Recently I decided to explore Cisco Unified Communication Manager’s Mobile Connect feature. This used to be called Single Number Reach and is exactly what you would expect: one number rings multiple phones–your VoIP set and an off-system number. It is straightforward to set up; follow this helpful guide on the Cisco Learning Network.
The nice thing about Mobile Connect is that it isn’t simply a multi-ring scheme; rather, it’s effectively a shared line appearance with your cell phone or other remote number. Communications Manager maintains supervision of the line, even if you take the call on your remote line (mobile phone), which allows you to easily switch between the remote and the desk phone. I believe, though I have not tested it, that this configuration would also allow the Mobile Connect line to participate in a hunt group.
In CUCM 7.x, you can configure an on-hook screen Mobility softkey to enable or disable Mobile Connect. This way, it does not have to be an always-on feature.
Enabling a Mobile Connect number consumes two additional device license units (DLUs) if you are licensing devices a la carte. The functionality is very nice and probably worth the licensing cost for those who want to use it.
I believe Penn State’s VoIP users will be really keen on CM6’s built-in presence and busy-lamp speed-dial features. These two go hand-in-hand and are one of those “it’s about time!” sort of things. Busy-lamp speed-dials allow a user to set up normal speed-dial keys that display, using graphical icons and the color of the button (if using a capable phone), whether that number is on-hook (available) or off-hook (busy). It’s a speed-dial with status information. This is a far better way of monitoring line availability than setting up shared line appearances just for that functionality, which we do today. Another cool trick, enabled by the presence feature: you can see those available/busy icons in the call lists, too. Now, when I look in my missed calls list and see that I missed a call from the boss, I can also see right there in the list if the boss’s phone is busy and decide whether or not it’s a good time to call back.
I disagree with the instructor’s comment on Tuesday that SIP on endpoints “sucks.” It’s good that CM6 fully supports the SIP protocol for trunking and endpoints, and it gives administrators a lot more options including remote softphones on various platforms (Cisco’s IP Communicator softphone is Windows-only). On the other hand, the SIP firmware for the Cisco IP phones is ridiculously bad, and I can see no reason you’d want to use Cisco IP phones with SIP firmware on Call Manager. The features just aren’t there. The third-gen Cisco phones have better SIP firmware and could be used with a third-party PBX, but there are a number of less-expensive alternatives.
The three-day course that Doug and I are attending is on upgrading from CM 4 to 6 and becoming familiar with version 6, including understanding some of the new features and noting some of the changes in existing features.
- Communications Manager 6.x is stable (comparable to 4.1.3; contrast with 5.x). Statement based on qualititative data (customer discussion in users groups, at training classes).
- 6.x – lots of SIP support. SIP on local endpoints “sucks” (says the class instructor, who is not a Cisco employee) – not because of CM’s support of it but because of limitations of SIP. SCCP is a high quality protocol for local endpoints. Use SIP for remote/soft clients.
- Operating system is Linux based on RedHat distro; database is IBM Informix.
- Appliance model restricts access to filesystem and database. My reaction is to want to fight against this but can see the benefits of closing this up. Access to database for CDR: no ODBC. Can push out the CDR records to an external server on a regular interval. (CSV)
- Realtime Monitoring Tool (RTMT) is improved and is now a primary way of accessing many data/statistics of CM.
- “Workspace Licensing” – the Standard offering contains most of the PSU per-user needs including IP phone, voice mail (Unity voice-mail-only), user control of devices, plus softphone (IP communicator) which we are becoming more interested in. IP contact center agents would still need to be licensed individually.
The actual upgrade process is mostly automated using provided upgrade tools. Some files need to be copied manually from the 4.x installation. Upgrading CM itself is not too bad. The devil is in the supporting applications, namely Unity and CRS (IP contact center and IVR). Unity 5 supports both CallManager 4.x and 6.x and so can be upgraded prior to CM. CRS 3.5.4 is not supported with CM 6.x. The upgrade path here would have to be CRS to version 4, then upgrade CallManager and CRS immediately afterward to the version that works with CM6. We felt bad for others in the class who had a large suite of Cisco IP telephony apps hooked into Call Manager.
Voice over IP at Penn State (and home)