Apple Push Notification Expressway Prerequisites

[tschafferx]

Hello Cisco community,

the following picture was taken from the CUCM deployment guide for APN. I am interested in the "1" flow. CUCM sends push notifications directly (or via a proxy) to the Cisco Cloud which relays it to the Apple cloud which in turn forwards it to the endpoint. That's clear.

What I don't understand is, why in the document "Mobile and Remote Access via Cisco Expressway Deployment Guide" describes, that: "Expressway deployments that are configured for MRA can support Apple's cloud-based Push Notification Service (APNS). From X8.9.1, we supported Push Notifications for IM and Presence Service instant messages. From X8.10, we support them for voice and video calls too."

Why would that matter? I mean the only time that the expressway coudl be involved in the flow of APNs would be if it was used as the "secure proxy" which is currently not supported/advised. All the other communication comes from the Call Manager. So why would the Expressway determine which features are being supported if it's no even in the communication flow?

Moreover does it state a bit further in the documentation, section "Process to use Apple Push Notifications in Expressway". That "Unified CM must be able to make HTTPS connections to Cisco's cloud services." That is true. But what does that have to do with the Expressway deployment? In my opinion it should state: MRA deployment needs to be set up and CUCM APN need to be enabled.

I appreciate any input on my questions.

Thank you in advance!

[jayage]

I think it is relevant to the situation when you're mobile users run Jabber MRA. For example: if they receive audio/video calls when the app is not active/at background and there is no active Expressway session the mobile app will get the info of an incoming call via APN and then "wake up" the client to receive the call via Expressway. From 8.9.1 it works with IM and from 8.10 for voice and video. I assume that even APN was set up but Expressway uses older versions it is not working even though the IOS device receives the notification of the incoming chat message or voice and video call. This is all my un- to semiprofessional understanding but it makes sense to me ;-) Hope this helps even though the thread is quite old.