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TMS 14.2 Smart Scheduler Phonebooks

Paul Woelfel
Level 4
Level 4

Hi,

with the new Smart Scheduler with TMS 14.2 you have the option to add telepresence rooms. Is it somehow possible to also include the phonebooks in the search?

We want to add Jabber Clients or external Video Conference Systems to the conference and it is not possible to add entries from the phonebook or even custom URIs.

Regards, Paul
22 Replies 22

Magnus Ohm
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Hi Paul

Phonebook searches and dial out to custom participants are excluded in the new SMART scheduler. However you could create dummy rooms in TMS that represents these URI's in order to do this. If you want this to be included into the new scheduler it has to be a feature request.

/Magnus

Hi Magnus,

but what about the Provisioning-Clients (Movi-Users)?It is also not possible to add them with the new Smart Scheduler.

As the Phonebooks were available in the "old" Scheduler, the Smart Scheduler is more a step backward than a replacement for the old Scheduler.

I think, Paul and I are not the only Users, wanting this feature back.

Thanks

Ingo

Don't worry Ingo, one of the first things I noticed was you were restricted to systems that were only listed in the system navigator.  I even thought it was necessary missing element that should be included.  I know it's suppose to be a nice easy smart scheduling option, but it should be "smart" enough allow us in include like you said provisioned devices, external, etc.

Hi, this is really a missing feature. The scheduler can't be to smart, if he doesn't know his bookmarks ;-)

So if someone of the BU reads this: Please readd this feature again! It's really needed!

Meanwhile I'm also talking to my local cisco contact ;-)

Regards, Paul

Michael McGary
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Paul,

I am not meaning to make light of the question, but I really want to undersand the purpose of including the provisioned user would be? Do you want the TMS system to dial-out to the user's FindMe? What happens if the user is not available during the default ring duration?

For me, my FindMe is set to ring inital devices for 30 seconds and then busy and no answer forwards to my mobile phone. If I do not answer my mobile phone, then it goes to voice mail. When it goes to voice mail, the people in the meeting now have to listen to mine and all the other people that were invited's voice mail greeings. Then all of those voice mail boxes now are recording the meeting for the maximum limit of each person's voice mail. Once the maximum duration has been reached, everybody in the meeting would have to listen to whatever post-recording message.

One of the other features we added to Cisco TMS v14.2 are new booking confirmations. In the Booking Confirmations, there is a new configurble SIP protocol handler. By default, we use sip:dialstring@example.com. This is then a clickable link that will auto-launch a call with Jabber Video for TelePresence. If you changed the protocol handler from "sip" to "tel", then the Jabber for Windows client would launch.

By including additional dial-in participants, the new booking confirmation shows a clickable link in the meeting invite. Those users that were invited to the meeting can now simply join by clicking on the link.

For the External Video Systems, those are presuambly fixed room resources. This can be easily accomplished as Magnus suggested by adding a new system of type Room and applying the apporpirate dial strings. That new Room system shows up in Smart Scheduler just as other systems do and you cannot double-book that far-end, unmanaged system.

Hi Michael,

thanks for your detailed answer!

At the customer installations we are requiring this features we have a Phonebook of external systems. We now maintain a manual list as a phonebook. It is more complicated to maintain them as Systems in the Navigator. Besides that, aren't systems in the navigator useing a license?

At this customer we don't have the voicemail problem problem, bevause it is only a telepresence Installation without cucm. I have the same SNR calling my jabber Clients and then to CUCM for deskphone/softphone and mobile or the voicemail.

Most of our customer installation use automatic connect because they either have a mixed infrastructure (Cisco and some old endpoints) or they just like better to get called instead og using One Button To Push.  If someone is scheduled to a meeting, they are mostly infront of the client and pick the call up. Some customers also use the jabber client as a video endpoint for really small offices and not as a personal client.

In my opinion the success of a video system is open directly connected to the usability of it. If you have to dial the URI of the MCU, maybe enter the Conf code and a PIN it's more complicated, than just picking up. Often the decision makers do not want to be trained into much detail on a video system, but it should just simply work. So KISS would be a good idea.

So Michael I hope it got more clear why we want to use phonebooks in the smart scheduler.

Regards, Paul

Btw: Tel URI is not that helpful at the moment as the Jabber for Windows does not support URI dialing. I'm waiting for 9.6 to come. Of course you can mess around with search rules on vcs and cucm.

regarding voicemail: If it really goes to voicemail the initiator can update the meeting and remove this user.

Regards, Paul

RenzKanwischer
Level 1
Level 1

Thanks Paul for highlighting this.

I am wondering what is SMART on this scheduler and what Cisco's strategie is behind this.

It looks very nice but very important features we use on the former scheduler are skipped.

The phonebook was a pain on the old scheduler but instead of improving it and add a search feature they dropped it completely! We use it for adding our ~500 Movi users and our ~500 manual phonebook entries. Not possible anymore!

And they use the TMS System name as search criteria, where we use technical DNS proof names and not user understandable names as in the phonebook.

And that is not all:

- Language selection not possible anymore

- Users Time zone detection is faulty and can not be overwritten by admin

- Dial out not working anymore.

For me it is a step back to ancient times!

I can not imagine where we can use this scheduler in the future. We have to redesign our End-User interface completely and I am very astonished about this evolution.

I agree with RenzKanwischer

Good message

br Oleksandr

Martin Koch
VIP Alumni
VIP Alumni

I also agree with the points mentioned by the admins/users here.

I think the next features need to be:

* dialing any kind of uri

  (might be handy to also be able to disable that for specific groups/users or have some filtering done to prevent for example ISDN dial out from the MCU)

* selecting and searching users from phonebook(s)

Michael:

I get your point, but the problem is always if a system tries to be more clever as you are, and at least

I know many deployments which want to be able to dial personal accounts and they do so and if its

with a workaround of eating up licenses and add it as room, which I think is even worse.

So the blocking does not really solve the issue, and this is something at least which Cisco could do.

You ask what should happen, yes, why not book a findme uri, which even might be better as if its

inside your organization you have full control.

Things what could happen (the points could be standalone or combined)

* smart scheduler detects a findme booking and sends out a mail with a link to the to be dialed up number (and jabber supports uri helper)

* MCU sends a flag "do not fork do voicemail" on its outbound call and findme+call control respect that

* findme sends out an email with a missed call notification, so the user could dial back

* Jabber gets a OBTP

* the user gets a missed call notification via email and even gets a list when he reconnects with his jabber client

And in addition to the Smart Scheduler, some personal smart conference control center so the

guy who booked it can easily kick somebody out.

Have an option if you select a dialout that the user has to confirm joining the meeting by pressing star,

so the call would go to voicemail but does not get into the conference and gets disconnected after 20/30sec

of inactivity

Imagination and programming skills are the limit, so lets get less restrictive and more creative :-)

Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify

I totally agree with Martin, Paul and Renz!

If we follow Cisco's suggestion to have dial out working with Smart Scheduler, if we add the external endpoints as "room/equipment" instead of phonebook entries or participant templates, we will have to buy additional licenses, because "room/equipment" systems use system licenses of TMS.

So, let's imagine Renz's environemnt with about 500 phonebooks entries. What would he have to do in order to add the external partipants as "room/equipment"? He would have to buy additional licenses for 500 systems.  =/

Let's imagine my TPaaS environment! We have many different customers, many different external endpoints, many different end users scheduling calls. What about the cost if I add every external participant as "room/equipment"?

That's horrible in my opinion! Mainly considering the investiment that the customer would have to make.

Our strategy is to invest in trainning so that the users may be able to use the complete scheduling interface instead of using some kind of "easy" and "friendly" interface. We are also investing in developing an external booking interface.

Really step back! I agree.

Regards

Paulo Souza


Please rate replies and mark question as "answered" if applicable.

Paulo Souza Was my response helpful? Please rate useful replies and remember to mark any solved questions as "answered".

We've added all our Jabber users as external rooms (lucklily we don't have that many).  Due to the nature of our network, we often can't really send dial-in information to Jabber users so Automatic Connect is pretty much the only option.  OBTP for Jabber video would be optimal, but of course that would only be viable if you could still use automatic connect to non-OBTP participants, which you can't do at the moment.

Adam Wamsley
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Hello,

A feature request has already been created to return this functionality to the new scheduler.

http://tools.cisco.com/Support/BugToolKit/search/getBugDetails.do?method=fetchBugDetails&bugId=CSCug76084

CSCug76084

Symptom:

No phonebook search or possibility to dial out to custom URI's in the new SMART scheduler.

Conditions:

Normal. feature request.

Patrick Sparkman
VIP Alumni
VIP Alumni

What do you all think about participant templates, having the ability to add them to the conference from the scheduler? After all, they're similar to the phone books.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPhone App

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