UC560 & CCA 3.0

[John Joseph]

Dear Cisco UC Community,

What are the ramifications if a company installs and configures a UC560 using command line configuration, and we would like to manage the telephone system using CCA 3.0?  Can we use CCA 3.0 after the fact to make modifications and adjustments to the voicemail system?  Or will this create a huge mess?

Any guidance and support is greatly appreciated.

Blessings,
John

[danplacek]

Generally it will create a huge mess.

CCA tends to choke on any configuration not created in its specific format.

-Dan

Please rate useful posts.

[paolo bevilacqua]

Why a low rating to a 100% correct answer, given with the will to help?

To partially compensate, I've rated for what is worth, 5 stars.

[trgood]

Odds are, many features in CCA will not work.  CCA also has a tendancy to edit non CCA configurations so it may break your current configuration.  Apart from that, Cisco will only support CCA configurations, so you lose that avenue of help. 

Essentially, you won't be able to manage your UC with CCA if you set it up with command line.  Let me know if you have any questions.

-Trent Good

[John Joseph]

Dear Daniel and Trent,

Thank you for your input. Now that the install is nearly complete, as the Cisco partner used the command line to configure our system, would you both recommend starting over with CCA?  The challenge is having the staff in house that is command line competent to make the necessary modifications when needed.

Any thoughts or suggestions as to what the possible options are from here?

Blessings,

John

[trgood]

Personally, I would start over with CCA.  Only scenario I would configure from command line is if there is something that you absolutely need that CCA cannot do for you.  In which case you would need to go to your partner everytime you need support.

Are there some things that you needed in your configuration that you don't think CCA is capable of?  Maybe there is some workaround that will allow you to configure these with CCA.

Let me know,

-Trent

[John Joseph]

Trent,

Thanks for the recommendation. There are a couple of pieces of our configuration that apparently require CLI. The primary configuration is our 8 analog lines and the four departments that pick up those lines. Each department has specific analogue lines to pick up. We need this for billing purposes. So, for example, one department has 4 lines to pick up, while another department has 2 lines to pick up-and so on.  But we don't want the departments to pick up each others lines other than in emergency procedures. Lastly, on of the department has 2 analogue phones and an ip phone that need to ring at the same time.

According to the partner, the department configuration required CLI. Is your recommendation still to reconfigure using CCA?

Thanks again for your help.

Blessings,

John J.

[trgood]

Hi Joseph,

Do you know exactly what part of those configurations require CLI?  From what I can tell all you need to do is differentiate which calls come from which department.

I'm assuming billing is being done on the PSTN end so you just need to be sure the calls are routed over the correct FXO lines.

Incoming calls are easy as the PSTN routes the calls over the correct FXO.  Then all you need to do is ensure that outbound calls are routed to the correct FXO lines.  You can implement this easily via CCA with one of two options:

Option 1:

Setup trunkgroups via the Configure > Telephony > Dial Plan > Outgoing > PSTN Trunk Groups tab placing the  appropriate FXO lines in the correct trunk groups(Ex, Department A; Department B).

Then on the Outgoing Call Handling tab setup 2 routes for each call type (Local, long distance, etc.. ).  You could use a different access code for each department (ex, 9 for department A, 8 for department B).  Then on those dial-peers set the preference High for the correct trunk group so that it selects those when routing out.

This way your calls should be routed out the correct FXO lines.

Option 2:

You could implement CO Lines for each department and put those CO Lines on the appropriate user phones.

If this isn't your issue let me know and we can try to think of some other possible solutions.  From your example though I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to implement via CCA.

-Trent Good

[paolo bevilacqua]

I think it is not possible because most users will want automatic routing to the appropriate telco circuit for outgoing calls.

They do not want differentiated access digits, or CO lines.

[John Joseph]

Trent,

Thanks for suggesting those options. We don't necessarily want dial codes for our users. So I'm not sure option 1 ideally works for our staff.

On question about option 2. I don't know what CO lines means. Help with clarification would be appreciated.

Blessings,

John J.