Listening to music on phone

[ciscojoe837]

How can I listen to the music-on-hold through the phone?  On the old Nortel systems you would dial a feature number, so I'm looking to do something similar here like dial an extension or something.  Thanks.

[jestowe]

What type phones are you using?  If you cannot hear music on hold by dialing another phone and selecting the hold button, 1. check your MOH file, 2. make sure it's set to play the file to internal extensions (vs the external music port), 3. and / or upgrade your firmware on the phone.

Thanks,

Jeff.

[ciscojoe837]

Hi Jeff,

     Thanks for your reply, but I think you are answering a different question.  I wanted to know how to listen to my music-on-hold from any phone --put the phone on speaker, dial, say, an extension, and then I hear music.  That's it.  It works otherwise so calling another phone and putting it on hold, type of phone, upgrading firmware is an answer to a different question.  Sorry if you were not clear with the question.  Any other thoughts?

BTW, don't care about the phone set as well -- the principle should work with any phone.  Thx.

[cindy toy]

Hi ciscojoe837,

Just to clarify, the question you are asking is, "How do I configure the UC520 to allow me to dial an extension from my phone to just listen to on hold music"?

Thanks,

Cindy Toy

Small Business Support

Community Manager

[ciscojoe837]

Correct.  The old Nortel systems you would hit a feature button to listen the music-on-hold from any phone -- if that example helps.  I know phones like the spa525 let you play mp3 directly from the phone, which is great as well.  Maybe even streaming music would be nice too, say using an xml application.  But, I would like this feature first then I can move on to the others.  Thanks.

[Albert Wilhelm]

I am getting the same request from my clients as well. Not only Nortel, but also Panasonic and Avaya Key Systems allowed one to hear the MOH without having to call in and have someone put you on hold. I believe they would press *xxx to listen (or something close to the sequence).

My clients like to listen to the MOH especially when they have changed the messages in between the music.

Bert

[Marcos Hernandez]

There is a way to do this, but it requires CLI. I have it documented here:

https://www.myciscocommunity.com/docs/DOC-1400#Can_UC500CME_be_configured_to_play_a_default_prompt_when_dialing_an_extension

The above should do it. You can replace the file and upload it to your flash regularly:.

Let me know if this helps.

Marcos

[ciscojoe837]

I'm using the external music port and not loading a file to flash.  Can this method work using an external music source and the moh port on the UC500?  How does the CLI change if I can use the external source?

Related questions / problems:

The flash is almost full and the moh doesn't always play when I load it onto the flash.  I found that when I would make a minor config. change the moh would stop working and I would have to reload the system and cross my fingers for it to work.  Now I just us an mp3 player as the source.  I really like that it can play off the flash but I just don't get why it doesn't play all the time. 

Is there a fix for this problem and can you point me to the right comminity doc url? 

Second:  Why is the flash so full and only come out with 256 MB in the unit?  Isn't memory cheap in general?  I don't get why Cisco would release a system with only 2% left in free space.  I know I can delete and clean up unused files, but that's only a workaround.  For such an expensive system there should have been room to spare.-- like 1 GB flash.  I would have had the CCA right on the flash and have it browser-based instead of premise-based (installing it on an individual computer).  Now, try upgrading the flash and it costs a crazy amount of money that would piss a customer right off after paying such a premium for this system.

Can you comment on this?  I think Cisco should just offer a return program and replace the 256 with a 512 or something.  Let's be fair, this was a huge oversite or spec. shortcoming. 

Thanks.

[Marcos Hernandez]

There is no easy way to configure dialing a number and listening to the live feed.

To answer your question on flash sapce, that is a problem that we recognized and addressed in the UC540 platform. For UC 520, CCA 2.1 offers flash space management tools that should help you mitigate this issue.

Thanks,

Marcos

[Steven DiStefano]

CCA 2.1 does offer the Phone Load Manager (PLM) which gives UC520 Partners an opportunity to remove Phone Loads they are not using in a given deployment from flash, hence the 128M Flash gets relief.  It also allows you to add them back :-)

On UC540, the IOS Flash is 256M and the PLM is there as well in CCA 2.1 for it, but less needed.

T cost of high quality indusrty grade flash (which Cisco uses) does effect the COGs and makes it hard for the BU to put a really large one in there is what I have been told.   But this is not the first time we have received this feedback and we thank you for that.

Steve DiStefano

Systems Engineer

US Field Channel Sales.

[ciscojoe837]

Thanks for both your responses. Do you think listening to music on the phone from a live-feed will be a future option?

As far as the flash goes,  it would be great if there were USB ports on the base unit for external thumb drives.  USB drives are inexpensive -- even the high quality ones.  You can get 16 GB for under $100.  Even the ASA5505 has USB ports so I know someone thought about it.  What happened to the UC520 design?

The other option would be an SSD drive.  They are small enough that I think they could be part of the design.  They are expensive right now but when you look at the list price of the Cisco flash, it's cheap.  Plus, the price of SSD drives is only going down as they get better.

As well, the power supply could be internal and the unit be a full 2U, short depth unit.  It's 1.5 U anyway and has a huge external power adapter, so an alternative would be to make it fit into a short depth rack system as well as fit on the desktop or have it as a wall mount.  I find a lot of companies just have a short-depth, wall-mount rack systems anyway --usually less than 12".  Larger wall-mounts for enterpise appliances usually 18 " maybe up to 21 " in depth.  I think the smaller depth is a nicer fit for the smaller business environments.

That said, with the UC520 you can purchase the rackmount kit, but it's very expensive for a couple of brackets.  It should be included just like a regular switch.

Sometimes I wonder though if the first release of the UC520 was really a beta.

[Steven DiStefano]

We will pass your non volatile memory input and Listen to Music capability along to the PMs for this product line.  I think you have a few very good ideaa :-)

The rack Mount kit for the UC520 8/15 or UC540 32 user system is about $200 List and is more than just the brackets (shown here on my floor)

https://www.myciscocommunity.com/docs/DOC-7062

The UC500 larger density system has internal power transformer so its alot cheaper.

Thanks again Cisco Joe.

Steve DiStefano

Systems Engineer, US Field Channel Sales

[Saurabh Verma]

Listen to MOH capability

There might be a way in IOS to dial a number and start listening to the music-on-hold. The UC 500 engineering team had done a science project back in 2008 to have a softkey that will play music-on-hold on IP Phones, however, we never had a request from the field for this functionality. We can go back and revisit and get this added in one of the future releases. I will need to check with the CME engineering team if they have this on their roadmap.

Larger Flash or USB

As Marcos pointed out, on UC 540 we have a 256MB compact flash. With this, additional space is available for system files. Files that are not needed for the system operation, like IP phone firmware for unused phone types should be deleted. Similarly, files such as CDR reports should be saved on tftp-servers. Any PC/workstation can run a tftp server software which instantly makes the drive space available for storing non-critical files.

Rack Mount Ideas

We did dig around to see if small businesses use rack-mount installations, however, we couldn’t get a definite answer/trend to this. It appears there is a wide variety of options for placement of products that have the desktop form factor and rack mounting is not a big percentage. In view of that we decided to provide an option for the rack-mount kit, leveraging kits that are currently being used by other Cisco products.

Thanks,

Saurabh

[andrew551008]

Download free tonos de llamada to listen to call waiting music and just press the speakerphone button to hear loud sounds.