Ask the Expert:Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles

[ciscomoderator]

With Jamie Gale

Welcome to the Cisco Support  Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions  about the Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles with Jamie Gale. The Cisco Unified  Enterprise Attendant Console is a highly scalable software-based console  designed for Cisco Unified Communications Manager customers. It combines  support for traditional telephony functions with advanced Unified Communications applications and services, such as at-a-glance destination  presence status for more effective dispatching of inbound calls.

Jamie Gale is a Technical Marketing Engineer in the IP Communications Business Unit at Cisco. He is an expert on Cisco Unified  Attendant Consoles with broad knowledge on the solutions Cisco offers including  the Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles for Businesses, Enterprises and   Departments. Jaime has more than six years of experience on designing,  implementing, and supporting Attendant Consoles in a whole range of businesses.

Remember to use the rating system to let Jamie  know if you have received an adequate response. 

Jaime might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Collaboration,  Voice and Video sub-community discussion forum shortly after the event. This event lasts through May 18, 2012. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

[Julio Carvalho]

Hello Jamie,

Quick question:

Is the Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles supported in a virtualized environment?, also

Can I use a 64-bit Operating System?

Thank you

Julio

[jamgale]

Hi Julio,

CUxAC is fully supported in a virtualized environment, you can find the minimum requirments and other information in our installation guide at the following link:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7282/prod_installation_guides_list.html

64-bit is not currently supported, this is on the roadmap and expected to be available early next year.

[asherif82]

Hi Jamie,

I have a customer who has some requirement that he need employees not to have access to PSTN using FAC and only be directed to outside by the Operator . So if someone wants to call local,national ,mobile...etc, first s/he has to call the operator and then the operator transfer him/her a free line so s/he can call outside.

Is that possible function using Attendant Console or some other third party application can perform that function?

Thanks,

Amr Sherif

[jamgale]

Hi Amr,

Yes this would be possible using the Cisco Unified Attendant Console.

What I would suggest would be to create an Internal Queue within the Attendant Console Web Admin and assign this to the Operator(s). You can then setup a translation pattern for Internal people to dial "0" or "100" or another number which would place the call through to the Internal Queue CTI Route Point.

The Internal calls would go through to the Operator who could then transfer them to the required external number, you would need to make sure that the CSS used on the CTI Ports and the Operator IP Phone has access to call PSTN numbers.

Hope this helps.

Jamie

[jamgale]

Amr,

The Attendant Console is used for transferring calls, there is no way to send a free line through the console to achieve this.

Is this possble using just an IP Phone?

[asherif82]

Hi Jamie,

The call flow that the customer need is that when end-user want to dial outbound calls,He just call  the operator by dialing "0" and then the later send him a free line and then the end user start dialing his number not to be transfered . Shortly the operator job is just send a free line to the employees not to dial external numbers and then transfer it to them.

You got my point, Is that possible with CUxAC ?

Thanks,

Amr Sherif

[Marcelo Vieira]

Hi Jamie,

I wonder how to upgrade the Cisco Unified Attendant consoles. Is there any training material on CSC that can help me with the process?

Thanks,

Marcelo

[jamgale]

Hi Marcelo,

You can download the software from www.cisco.com/go/ac.

Part of the downloaded ZIP file is documentation for installation of the software, within this document there are instructions on how to perform an upgrade.

In essence, you simply run the new install over the top of the current installation and the software does it all for you, nice and simple :-)

Thanks

Jamie

[Javier Cuadros]

Hi Jamie,

Thanks in advance for you help,

A customer have already cuac enterprise version 8.0.6 installed with cucm 7.1.5 and is planning to upgrade cucm to version 8.6. As actual version of cuac is not compatible we require to upgrade as well cuac, my question is about upgrade licenses, And upgrade software.

where can we get them?

Do we need a new license for the new version of cuac? Or we just need to download the new version of cuac 8.6.2 and install it over the old version and licensed are migrated automatically?

Are these free of charge? Or we have to purchase them?

Thanks again.

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[jamgale]

Hi Javier,

You can just download the latest software from www.cisco.com/go/ac and run the upgrade over the top of the current installation.

Unless the customer is running on VM, renames the machine or uses another machine then the licenses will migrate with the upgrade and this is free of charge. If a new license is required dues to the scenarios mentioned, you would need to contact Cisco TAC with the Sales Order Number for the purchase of software or the License Activation Code originally used and request a re-host. They will then proceed to reset the LAC and a new license file can be generated.

It is worth noting that version 9 (due for release next month) will introduce version specific licensing, if you are performing a major upgrade (version 8 to version 9 as an example) you will need a new license file. If you have a valid UCSS contract in place then this is free of charge, if not you will need to purchase an A La Carte upgrade at a cost. This information will all be available in the documentation with the release.

[bigcappa1]

Jamie,

2 questions here, think one has been covered.

Going to upgrade from 3.1.1.8 to 8.5 (cucm is on 7.1 but upgrading to 8.5 in the summer). Realize I can upgrade over the top and will have to upgrade all user consoles accordingly. Will I need a new license for this or is the current one fine.

2nd question is we have just started to role out the CUEAC to remote sites, one issue we are having is the speed dials, they don't seem to be restricted to the local console, so if one user adds an entry they all users can see this, we want the local site to have their own list of speed dials, is this possible?

Thanks

Paul Spence

Sent from Cisco Technical Support iPad App

[jamgale]

Hi Paul,

1. Unless the customer is running on VM, renames the machine or uses  another machine then the licenses will migrate with the upgrade and this  is free of charge. If a new license is required dues to the scenarios  mentioned, you would need to contact Cisco TAC with the Sales Order  Number for the purchase of software or the License Activation Code  originally used and request a re-host. They will then proceed to reset  the LAC and a new license file can be generated.

It  is worth noting that version 9 (due for release next month) will  introduce version specific licensing, if you are performing a major  upgrade (version 8 to version 9 as an example) you will need a new  license file. If you have a valid UCSS contract in place then this is  free of charge, if not you will need to purchase an A La Carte upgrade  at a cost. This information will all be available in the documentation  with the release.

Please also note that during the upgrade from the version you already have, you need to change the CUCM End User to an Application User before performing the upgrade.

2. When creating speed dials there is an option called Private Speed Dials, my suggestion would be to ensure that is selected, this will mean only the operator which creates it can see that entry. This does mean that some operators will need to create the same speed dials but this is the only way to restrict who can see the speed dial entries.

[vinhnguyen]

Hi Jamie

Currently we have two queues.  At the moment when the queues are busy the call go to voicemail.  Customer want the call to sit in the queue and music on hold playing.  Is this possible and is there a Cisco link for this type of configuration.

Thanks

[jamgale]

Hi Vinhnguyen,

By the sounds of you description you either have the queues configured to go to an overflow destination in certain scenarios (you can check this in the queue managament section of the CUxAC Web Admin) or you are actually sending calls to the operators phone instead of the queue and therefore the next call is following the routing of the phone.

If you do not have any overflows cofigured against the queues, once the calls hit the CTI Route Point (Queue DDI) they are redirected immediatly to a CTI Port (CT Gateway Device) where they queue to be answered, you can have as many calls waiting as long as you configure enough of these CTI Ports.

To play music to callers that are waiting, in the Web Admin under general properties there is an option called Held Queued Calls, select this and the call is answered and placed on hold immediatly, the caller will then here the MoH source configured against the CTI Ports.

This can be found in the installation guides at the folllowing link:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps7282/prod_installation_guides_list.html