Siemens / PIMG / MWI Problems

[Vance Krier]

Hey group,

Unity 4.2(1)

Siemens 9006.6

Got a strange one here. I've got a TAC case open, but three days with no resolution, so I appeal here for help. The basics of MWI functionality is working, but we've got a serious problem. The MWIs seem to get confused and then lockup.

If the MWI on the telephone is On, and Unity attempts to turn it on again (refresh or whatever), then it gets very angry. It will fail, because the phones don't allow this. If the MWI is already on, then the phone responds with a 'Not Possible', which the PIMG hates. Unity will retry 5 additional times to light it. Once it gives up, it changes the status to MWI Failed. If a user then clears their messages, Unity does not attempt to clear the MWI.

I believe this is because when Unity fails to light the MWI, it changes the MWIOn field in the Notification MWI table to a 0. Therefore, Unity thinks the light is off and never attempts to clear it. The same thing can happen if the light is already off, but it happens in reverse.

So, essentially, over time, more and more lights are getting stuck On or stuck Off.

Just now, I forced a MWI Refresh. Before I did this, there were 117 mailboxes that were confused. Now there are 144.

Any ideas how to fix this or how we can continue troubleshooting?

If we could just either get it to recognize the 'Not Possible' response as being ok, or get it to always send the MWI On/Off, no matter what it thinks it is currently set to..

As a side question, does anyone know of a way to send a MWI On or Off command from Unity, for a particular phone? As in, a manual tool that I can specify an extension and then send the command to set the lamp?

Thanks!

Vance

[Tommer Catlin]

Make sure you have latest and greatest PIMG software installed on the PIMG. You can download April 26th dated versions. I had this problem with my Rolm 9005 and PIMG i'm working.... The pimg was sending the light request twice and it would turn the light on, then off again.... I updated to the newest version and its fine now.

Oh.. the fun of PIMG's.....

[Vance Krier]

Hey, much thanks for the response!

Yup, we're running the latest code, downloaded on the 27th. The lights go on and off correctly in most cases. Sometimes they get confused and then never seem to recover on their own. I can replicate the issue by refreshing the MWI for a subscriber that already has MWI ON. This will break that subscriber and it seems to require manual intervention to get it fixed again.

Can I ask you a question? If you go to a handset that has privileges to light the lights, and you attempt to turn the MWI lamp on twice, what is the response from the PBX?

In this integration, the PBX will respond with WILL CALL BACK upon successfully lighting the lamp, a MW CANCELLED upon successfully clearing the lamp, and a NOT POSSIBLE any time Unity tries to light the lamp when it is already lit.

I'm Siemens illiterate, so I'm relying completely on the integration guide (written for 9006.4, we're running 9006.6), the PBX guy, and TAC. TAC has been helpful as far as getting me info on how to run debugs on the PIMGs, but we've yet to find a solution. They're basically saying the PBX shouldn't do that, but they can't tell me what it should do.

At this point, we don't know if Unity is misbehaving, or if the PBX is. I'd love to validate whether the 'NOT POSSIBLE' message is the correct response to a subsequent MWI request, or if your integration does something different...

If I send you the PIMG debug commands, would you be willing to capture a debug output for a successful lamp on and off, and then a lamp refresh on an extension that already has the lamp lit?

Thanks, I very much appreciate the assistance!

Vance

[Tommer Catlin]

You may have something wrong in the PIMG... its what it sounds like.... I think the PIMG is misbehaving and does not understand what "not possible" is. My PIMG is beta for the 9005 and I had a similar issue. They sent me new code for it and resolved the issue of the lights turning on.. then off right away. You watch it happen in the PIMG call log for the MIW on, etc.

You could try and put the MWI cords for the 9006 in the PIMG so it knows what it should be sending... I know the instructions probably say no and leave blank... but.... may be a stab in the dark.

See if your TAC guy can escalate it to the the Unity PIMG group. There are some guys there that can take those logs and send them to Intel. Intel will be able to tell Cisco if it's a bug in the PIMG.

I'm also Siemens illiterate.... slowly learning...

watch the port monitor on Unity and see if its sending out double or 5 times the MWIs..... maybe it's Unity that is confused.....not the PIMG.

[tjjorgensen]

It's something in the Siemens config, double check all those optiset ports and cos settings. If nothing is wrong I would triple check. Make sure you have full messages enabled too.

[tjjorgensen]

Spoke too soon. I resolved the issue in 4.0(5) with Hicom changes. After an upgrade (and later fresh reinstall) of 4.2(1) I experienced the EXACT same as above. We have turned off the scheduled resync of MWI, and reran the MWI off script on the Hicom side. No fix to our issue here either, just hacks and work arounds.

[Tommer Catlin]

I got an updated PIMG file for the MWI syncs with our 9005. We had an issue since day one with the 9005, but the Unity engineers were able to help us out. Intel and Cisco crafted a patch for our PIMG's to fix the MWI signally problem. basically what was happening is that the PIMGs were sending double MWI's to the Rolm. When that happened, it would turn the light on at the phone, then turn it off. Then all hell broke lose because now the phone and Unity were out of sync between lights and messages.

So this patch actually fixed the timing issue. I had to caputure the logs out of the PIMGs and Unity so they could adjust the PIMG firmware to fix it.

I can now turn on resync at 2 AM it will turn lights back on that were off, etc. Works well now.

Try a manual test of this:

Go into a subscribers profile in SA

click on Messages

then click on Refresh to see if the light comes on (if there is a new message in the box)

If the light comes on and stays on, good.

Now hit refresh again (MWI refresh)

Did it turn it off? If it did, you have the same timing problem.

The way I fixed it temporarly, was to:

Subsriber clean out their new messages

Delete the MWI notification out of their profile,

readd MWI notification

now Unity and the phone were back "in sync" with each other. I could leave a message, light turns, listen to the message, light turns off. But the problem would come back every now and then on different phones.

It's in your PIMG, I can almost bet you on it.

hope this helps!

[nordendale]

It sounds like I may be encountering the exact same problem on a PIMG/9751 integration. If I click resynch on a box with a message it will toggle the light off if it was on. If I hit resynch again it will turn the light back on? and so on. I have a TAC case open. I am running the latest PIMG software. Do you have any information that might help me and TAC to get the fix? e.g. your TAC case number. I would like to test the patch.

cnordendale@enventis.com