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.

[jamgale]

Hi tirianwilson,

Thanks for your questions.

I will start with CUxAC, you are correct in the fact that CUxAC can only have a single directory which is shared between all operators, in the current release this is a sync with CUCM and in version 9 you will have the ability to sync directly with Active Directory (In a new Premium Edition) as well. What you can do in the latest release is create Personal Directory Groups, althouh each operator will see the Full Directory, they can create there own group using a filter which will populate a new group with the relevant users, for example your filter maybe location is equal to North Caroline. This group will dynamically update with new users without any user interventiion as long as that filter rule is met. Having said that, I understand if there is privacy rules with the operators still being able to see the full directory.

In CUxAC you can also set the queues so MoH is played to the caller whilst they wait instead of hearing ringing.

With Arc Premium you can achieve the directoryt segregation you have described as you do have the ability to create multiple directory groups and these groups are associated to the relevant operator user accounts, this restricts the directory to the people you want each operator to see. With Arc Premium you can do a sync with Active Directory, Microsoft ADAM or CUCM as well as a CSV import and the ability to manually create contacts in the directory. I am not sure why you believe this directory segregating is not possible with Arc Premium but this feature has been in the product for many years.

Arc Premium also has the ablity to play MoH to callers instead of ringing, however with Arc Premium this comes with an additional module called Arc Voice Connect, this is not out of the box functionality.

With regards to your third requirements for AD or CUCM authentication, this is not availble in either product and I am not aware of any other Attendant Console that has this functionality.

I hope this helps, if you want to follow up on anything then please let me know.

Jamie

[tirianwilson]

Good Afternoon and thanks for your response!

     Have you actually implemented multiple segregated  directories on Arc Premium?  We tried and couldn't make it work; then  we opened a case with Arc and they couldn't make it work, so they let us  return all our licenses for a full refund.  The recommendation was to install multiple servers in VMs and control access at the server level, but we didn't want to go that route unless we absolutely had to.  The issue in our environment  is that each of the different directories has "sensitive" information  in it like cell phone numbers for executives that they need for their  switchboard operators to have, but don't want the operators from the  other BUs to have.  As a  result it is one of the two "must have" features - the other being hold  music for the queues.  Our software policy specifies AD integration as a  requirement, but it has been waived in the past when such software was  not available.  We keep looking for a product, but haven't found anything yet.  Have any of your other customers ran into similar issues?

[jamgale]

Hi,

My background is from the Arc Premium side of things before moving to being the TME for the Cisco Unified Attendant Consoles, I deployed Arc for around 5 years and had many implementations where segregated directories where setup.

I do not know why you would have been told this was not possible but it is something I can look into for you, there is a possiblity that it wasn't possible with how your Active Directory was structured. In order to sync into different directory groups the users in AD would need to be either in there own OU or have a property unique to that directory group, for example location  = directory group 1.

Feel free send me a Private Message on here with your contact details, we can then catch up offline to find out more details around this Arc Premium issue.

With regards to the AD integration, I have heard a handful of customers ask for it but it has never been a high priority feature, unfortunatley as mentioned before I am not aware of any Attendant Console software which offers this functionality.

Jamie

[marcusdewaal]

Hi Jamie

I have deployed 2 CUEAC 8.6.2.2000-2 servers with 15 operators each. Each remote site has its own queue. The BLF service needs to be constantly restarted in-order for the receptionists to see the BLFs. Is there a work around for this?

Secondly, Each remote site would like to only see their particular sites corporate directory, how do I enable this? Do I use the directory rules on the server?

Regards,

Marcus de Waal

[jamgale]

Hi Marcus,

There is no reason for you having restart the BLF service, it sounds like the connection between the CUEAC Server and the CUCM for line status is getting disconnected and the restart is simply re-establishing that link. In order to look into what is causing this you would need to open a TAC case and provide the relevant traces that they would ask for.

With regards to your second query, the CUEAC Server can only sync one directory which all operators on that server will see, you can restrict the directory which is imported using the filters and creating rules such as location is equal to remote site A, this will then only import the users which match that rule.

If you have the need to seperate out the directory for different users on the same server, this is not possible with the product today. What you could do for each remote site however it create Personal Directory Groups, that will allow the operators to see there selected users in one directort tab. For more information on this and to see how it works, you can look at the Personal Directory Groups video at the following link:

http://www.arcsolutions.com/north_america/solutions/products/cisco_oem_consoles.aspx

Hope this helps.

Jamie

[marcusdewaal]

Hi Jamie

Excellent, thanx for pointing me in the right direction. I was unaware of those videos.

Regards,

Marcus

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Jamie,

I just wanted to take a moment to say thanks for your outstanding support on this

"Ask the Expert event" +5 from this end!

It's great to see the detailed answers that you have provided to the questions here

Good stuff!

Cheers!

Rob

"Everything is broken" - Bob Dylan

[jamgale]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for the feedback, I am glad to hear this event has been helpful.

Jamie

[bingzaballa]

Hi.

We are upgrading our CUCM from 6.x to 8.6  And so We are bringin CUEAC 8.2 as part of the migration.  In our current setup, we have 20 offices with each office having a receptionist/front desk who uses AC. Each office has their own Main number which is handled by AC with a separate pilot point /CTI route point.

So now, I'm trying to figure out how I can do this in CUEAC 8.6  I have installed a lab environment with only one server for all sites. IT does not look like I can assign a separate CT Gateway devives to each Queue.  Is there a way to do this, i.e. each Queue having a separate CT ports, CT Gateway devices, Service Devices ? 

Or does it look like I will have to install 20 CUEAC servers , each server per site   ?

Thanks.

Bing

[bingzaballa]

I meant to say we are bringing CUEAC 8.6.2 ( not 8.2)

[jamgale]

Hi Bing,

In CUEAC it is possble to create multiple queues (up to 50) and each queue has it's own CTI Route Point. However, what you are referring too is the use of CTI Ports which are used for placing calls on hold, call park and transferring calls.

The CTI Ports in the current release are a shared pool of devices, meaning that the devices use a specific Calling Search Space, Partition, Music on Hold source and other properties.

We understand that there are some setups where different queues maybe handled by different operators in different locations and in this particular setup you require calls into the different locations to use there own CTI Ports so you can use a specific CSS/PTN etc for that site.

As a result of feedback from customers, version 9 of CUEAC which is currently scheduled for release on June 28th will have the ability to create what we call Queue Device Groups. You will be able to create up to 20 groups and within each group you can have your own CTI Ports which can have there individual settings, you then assign this group to a queue or multiple queues. When a call now routes to a queue, it will use a CTI Ports which is assigned to the group which is assigned to that queue.

There is a consideration when planning to implement using queue device groups, currently (and including V9), it is only possible to control a maximum of 255 CTI Ports per CUEAC server (CTI Route Points are not included in that number). What you need to work out is how many of each device type is needed in each group and if you end up with more than 255 then you will need to consider reducing the amount of devices in each group or plan on deploying a second server - we do have plans to change that limit but I could not advise when that would be at this time.

Having said all this, if you cannot wait for this release then the only option would be to implement multiple servers in order to use unique settings on CTI Ports for each location.

I hope this helps

Jamie

[bingzaballa]

Thanks for  the quick reply. I feared this was the case that I have to install a server per location.  I'll see if I can wait for version 9. Trying to ask my Rep if we are entitled for it. 

Bing

[jamgale]

No problem Bing,

If you have purchased a UCSS contract then you will be entitled to a free upgrade to V9 once it is released.

[Davemzcs2]

Hi there-

i am getting this issue with the Attendant Console:

"The specified extension is not valid. ask the administrator for a valid extension for this application"

1. I log in with a different user/extension. 

2. Then logout.

3. Finally log in with the usual extension.

Best regards,