Ask the Expert: Installing, Integrating, and Troubleshooting Cisco Unity Connection

[ciscomoderator]

Welcome to this Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions about integrating Cisco Unity Connection into your environment and troubleshooting the many features that are available with the Cisco Unity Connection voicemail solution with expert Brad Magnani.

Cisco Unity Connection is a voicemail and unified messaging platform with a comprehensive feature set and is based on the Linux unified communications operating system. With Cisco Unity Connection, you can access and manage voice messages in variety of ways, using your email inbox, web browser, the Cisco Jabber messaging integration platform, Cisco Unified IP Phone, smartphone, tablet, and more. Cisco expert Brad Magnani will cover and answer all of your questions about Cisco Unity Connection.

Brad Magnani is currently a member of the Applications TAC team in Richardson, TX. He has attended Cisco Live and has provided mentorship and technical training in the Bangalore and Krakow TAC centers. His areas of expertise for the past six years have been Cisco Unity and Cisco Unity Connection. Brad also has experience troubleshooting and working with various voice products, including Cisco Unity, Cisco Unity Connection, Presence, Communications Manager, and Jabber. He graduated with a bachelor of science degree in applied networking and system administration from Rochester Institute of Technology. He has achieved certifications for Unity Support Specialist and CCNP-Voice.

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

Because of the volume expected during this event, Brad might not be able to answer every question. Remember that you can continue the conversation in the Collaboration, Voice and Video community, under subcommunity Unified Communications Applications, shortly after the event. This event lasts through March 28, 2014. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other Cisco Support Community members.

[Anthony Holloway]

Hi Brad,

It's been a while since we've last worked together, but I want you to know that I appreciate you hosting this event.  Thank you.

Troubleshooting

I was creating a new Routing Rule the other day and I noticed that it only asks for a name for the rule upon creation.  It's enabled by default, and has no criteria to match calls on; this caused a bit of a stir when all of our inbound calls to CUC were going to the System Directory handler, which is the default action for new Routing Rules.  Is this a defect in 8.6(2) or a design decision?

[Bradford Magnani · Accepted solution]

Hey Anthony,

Long time no see!  Unfortunately it's been that way ever since 2.x... It would make sense that rules should get created in the disabled state until manually enabled.  It's probably a valid feature request for you to submit through the Cisco account channels with your business case attached.

Brad

[Rob Huffman]

Hey Brad & Anthony,

First off, I wanted to "second" Anthony's Thank-You for hosting this Ask the Expert Event! +5 to both of you here

I think it also would be a great idea to move new forwarded Routing Rules to the bottom of the list when created. When I was first playing with these I created a new rule that was pointing calls to a test user named Earl Elk. So when I finished I did my test and everything looked good. About 5 minutes later I started getting calls that all forwarded calls were going old Earl's greeting/mailbox....OOPS!!

My BAD!!

Luckily I had recorded a somewhat professional greeting for Earl Elk at least

Thought you both might get a chuckle out of this!

Cheers!

Rob

[Jackson Braddock]

Hi Brad,

Thanks for your quick and detailed answer.  Another quick question.  When unified messaging is configured with Unity Connection, how does the message arrive in Exchange? 

Thanks again.

Jackson

[Bradford Magnani]

Hi Jackson,

I responded to a couple questions with the process that UM uses to deliver the message to Exchange.  Here's what I mentioned:

Unified Messaging uses Microsoft's Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol which operates over HTTP or HTTPS.  This is different than the Unity Enterprise version that ran on Windows that integrated with Exchange via MAPI.  UC sends messages directly into users' Exchange mailbox using this protocol.

From a UM perspective, when a user receives a voicemail, UC syncs that message out to Exchange using the EWS protocol.  That message arrives on the Exchange server and can be seen by the user's Outlook client or Outlook Web Access web page.  When that message is read/unread/deleted, that information is sent back to UC over the EWS subscription for that user.  UC then determines what action needs to be taken on the message (read/unread/delete) and then will perform it, then turn the light on/off on the phone.  There is a 1:1 mapping between the message in UC and the message sitting in your Exchange inbox.

Hope that helps,

Brad

[hhtyson11]

Hello Brad,

Recently, I changed my SMTP domain and now voicemails from external callers are not getting delivered? Why is that? Appreciate your help on this.

Thanks,

Henry

[Bradford Magnani]

Hi Henry,

This is likely due to https://tools.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCtz32891 ; The reason is that the UnityConnection system account is the one that proxies the external callers.  If the SMTP suffix change didn't occurr properly, it's unable to send messages to users who have the new SMTP domain who may have changed properly. 

This CLI query will show you the SMTP address for all accounts:

run cuc dbquery unitydirdb select alias,smtpaddress from tbl_alias

Chances are you'll see the UnityConnection system account with a different SMTP suffix.

The quickest way to fix this is to change the SMTP domain to something totally unique you've never used (following the Workaround steps in the bug above), then change the SMTP domain back to your desired domain (following the Workaround steps in the bug above.  This should stamp all of the users/system accounts correctly.

Hope that helps,

Brad

[Dominic Ellis]

Hi Brad,

I've been reading through your discussion -  thanks for hosting -  very interesting.

We are just about to upgrade to Unity Connection 9.0 from a very old

out of date classic unity 7.0

Just wondering if you can advise on any links to 'must read' docs

from Cisco that would get me up to speed on the new features on

UC 9 / technical docs on how Unity connection delivers voicemails etc

to exchange.......

Regards

Dominic

[Bradford Magnani]

Hi Dominic,

I made mention in another discussion that UC uses Exchange Web Services (EWS) protocol to talk to Exchange, which is web-based unlike MAPI with classic Unity.  Since EWS isn't a Cisco protocol, we don't document how it functions at a technical level.  You may visit Microsoft's website to learn more about it. 

The Unified Messaging Guide is one that you'll definitely want to visit for the configuration required for UC to talk to Exchange: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/connection/8x/unified_messaging/guide/85xcucumgx/85xcucumg020.html

Give that a read and if you still have questions, let me know.

Hope that helps,

Brad