"Time Remaining" counter on MCU Conferences page

[Bob Fitzgerald]

Hello!

When scheduling a conference in TMS involving a MCU, after the conference starts the remaining time as expressed in the MCU is around 15 minutes longer than what you scheduled. 

Is this some sort of padding that TMS sends to the MCU, kind of like TMS considering an endpoint in an ad hoc call as being busy for the next 5 minutes?

This is seen in the following combinations: TMS14.3 (beta)/MCU 4.4(3.54) & TMS13.0/MCU 4.3(2.32)

Thanks!

[Paulo Souza]

Hi Bob,

Have you configured the field "Tear down buffer" when scheduling a conference in TMS?? Are you using NTP to syncronize clock for TMS and MCU?

Regards

Paulo Souza

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[Patrick Sparkman]

I've seen this issue as well, have for the longest time, since we use TMS for conference control and scheduling I've never payed much attention.  It doesn't matter if it's using start/end buffers or not from what I've noticed, I just did a test and this is what I got.

Conference on TMS:

• Start time is 11:13p
• End time is 12:00a
• No buffers are set

According to the MCU:

• Start time is 23:13
• Time remaining is 1 hour, 2 minutes
• End time is 00:15

It's not an NTP issue, it seems to be a TMS issue.  According to the Audit logs on my MCU with the test I just did I see the following in the logs, the conference duration being set from TMS via API is being set incorrectly.

46477

23:13:02

API

administrator

/HTTP/TCP/128.186.172.168:49851

Info

Conferences: conference [9810 - VTC Test] maximum duration set to "0 days 1 hours 2 minutes"

[Bob Fitzgerald]

Hi Paulo,

I see the same results as Patrick.  No 'Tear Down' buffer configured for conference but confence end time on MCU shows longer than scheduled.

[Paulo Souza]

Hi folks,

As the conference end time is around 15 minutes longer than the real scheduled time, I think it can be something related to the Extend Mode in TMS, which normally extends the conference by 15 minutes. Can you schedule a new conference and set the "Extend Mode" parameter to off to see if something changes?

Besides some bug possibility, this is the only possibility I can imagine.

Regards

Paulo Souza

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[mayank.sharma]

Hi Guys,

I tried it with the Extend Mode set to "OFF" and still the conference that is created in the MCU is for extra 15 minutes. Strange...

I would have thought that if the I set it to off.. I explicitly do not want the meetings to extend i.e. "Off will ensure that meetings are never automatically extended". So TMS would not need to reserve the extra 15 minutes on the MCU hence saving the MCU resources.

Starting to feel like a bug.

TMS 13.2.1

MCU 4501 Software version 4.3(2.32)

[Kjetil Ree · Accepted solution]

Hi,

This is actually be design. TMS does it like that to make sure that TMS is the one tearing down the conference; we don't want the MCU to tear it down by itself for example if there are subtle differences between the MCU's and TMS's time.

Regards,

Kjetil

[Bob Fitzgerald]

Hi Kjetil,

Thanks for the reply.  I knew there had to be a logical explanation for it. 

[mayank.sharma]

Hi Kjetil,

If that is the case... then when will the "Audio notifications" from the MCU play indicating that the Conference is about to end in X minutes. Because as far as the MCU is concerned then the conference will only end 15mins after it is scheduled to end by the TMS. Therefore the MCU will not get a chance to play the  "Audio notifications" as the TMS will tear down the conference 15 minutes prior. Hence if we have an Audio only participant in the conference they will never hear the "Audio notifications" that the conference is scheduled to end soon.

Below is the definition of the Audio notifications Home > Settings > Conferences from the MCU (MCU 4501) help file  

Audio notifications

Audio notifications Allows various audible in-conference features to be enabled or disabled.

The options are:

Conference timing: audible messages to indicate when the conference's scheduled end time is approaching.
Join and leave indications: audible messages indicating when other participants join and leave the conference.
Conference status: audible status messages for example indicating to a participant that he is the only participant in a conference.

Regards,

Mayank

[mayank.sharma]

Hi Kjetil,

I missed out mentioning that when the conference is scheduled direct for the MCU (Not TMS) the "Audio Notification" is played but it never played when conference is scheduled from the TMS. The reason for this is I think that whenever a conference is scheduled via TMS extra 15 minutes is added for the conference in the MCU and I think this also applies to when the conference is extended.

Regards,

Mayank    

[Kjetil Ree]

mayank.sharma wrote:
If that is the case... then when will the "Audio notifications" from the MCU play indicating that the Conference is about to end in X minutes. [...]

That is the obvious downside of the current way TMS does it: The MCU's audio notification is never played.

Regards,

Kjetil

[mayank.sharma]

Hi Kjetil.

Thanks for confirming this,

Hence to go forward do we log a TAC case or a feature request for it.

Regards,

Mayank

[Darren McKinnon]

Is there any way to have an audio message announce the approaching end of a meeting when using TMS to book meetings?  I currently have TMS 14.4.2 and MSE 8420 blades.  I will be replacing my 8420 with 8510s, but I don't think this will matter.

This concern comes from 2 things:

1. when using C series, SX series, or Ex series, while content is being shared, the TMS message is appearing in the small window where the presenter is (big problemm on single monitor systems)

2. Audio participants have no indicators that a meeting is going to end.

If there is nothing now, is there value in creating a Feature Request for TMS to have something done about this?

Darren