes is the default setting, which means that endpoints will only display addresses that they are capable of dialling. For example, on an H.323-only endpoint, ISDN numbers and SIP addresses will not be displayed.
- No means that the endpoints will display all addresses and numbers in the phone book regardless of their dialling capabilities.
The "Use Flat H.323 Dialing Plan When Routing Calls" setting is used to disable the Gatekeeper neighbor checking logic in call routing.
On: Configures Cisco TMS to assume a 'flat' dial plan, where all aliases can be dialed without prefixes no matter which Gatekeeper a device is registered to. When set to On, no Gatekeeper comparison is done in call routing. This is useful for situations where Cisco TMS is not managing the Gatekeepers so the neighbor checking can not be performed, or where Gatekeepers are not direct neighbors to each other (hierarchical or multi-legged paths).
Neighbor Zone prefixes read from Gatekeepers are not used in call routing when this option is set to On.
Off: Cisco TMS determines if gatekeepers are compatible by checking if the call participants are registered to the same gatekeeper or the gatekeepers are direct neighbors. Cisco TMS determines if an alias can be reached between gatekeepers and to insert E.164 dialing prefixes for neighbor zones if required by the gatekeeper's configuration. If Cisco TMS fails this neighbor check, it is assumed the call can not be made with H.323 aliases and alias options will not be given as a valid call routes.
As far as the Scheduler goes this setting will be applied in that when the users schedule a meeting using the Scheduler, TMS will apply this configuration when building a call route between the endpoints that the user has selected.
As for how TMS decides endpoint will initiate the call is determined by several factors such as:
1. Is the call a point to point or multipoint call.
2. Which endpoint has multisite capability.
3. The protocol H.323, H.320, SIP etc.
4. IP/ISDN zone configuration.
5. Gatekeeper Registration/Configuration
6. Endpoint configuration
TMS will consider these factors and determine the best call route. Now in your case, the user scheduling the meeting probably does not know whether the system that they selected to be the master has multisite capabilities or not. So TMS looked at what it knew about the endpoints and selected the endpoint that could make a multisite call. In this case the C90 was probably registered to the same Gatekeeper/VCS as the Bob.1700 and had multisite and could make an H.323 and SIP call.
Without know the exact configuration of endpoints involved it is hard to say with certainty why TMS chose the ZCare C90 to initiate the call.
The key here is was the Bob.1700 the master endpoint when the call connected, meaning when the call did everyone see Bob when the call connected. If not then there would be a problem.
In my experience when testing, TMS most likely select a newer codec with multisite over a legacy endpoint with multisite when building it's call route. For instance if I schedule a call with three endpoints a Classic TANDBERG 1000 with multisite, MXP 1700 with multisite and a C-Series with multisite, the call will be initiated from the C-Series whether the call was scheduled in TMS directly or using the TMS Scheduler or using our integration packages. But this is my opinion based off of my own testing and is not fact or by design in TMS.
I hope that this was able to assist you. It is important to note that in most cases the users do not know what capabilities the endpoints have and TMS does so it will build a call route based off of TMS configuration and what it knows about the endpoints.
One option for this customer would be to configure the "External MCU Usage in Routing" setting (Administrative Tool>Configuration>Conference Settings(Advance Conference Options) to "Always" or "Always, except point to point" then TMS will always use an external MCU when routing calls for calls scheduled using the Scheduler.
Tim W.
