CCIE Voice Study

Cisco Unity Express has the ability to route calls to an Operator Extension on the behalf of users. There are a few different ways that the Operator extension is used by Unity Express:

1. After a message is sent to a Subscriber, the caller has the option to press Hash (#) for further options. If options 1 (Standard delivery) or 2 (Urgent delivery) are selected, after the call is transferred, the caller is transferred to the Operator
2. As part of the default auto attendant, 0 can be selected (the zero-out number can be changed)
3. While listening to a personal greeting, the caller can press "0" to be transferred to the zero-out number. If this is not set under the voicemail mailbox configuration, the default system value is used

The global operator ...

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When the hunt options for a hunt-group are exhausted (i.e., no members answer), to ensure calls are not lost it is often desirable to send calls to voicemail. The question becomes, then, where are calls delivered? In Cisco Unity Connection and Cisco Unity its possible to use Alternate Extensions (for example), but what about CUE? Although it is possible to create a subscriber specifically for voicemail for subscribers, this does limit flexibility of the solution. A better option is to use a General Delivery Mailbox (GDM). One caveat of using a GDM is that MWI notification is not available, not even to group members, however this limitation should be considered in the context of the solution. What you can do to work around this limitation is configure message notification from the GDM to ...

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Live Record provides the ability for IP phone users to interactively record phone conversations. Messages are delivered as voicemail messages to the party who initiates the Live Record function. A 2-party conversation or an ad-hoc conference can be recorded. An audible notification alerts participants that the conversation is being recorded (this is controlled by Cisco Unity Express).

Live Record is available when CME is integrated with Cisco Unity Express.

The following configuration tasks must be completed to enable Live Record:

• The Live Record pilot must be configured on CME under telephony-service
• The LiveRcd softkey must be assigned to an ephone template for the "connected" state, and the template in turn assigned to ephones
• The ...

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Broadcast messages are notifications sent to all users of the telephony system. The recipients hear the message immediately after logging in to their voice mailboxes. The recipients cannot interrupt the message with any DTMF key.

Once a user is allowed to send broadcast messages, the option appears when the user logs into VoiceView Express. Broadcast messages can not be sent any other way than with VoiceView Express. Messages are recorded on the IP phone, have the start and end time set within the VoiceView interface, and are sent from the one convenient interface. The user doesn't absolutely need to set start and end time - if the message is sent immediately using the VoiceView Express TUI, the system default lifetime for a broadcast message is used (this is configurable), and ...

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VoiceView Express is a powerful tool providing a telephone-based interface for end users to manage their voicemail services. Beyond simple management of a user's inbox and Greetings management, VoiceView Express is the only interface available for a user to create and send broadcast messages. VoiceView Express is actually quite a nice interface - far better and more user friendly, I would suggest, than navigating Unity prompts. I could certainly imagine users preferring to use VoiceView Express for voicemail management.

VoiceView Express is enabled by default, however there are a few configuration tasks must be undertaken on the CME side to enable the service for users. These tasks are as follows:

• The Services URL must be configured under telephony-service. The Services ...

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The CUE initialization wizard is handy, and certainly provides an administrator an easy way to configure a system quickly; however it is not absolutely essential to run the Wizard for CUE to operate correctly. It is also very useful to know how to configure CUE integration manually since, on first login, if the initialization wizard is not run, it is not possible to re-run the wizard (unless you factory reset, of course, which will take time!). This article walks through the minimum configuration required to integrate CUE with CME using only the CLI.

The steps required are:

• Define the SIP proxy server IP addres (i.e. the CME gateway)
• Define the voicemail application and associated a SIP trigger; in other words, the voicemail pilot
• (Optional) ...

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Cisco Unity Express (CUE) provides a fantastic interface which administrators and telephony users can utilize to interactively manage the voicemail system. Of particular interest is the ability to automatically record voice prompts. All prompts must have the following format to be played successfully by CUE:

• G.711 u-law
• 8 kHz
• 8 bit
• Mono

Rather than record the prompts using specialized sound editing tool (like Goldwave, or Adobe Audition), a far better alternative is to use the embedded and integrated recording tool offered by CUE. The quality of the recordings and playback is far superior to .wav files (and is the recommended method by Cisco!)

Prompts are recorded using the Administration via Telephone (AvT) interface. This interface ...

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Pinless login allows subscribers, such as individual users, to simply access their voice messages without unnecessarily entering PIN information. This could be particularly useful, for example, in user scenarios where users are particularly prone to forgetting passwords, or when a group mailbox is shared amongst multiple users, and it is not practical to require users to login - particularly when the password can be changed, or easily lost. Pinless login provides a useful solution to some frustrating user-centric problems.

This article configures pinless login for a single subscriber. Typically this would be tested by simply dialling the voicemail pilot from the subscriber's phone; we get a little more technical, and review the trace debug logs to verify pinless login is successful. ...

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Configuring a new user (subscriber) in Cisco Unity Express involves creating the user in CUE, assigning phone numbers, and allocating space for the voice mailbox. An additional optional but recommended step is to set Call-Forward options in CME (or CCM, as the case may be).

The following example creates a new user, Steve, with extension 7001. Notice that we assign an E164 phone number as well as the 4-digit extension. The reason for this is explained here: http://www.ccievoicestudy.com/Cisco/VoIP/Impact_of_Dial-plan_Pattern_and_E164_aliases_for_CUE_and_CME_integration/. This step is optional, of course, if a dial-plan pattern has not ...

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Configuring QoS between CUE and CME requires identification and re-marking of packets that match the following criteria:

• Payload: RTP (i.e. UDP > 16384)
• Signaling: SIP (TCP 5060)

CUE actually already marks RTP traffic as DSCP EF, and signaling (SIP) as DSCP AF31, however best practice dictates that we will make traffic on the service policy ingress. In fact, look at the access-list counters iterate when applied to the service-engine interface (this is before any QoS marking is applied - we simply apply an ACL to verify traffic characteristics):

CME#sh ip access-lists 115
Extended IP access list 115
10 permit ip host 192.168.255.98 any dscp af31 log (8 matches)
20 permit ip host 192.168.255.98 any ...

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Cisco Unity Express (CUE) offers an integrated script editor that allows an administrator to easily create fully functioning auto attendant scripts using a convenient web interface. This article covers the requirements and process for setting up an Auto Attendant in CUE, followed by a step-by-step guide.

The process to configure an Auto Attendant in CUE is:

1. Prepare the voice prompts. These must adhere to the following Cisco standards:
   • G711Mu Law
   • 8 Khz
   • 8 bit
   • Mono
2. Upload the voice prompts to CUE
3. Use Editor Express (the integrate script editing web GUI client) to create the auto attendant script
4. Create a new IVR application
5. Configure a dial-peer on CME to route calls to the IVR ...

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One common trap that I've seen in configuring Cisco Unity Express with CME is that after voicemail integration is completed, as part of the integration with the PSTN (which usually comes later), E164 extension mapping for CLI presentation is enabled using the command "dial-plan pattern". The caveat is that this command changes the way that numbers are presented to CUE. Although this will not impact the ability for people to leave messages, it does mean that users can not simply press "Messages" on their phone to retrieve voicemail. This is because CUE no longer recognizes the CLI of the calling party. Instead of hearing "enter your password", users hear the request "enter your ID". This phenomenon has structured troubleshooting and identification steps, and a simple remedy.

In ...

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Live-record is a great little feature available when integrating CUE and CME; a feature that does not exist natively with CUCM. As long as the "Live Record" softkey button is assigned to a users' ephone, and the user is a valid CUE user with a mailbox, they will be able to interactively record voice conversations. The recorded conversations are stored as a message in the users mailbox. CUE periodically beeps to alert participants that the call is still being recording - this is required under certain national legislations (such as Australia).

For live-record to work correctly, conferencing must be configured and working correclty. Verify that ad hoc conferences work before proceeding with live-record. The process to enable and use Live Record is:

1. Ensure ad hoc ...

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Integrating Cisco Unity Express with Cisco Communications Manager Express gives an administrator granular control of Message Waiting Indication (MWI) capabilities on a per-subscriber basis. There are essentially 2 ways that MWI can be enabled between CME and CUE, and 3 configuration methods:

1. SIP MWI (SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY MWI)
2. SIP MWI (Unsolicited); either
   1. explicitly configured under the sip-ua sub-configuration,
   2. or implicitly configured when MWI capabilities are assigned to ephone-dn's, using the legacy "outcall" method

In the SUBSCRIBE/NOTIFY method of MWI, a SIP UA (i.e. the IP phone) subscribes to the voice-mail server, thereby requesting notification of mailbox status. Unsolicited notification does not require IP phones to subscribe ...

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Important considerations for integration between Cisco CME and CUE:

1. IP connectivity must be enabled between CME and CUE
2. G711Mu Law must be used, since Unity Express does not support any other codecs

To enable communication between Cisco Communications Manager Express and Cisco Unity Express, a dial-peer must be configured in CME. The following configuration provides the requirements on the CME side for CUE voicemail integration. The voicemail pilot is defined, and one DN configured to forward calls to voicemail in CFB and CFNA scenarios (note that the CUE initialization wizard does this anyway, so strictly speaking it is not absolutely necessary). In this example, 8888 is used as the pilot. Typically, the pilot number should not be part of the in-dial ...

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Integrating Cisco Unity Express for use with Cisco Unified Communications Manager involves preparing the CUCM, then either running the initialization wizard via the CUE web GUI , or manually configuring CUE via the CLI. This article uses the web GUI for initial configuration.

For the purpose of this article, we will use a single site - a future article will discuss the impact of regions and transcoding (since CUE only uses G.711Mu law), and SRST. This article is purely concerned with integration of CUE with CUCM.

1. Prepare CUCM. This involves creating the CTI ports, CTI route point (for the voicemail pilot, and any ancillary applications, such as Auto Attendant), creating the application user and associating to the CTI ports/RPs and, the optional but highly recommended step ...

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Cisco Unity Express, as a software application, is heavily reliant on licenses in order to determine which features are available to the network administrator. This includes integration to the call control engine, whether that be CCM or CME. When an NM-CUE first comes out of the box, it may not be licensed for the correct system - the initialization wizard can be run with the wrong system, and although integration could be completed (I have seen one such installation where this was done), the results will be less than ideal in production. The correct license should always be applied. I also know on the first time I had a module licensed for the wrong version, I freaked - I went down the path of upgrading software, which in retrospect was clearly incorrect... The key to integrating CUE with ...

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Restoring a CUE module back to factory defaults isn't as easy as simply erasing startup-configuration and reloading. You need to take CUE offline, then explicitly perform a factory reset. The "erase startup-configuration" command only, from what I can tell, removes specific system configuration parameters (NTP is one setting that is removed); users, mailboxes and administrator credentials are only removed through factory default. Factory default also allows the initialization wizard to be run upon reload.

se-192-168-255-98.localdomain# offline
!!!WARNING!!!: If you are going offline to do a backup, it is recommended
that you save the current running configuration using the 'write' command,
prior to going to the offline ...

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The minimum configuration to enable the CUE module for use by your IP phones involves:

• configuring IP addressing on the service-engine; and
• if you are using IP unnumbered (as is often the case), configuring a static IP route so that the Cisco CME router can route traffic towards the CUE module.

The static route installation is the bit I almost always fail to remember!

!
interface Service-Engine1/0
 ip unnumbered GigabitEthernet0/0
 service-module ip address 192.168.255.98 255.255.255.0
 service-module ip default-gateway 192.168.255.99
!
ip route 192.168.255.98 255.255.255.255 service-Engine 1/0
!

Once the configuration has been applied, you can session to the service module from the locally ...

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