Either way, you may have a practical need to record calls. There are certainly many ways of doing these from very expensive solutions from Cisco partners which use voice recognition to scan recordings for interesting phrases, to much simpler Live Record feature which is the topic for today.

WARNING:  USE OF THIS FEATURE MAY BE UNLAWFUL. You should check applicable state (and in the case of interstate calls) federal laws on the subject before using this feature. In the spirit of full disclosure, you can get all details of how to setup this feature from Cisco.

I’m going to summarize the solution and outline the steps here.

1. Do you have enough disk space to handle this feature? This solution uses your Cisco Unity Connection or Cisco Unity voice messaging system to take the recordings.  Using the default setting, which is to store recordings in G.711 format, you’ll need 64kbps / 8 bits-Byte = 8kBps * 60 seconds = 480kB per minute.  To make things easy, I’d just round it up to a half MegaByte per minute.  It’s quite possible you’ll need to adjust the quotas on your user’s mailboxes.
2. The next consideration is conferencing resources. The feature works by conferencing the calling party, called party, and unified messaging system together so the recording can take place. This could be done with either software (the Voice Media Streaming Application) or hardware (DSPs).  If you have a multi-site network, keep in mind that different codecs may be in use and their transcoding or a hardware mixed-mode conference resource may be required.

   Since these recording sessions are conference calls, the Cisco Unified Communications will, by default, keep the conference up as long as at least two parties remain. This will tie up the conference bridge and make the recordings longer.  To avoid this, you can go to System => Service Parameters => Cisco CallManager and set “Drop Ad Hoc Conference” to drop the conference when the initiator hangs up or when no OnNet parties remain.

3. Examine your dial plan and set aside a Live Record Pilot number.  At its core, this is a Directory Number which is permanently call forwarded to the Unified Messaging system’s pilot number. (We used this same technique in a previous blog posting on Sending Callers Straight to Voicemail.)

With those steps done, the remainder of the work takes place inside of the messaging system.  For my environment I use Unity Connection, so I’m going to summarize the process for that platform. Again, for all the details (or if you’re using Unity) see the URL above.

1. The first step is to configure the system to take calls which come from the pilot and direct them to the Live Record feature.  This is done by editing the call routing rules on the system.
2. The second step is to configure the “remember this is recording” beep under System Settings => Advanced => Telephony. AGAIN CHECK WITH YOUR LEGAL ADVISORS and consider configuring the beep to play at fifteen second intervals or less.  You can also use a value of ‘0’ to disable the beeps entirely.

Now if everything works, you should be able to test it out and get a recording of your call placed in your voice messaging box.  For extra credit, you can use an RSS reader on Unity Connection to access your recordings that way.

For instance, let’s say that a customer in moving from a Unity Domino environment to Unity Connection in which has integration into Active Directory and the alias’s for all subscribers are completely different. However, you still want to move all the related information over from the Unity Domino environment and over writes the subscribers just imported and sync from Active Directory. The question is: how this can be accomplished?

Another aspect to COBRAS is something called the COBRAS Data Viewer. With this utility one can open the MDB related to the Unity database or DoH (Directory Object Hierarchy) and make necessary changes to ensure a smooth import. In the case above where one alias is first initial and last name in the domino directory and the other way around in Active Directory, the COBRAS Data Viewer tool can easily provide this transition.

As a precaution, make sure you make a backup copy of the MDB file before executing any Data Viewer routines since all changes are FINAL. If you make a mistake and need to back out; simply delete the MDB file you made a mistake on and copy the backup copy to the working directory and start over. This is the most preferred method and highly recommended by Cisco.

To begin, run the utility after installing and go to File>Open and browse for the related MDB file from your working directory. The file name should be UnityDBData_Backup_Date_Time.MDB. Note the Date will be in the format of YYMMDD and the time will be in the format of HH_MM_MS. So if I ran the backup process on April 4, 2010 at 9:30:12am the file name would look like UnityDBData_Backup_20100704_09_30_12.mdb.

Once the file is open it should appear very close to the illustration above which displays the current subscribers. Now you need to choose Edit>Export users in backup to CSV option. This will dump all the subscribers in the MDB file into a CSV which contains four columns:

• OLD_ALIAS
• OLD_EXTENSION
• NEW_ALIAS
• NEW _EXTENSION

You will have to add either the new alias and or extension for each subscriber listed using your favorite CSV file editor (my preference is Microsoft Excel). Once the file has been successfully edited, you are ready to apply the changes.

The changes will be applied to the MDB backup files. Make sure you back up the original file by simply copying it to another location. Once the changes are applied to the UnityDBData_Backup MDB file, it cannot be undone.

Next go to Edit>Remap subscriber alias or extension, browse for the CSV file you just finished making the changes to and then hit the apply button. COBRAS will try to find each subscriber referenced in the CSV file under three search condition rules:

1. If an old alias value is provided in the CSV, this is used to search for a user. If a user is found then it will use the new alias and/or the new extension value for that subscriber’s alias and primary extension.
2. If an old alias is not provided or does not match a user in the backup, then the old extension value is used to search for a subscriber’s primary extension. If a user is found then it will use the new alias and/or the new extension value for that subscriber’s alias and primary extension.
3. If an old alias is not provided or does not match a user in the backup and the old extension value does not match an existing user’s primary extension, then the old extension is searched for among all the alternate extensions in the backup. If a match is found for a user’s extension then that alternate extension is replaced with the new extension value.  Nothing is done in this case with the new alias string if it’s provided.

Reference:

• Jeff Lindborg Data Viewer Help file

Author: Joe Parlas

At a high level, the restore process has three wizards in place to guide you through the process, which can get very complicated.  Most of the complication is handled by the tool but every tool needs a little help.

The three wizards are:
1) Select the objects you want to restore. You are in complete control at this point. If you want to restore everything on the fly, then you would choose to restore all objects which includes not only the  subscriber’s backup from the Unity system, but all the call handlers as well.  The number of subscribers and handlers, and if you are planning on restoring voice mail or not, will all add to the timeframe required for the restore to complete. Another option would be to use the COBRAS utility to restore the same audio attendant applications on multiple Unity or Unity connection systems then manually re-creating them.

2) Resolve conflicts with the objects selected on wizard 1. There will be conflicts if objects already exist in Unity Connection with the same alias or extension number as in Unity.  If the aliases are identical with the same extensions, the tool will automatically pick this up and recommend an over write.  If the object does not exist on the target Unity connection box, as long as the extension is unique it will recommend a new subscriber creation.  This will also happen with the Call Handlers you are trying to copy over as well.

3) Resolve link references for any objects you choose to restore from Wizard 1. A link object is links that are assigned to objects being created in Unity Connection.  For instance, a subscriber may have a link after playing a personal greeting to exit to a destination yet to be created in Unity Connection. Unity Connection, unlike Unity, is not so forgiving on having all links accounted for.  This is done to ensure database integrity.

Some of the usage scenarios that have been used so far are:

1. Straight backup and restore operation
2. Restore a single subscriber or restoring selected voice mail messages which may have been accidentally erased
3. Restore a COBRAS backup to a different Unity/Unity Connection version or product which would be migrating from Unity to Unity Connection
4. Merge multiple Unity backups to a single Unity Connection Server
5. Copy identical audio text applications from a source server setup to multiple servers in your environment

As you can tell this is a very powerful utility. If you integrate Unity and Unity Connection systems or are thinking of backing up your system in a more robust way; seriously consider the COBRAS tool.Author: Joe Parlas

The answer in this case would be COBRAS (Consolidated Object Backup and Restore Application Suite) which is a set of tools which makes the migration from Unity to Unity Connection as painless as possible. What is unique about the COBRAS tool is that it is very object-oriented and quite a bit different from normal back up and restore methods. With the COBRAS tool, all objects will be backed up when running the COBRAS Export for Unity tool. The tool will completely export all objects — including messages — except for:

• Restriction tables
• Class of Service
• Contacts (includes all networking contacts such as SMTP/AMIS/Bridge/VPIM subscribers)
• Holidays
• System configuration data such as switch configuration, LDAP integration details, IMAP login data, RSA configuration, advanced settings etc.
• Locations
• Subscriber templates
• Password policy information
• Name Lookup Handlers (a.k.a. Directory Handlers)
• Exporting from Unity 7.0 and importing into Connection 7.0 only, PINS will not be restored since Connection 7.0 does not support the same storage hashing algorithm. This was changed with Unity Connection release 7.1(3) and above.

Now with the conventional Backup and Restore process using DIRT, you can only restore to the same version of Unity or Unity Connection. Not so with COBRAS, I can back up all objects on one system and choose what I want to restore on a completely different system version. This makes this utility extremely powerful.

Now with the advent of Unity Connection 8.x, COBRAS has two backup modes. Briefcase mode, which is used most of the time, allows you to back up everything on Unity to a series of MDB files and then import desired objects into Unity Connection. This was the original method designed for migration of users from Unity to Unity Connection.

With Unity Connection 8, this version can do digital networking like Unity into the Active Directory tree structure which allows you to maximize the next backup mode called Hot Mode. In a Hot Mode design, COBRAS is being used to move subscriber accounts including voice mail from the Unity store to the Unity Connection store. So if both versions of Unity and Unity connection are at the 8.x level and above you can take advantage of this unique feature.

If you want to get a chance and take Cobras for a test drive, take the Global Knowledge course IUC – implementing Unity Connection 7.0

Author: Joe Parlas

First we are going to have to go into a utility shown below called UTIM (Unity Telephony Integration Manager) which allows us to configure Unity for connection into VOIP or TDM PBX’s. You will need to log into the Unity Server and navigate to Start –>All Programs –> Unity —> Manage Integrations this will bring you to the screen shown below

Now you want to create a new integration method, so select the “Create Integration” icon on the left side of the screen and be patient. It may take a while before the next screen shows up. In fact, most people have the tendency to click multiple times and then multiple windows will appear. If that happens, close all of the excess windows out. You only need one.

Now notice above we are choosing to use the SCCP method to connect to our CME Router, then hit next.

The next screen is for your documentation only. If you are doing multiple integrations to the same Unity server, make sure your integration names and cluster name are descriptive.

After choosing next on the above illustration, we now put in the address of the CME router defined under the Telephony Service configuration. In this example, the CME Telephony Service address is 192.168.0.1. Optionally, you can ping the server just to make sure it’s available.

From the below illustration, our CME router responds to our ping request so just choose OK to proceed to the next screen.

You will be asked for your MWI on and off codes. As you recall from the last post, we programmed 7070 as the DTMF on code and 7071 DTMF off code. There have been some cases, where technicians would reverse the code order, which can be upsetting to the end users.

Now this is another important step. We have to include the name prefix we created on CME. The CME named ports or vm-device-id were programmed as TPAUM1-VI where we leave off the last number. This is exactly what we need to put into Unity as the device prefix, then when you add number of ports it will add the port number to the prefix when attempting to register with the CME device.

Now we are almost done. Once you choose ‘Next’ from the screen shown above, you will receive the completion setup screen letting you know what options you are about to use for your integration. At this point finished in which the Unity services will be restarted.

We need now to stay into UTIM in order to designate that the server we are attempting to connect to is a CME router and not a Call Manager or Unified Communications Manager. This is accomplished by navigating on the left hand side of the configuration navigation panel and click on the cluster name as depicted below. Now choose the modify button.

One the modify button is chosen, you will have to again fill out the IP address or host name of the CME router as shown below.

The last step will be to select the check box that says “This Server is CUCME/CCME”. After choosing OK you will need to choose the “Save” button which will cause the Unity Services to be restarted automatically.

This completes the procedure on how to add Unity into a local CME router. For additional information concerning other integrations to Unity check out the Cisco installation and configuration guides.

Author: Joe Parlas

As a review on how ports are created in CUCM, one would navigate to Voice Mail –> Voice Mail Ports in order to use this with Cisco Unity.  In CUCM, you create voice mail port numbers and voice port name prefixes.  This is accomplished using two distinct methods in CME.

Let’s illustrate a CME configuration which will add four voice mail ports for inbound and outbound, and one dedicated outbound port using the SCCP protocol to which will allow Unity to register it’s ports with CME.

First we create ephone-dn’s to represent each individual port.  To prevent confusion with other directory number configurations in CME, you should place a description or name for documentation purposes.  Let’s see what the running configuration will look like for the ephone-dn’s created to represent each SCCP port into Unity.  As a reminder, when you create the directory numbers ensure you set them up as dual-lines which will be needed for Unity to execute call consult transfers using its auto attendant feature.

TampaCME# show running-config
ephone-dn 14 dual-line
number 80030
name VoiceMail_1
preference 1
no hunt stop
ephone-dn 15 dual-line
number 80030
name VoiceMail_2
preference 2
no hunt stop
ephone-dn 16 dual-line
number 80030
name VoiceMail_3
preference 3
no hunt stop
ephone-dn 17 dual-line
number 80030
name VoiceMail_4
preference  4
hunt stop

Note: Secondary 9 may appear in your configuration under preference which indicates preference 9 for a secondary number configuration which is not configured in this running configuration

Below is a dedicated Cisco Unity Port configuration in CME.  We purposely use a DN beginning with a number range which is not reachable by any IP Phone key pad.

Ephone-dn 18
number D4
preference 0 secondary 9
huntstop

Notice dual-line not required since it is used only for outdialing with Unity for MWI,  TRAP, AMIS etc..

Next is to create the ephone’s which will represent each of the prefix names that will be configured in Cisco Unity to pass to CME for port registration.  That part of the running configuration would appear as follows:

Ephone 10
vm-device-id TPAUM1-VI1
button 1:14
Ephone 11
vm-device-id TPAUM1-VI2
button 1:15
Ephone 12
vm-device-id TPAUM1-VI3
button 1:16
Ephone 13
vm-device-id  TPAUM1-VI4
button 1:17
Ephone 14
vm-device-id  TPAUM1-VI5
button 1:18

As an important point, keep the device prefix name less than 13 bytes. This issue is with Unity which will not allow you to add a prefix name greater than 13 bytes in the Unity Integration Telephony Manager or UTIM.  So try to keep the prefix name as short as possible with a meaningful naming structure. In this example this is used for a CME configuration with a local Unity in Tampa Florida i.e. TPA which represents the Airport code value for the area.

The last piece for the CME configuration would be for MWI support.  First we need to configure the IP Phone message button so when it is depressed on the Cisco IP Phone, it will route to one of the assigned voice mail ports configured in the hunt.  This is done in the telephone service configuration as depicted below:

TampaCME#show running-config
Telephony-Service
Voice-mail  80030

The last component would be to add the actual MWI using the ephone-dn command as follows:

ephone-dn 20
number 7070
mwi on
!
ephone-dn 21
number 7071
mwi off
!

Notice we must carefully keep our MWI phone numbers from overlapping other numbers in CME to prevent interdigit  timeout issues.

Next time we will look at the Unity setup to support this configuration and address some important CME troubleshooting commands in case Unity fails to register with the local CME.

Author: Joe Parlas

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6LRmWvUCtY]

When you launch Cisco Unity Tool Depot from the Unity program group on the Cisco Unity server, the Tools depot defaults to Tool News.  If the Cisco Unity server has Internet access, the depot cross references the various tools against a database at www.ciscounitytools.com.  A revision history is displayed and updated versions of the tools can be downloaded.  Jeff Lindborg maintains the Cisco Unity Tools website where you can sign up to an E-Mail distribution list where you are notified of updated tool availability automatically via E-Mail.

The Unity Tools Depot is a tabbed page.  On the left hand side of the page, you will see the various tool categories.  This information is displayed in the screen capture below:

In the screen capture below, I accessed the Administration Tools folder and single clicked the Advanced Settings Tool.  A tutorial will be displayed on the right hand side of the page that will explain the functions of the tool.  At the bottom of the page (on the right hand side) there is normally a revision history of the tool.  Additional information and videos regarding the tool usage are available at www.ciscounitytools.com (click the search icon and perform a search on the tool name). The tool can be launched by double clicking the icon on the left hand side of the page.

There are a lot of great utilities in the Cisco Unity Tools Depot. My personal favorite tool is the Port Status Monitor.  You can learn a lot regarding Cisco Unity’s operation by running this tool and analyzing the output when calls are placed into the Unity system.

Have fun playing with the tools.

Author: Dennis Hartmann

1. Cisco Unified Presence Server (CUPS) – This is the brain of the Presence architecture and works in almost the same manner that the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) does. For example, CUPS servers are organized into clusters of up to six servers for redundancy. Also, the first CUPS server is designated as the Publisher and the other servers are designated as Subscribers.

2. Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) – This is the main call-processing component of any Voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructure and will be the primary device the CUPS cluster will integrate with. It controls the endpoint devices that will report the presence status to the CUPS server and, if watching devices are located across different dialing areas, it will be responsible for properly routing the call between endpoints.

3. Cisco Unified Personal Communicator (CUPC) – This desktop application gives employees access to all their UC services. It registers to the CUPS and CUCM servers, and unifies the functionality of the following two clients.

4. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace/MeetingPlace Express – These servers integrate voice, video, and web conferencing capabilities, and let you incorporate media interactions in a broad range of communication
scenarios. Cisco Unified MeetingPlace is deployed as an on-premise solution run over internal networks.

5. Cisco Unity/Unity Connection – These servers provide advanced, convergence-based communication services such as unified messaging and voice messaging. Cisco Unity is a Windows-based application capable of supporting unified messaging, while Unity Connection is a RedHat Linux-based appliance solution that supports voicemail only.

6. Cisco Unified Videoconferencing – Designed to scale to both small and large networks, this solution provides a modular and stackable architecture that can support as few as three parties and up to several hundred in a single conference.

7. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) v3.0 – LDAP is an industry-standard protocol designed for accessing and modifying Directories that are optimized for very efficient reading, and provides a means for organizations to centrally locate and organize all of their user information.

8. Cisco Unified IP Phones – Cisco’s 7900-series of IP phones are used as the client endpoint-devices that will report the Presence status for the assigned user.

9. Third-Party Presence Servers – CUPS is able to integrate with other vendor solutions by using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), as well as a protocol named SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Leveraging Extensions).

Author: Jeffrey Hall

If you are using Unity in a standalone configuration, ie you have configured it using a private Active Directory Forest/Domain and a private Exchange or message store platform not coupled to your corporate directory or message store, and you want to maintain that same solution for now and in the future then it is more cost effective to move to Unity Connection. Unity Connection supports up to 10,000 mailbox users per server if using “platform overlay 3″ approved hardware and has all of the features that Unity has with an added bonus of using personal routing rules.

If you plan to move to the Connection product, then I would highly suggest that it would involve a migration to the new system. In other words, purchase a new server and prepare that box to receive the Unity database and Message Store (Optional) information. This will allow you to have a fallback position if anything negative were to happen during the data migration process.

Now the question is, how do you migrate your voice mail and directory information from your current system to the new Unity Connection?

First of all, you will need to use the approved migration tool. The recommended tool for this procedure is COBRAS (Cisco Objected Backup and Restore Application Suite). However in order to use this tool, your Unified Messaging Server will need to be running at version 4.0(5) or later. If you have an earlier version, you can still use the standard 4.x to 7.x migration tool, however not all data will be migrated.

COBRAS will migrate:

• Call Handlers
• Subscribers (including voice mail messages if desired)
• Interview Handlers
• Public Distribution Lists
• Schedules
• Routing Rules (only going to be used for Unity not Connection)

COBRAS will not migrate:

• Holidays
• Class of Service
• Restriction Tables
• Name lookup Handlers
• Locations
• Contacts
• System Configuration data, such as LDAP integration details, IMAP login data, advance settings, etc..
• Subscriber templates
• Encrypted Messages

COBRAS also has a viewer which allows you to delete or alter data before uploading it to the new system. Here is a shot of the database viewer in which you would point to the MDB file created by COBRAS Export:

Additionally, the COBRAS Message viewer can be used to open up the message COBRAS Export MDB file un-pack as a wav file and play it as depicted below:

Check out the COBRAS utility today at the Cisco Unity Tools web portal.