Unified Communications

Category Archives: Unified Communications

Integrate Exchange 2016 in Cisco Unity Connection Manager for Voice Mail feature

Exchange 2016, Unified Communications May 10, 2017 Leave a comment

The Cisco unified messaging feature provides voice mail feature for Cisco Unity Connection client users. When this single inbox feature is enabled on Unity Connection, to the user mailbox in Unity Connection and then the mails are replicated to the user mailbox on Exchange the mails are replicated to the user mailbox on Exchange.

With Cisco Unified Messaging service users can access their Voice Mail in 2 ways :

Access their Voicemail from the Exchange inbox and listen them via computer speaker.
Directly from the phone interface.

Though there are multiple other options like text to speech, integrating with calendar options that can be done, but this topic focuses only on the voice mail part considering the article will become too lengthy if other components are explained.

Cisco Unified Messaging service supports the Following Exchange servers:

Exchange on premise versions Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Exchange 2013 & Exchange 2016.
Office 365.

Single Inbox :
Single inbox is the Feature Name in Cisco Unity Connection Manager
This supports the Synchronization of voice messages between the CUCM and Exchange/Office 365.Before we configure on Exchange the Single inbox feature in unity connection needs to be configured.

How it establishes connection with Exchange :

Unified Messaging Service is the component in CUCM which defines the connection and establishes the communication between exchange and CUCM for enabling this feature and delivering the voice mail to end user mailboxes.

Below is the High Level Architecture of how it works:

Components involved in them are :

Unity Connection Publisher.
Unity Connection Subscriber.
ExpressWay-E.
ExpressWay-C.
Microsoft Exchange.
Active Directory.
DNS records.
SSL Certificate for EWS/AutoDiscover.

Prerequisites from the Exchange Side :

The Unified Messaging service can connect to Exchange server in 2 ways:

1) We can select a specific Exchange server to communicate.

If we select a specific Exchange server, Unity Connection sometimes detects when we move mailboxes from one Exchange server to another, and automatically access the Exchange mailbox in new database and server. In scenarios ,When Unity Connection cannot detect the new mailbox, then we must manually update unified messaging services or unified messaging accounts. So its better not to go with this option.
2) We can make unity connection to search for Exchange Servers.

If we allow Unity Connection to search for Exchange servers automatically , then we need to give permissions from the Exchange servers through RBAC for the unity service account.

One Unified Messaging Active Directory account needs to be created. This AD account will be configured on the Cisco Unified Messaging service to perform this operation.
A dedicated RBAC role ApplicationImpersonation role needs to be created and assigned only to this account.
Cisco Unified Messaging service uses Autodiscover and EWS protocol for this service to work. So all the end user clients needs to have access to this protocol
Exchange server SSL certificate for EWS and Autodiscover needs to be installed on Cisco Unified Messaging service if require SSL is enabled for these 2 protocols on exchange server.

Network Requirements:
1)The Outlook clients & Cisco Jabber Clients should have perfect connection to EWS and Autodiscover which will be present by default.
2)The EWS connection between Unity connection and Exchange should be present.
3)The Autodiscover connection between Unity connection and Exchange should be present.
The default Unity Connection configuration settings is sufficient for a maximum of 2000 users and 80 milliseconds of round-trip latency between Unity Connection and Exchange servers.For more than 2000 users and/or more than 80 milliseconds of latency, we can change the default configuration as per cisco guide.

4)Unity Connection should be configured to use DNS, its recommend to configure Unity Connection to use the same DNS environment in which the Active Directory/exchange environment is publishing its records. If Split DNS configuration is used then all the required entries for Unity Connection needs to be configured on both the places.

Configuring Unified Messaging Services Account:

This account will be used for unified messaging services to make it look generic.
Do not create a mailbox for this domain user account. There are known histories where the unified messaging services not functioning properly with the mailbox.
Do not add this account to any administrator group.
This account must be enabled , with complex password and password never expire.

Create RBAC role for the dedicated mailbox account:

Run the below command in Exchange management shell for the created service account to get permission on exchange for searching the mailboxes.
New-ManagementRoleAssignment -Name rolename -Role:ApplicationImpersonation -User useraccount

Confirm Exchange 2016 Authentication and SSL Settings :

This part is very much required because Unity manager looks for EWS and Autodiscover for the service to work.

Authentication can be checked by logging into IIS manager in Exchange 2016 – Expand Sites – click Autodiscover and see the authentication and SSL settings

Cisco5

Check the same for EWS also.

Note: Unity Manager supports NTLM or Basic Authentication.
Depending upon the authentication setting we have on Exchange Autodiscover and EWS the same authentication must be used on the Unity manager.

If require SSL is enabled on both the protocols EWS and Autodiscover , then we need download SSL certificates from the Exchange server and install them on the Unity Connection server.

Below tasks needs to be completed in CUCM:

1) Create a new Unified Messaging Services in Unity Connection from Cisco Unity Connection Administration.
2) Upload the Exchange certificates to the Unity Connection server.
3) Enabled Unified Messaging for users in Cisco Unity Connection through Cisco Unity Connection Administration.
4) Users with Unity Connection mailboxes needs to have licenses assigned for this component through Cico Prime License Manager.

Rest detailed procedures on the above steps can be seen from the Cisco Articles for CUCM.

Thanks & Regards
Sathish Veerapandian

UC Analytics by Code Software

UC Analytics – Monitoring and reporting for Skype for Business

Available anywhere and on all devices the powerful analytics enable organisations to get smart about the areas that matter most to their businesses. UC Analytics is a user driven solution which delivers relevant information through its customisable dashboards and the automated reports.

Skype for Business allows users to connect from anywhere using different communication methods such as voice, video, IM and conferencing allowing you to improve your business outcomes in a sustainable way.

It can reduce the operational costs of travel, telecoms and IT and increase response times and productivity but only if you are smartly managing the resources. UC Analytics ensures that users are adopting the new modes of communication and the expected cost savings are being realised. It will highlight potential problems areas showing usage trends assisting you in driving user adoption through education and training.

Monitoring reports provide basic analytical reports with some useful information.

It has the comprehensive user adoption reports and dashboards for Lync but also can collate data from other data sources such as Cisco UCM, Avaya and mobile phones.

Solution overview:

UC Analytics is a monitoring and reporting tool which delivers a 360⁰ view of Skype for Business usage and associated costs. Trends in use of voice, video, IM, conferences, file transfers and app sharing can be compared highlighting user acceptance, performance metrics and cost savings enabling more effective use of resources.

It is easy to use, displaying information either through the customizable dashboard user interface or automated reports in a simple to view format suitable for use by any employee within an organisation without the need for any time consuming manual processes.

DASHBOARD USER INTERFACE

The dashboards deliver a real-time snapshot of Skype for Business usage updating every 60 seconds. Enjoy the flexibility of a user experience the way you want it, you decide what charts go where and what information is displayed. Filters can be applied directly to the charts ensuring only relevant information is displayed and click through reporting produces detailed reports with a single click.

Example of few samples:

We have an option to see which client, IP the user is logging

SFC1

This can be integrated to a dashboard which displays automated daily reports as below

We have an option to generate outbound and inbound calls and choose the pie chart options of our choice SFC4

The report has options to choose top destinations, top usage employees , unused extensions and queue status

Good thing is that this product supports multi-tenancy as well and we have option to automate reports based on OU.

We have option to collect response group utilization and check the cost usage by every users for enterprise voice.

SFC7

REPORTS

All reports can be scheduled to run automatically or generated on a one-off basis. Delivery is typically via email or saved to disk and can be in a variety of formats such as Excel, PDF or CSV. Standard report templates are available for user adoption, capacity planning, conferences, call carrier comparisons, costs and more.

The varying reporting requirements of organisations using Skype for Business means the reporting solution must be flexible enough to reflect these diverse needs. The report designer allows users to define the fields displayed in reports ensuring the information is entirely relevant. The report builder allows reports to be sorted and grouped by up to 3 levels such as date, department, employee, cost, duration or call volume. Filters can be applied including date, time, call direction, call type, employee, extension, department, response group and more. There is the option to include or exclude charts which can be bar, pie, line or stacked bar. Details displayed on the Y-Axis can also be selected dependant on report type. It is easy to brand the reports with an organisations logo and relevant colour scheme.

ALARMS AND BUDGET

It is possible to set up as many system alarms as required. When a user defined call criteria has been met such as low MOS, specific error ID, calls over a defined cost or duration an alarm is instantly delivered by email and immediate action can be taken. Using the budget feature you can even set a monthly cost threshold on an extension, when this has been reached outbound calling is barred allowing further investigation to be made which addresses employee abuse and the threat of toll fraud.

Hardware Specification and requirements:

One web application server
Intel Xeon or Equivalent 2 cores CPU with 2.66 Ghz Intel Processor
4 GB RAM Minimum
Windows 2008/2012 OS 64 Bit + IIS + ASPNET +FrameWork 4.5
SQL 2008\2012\2014 express 64 bit
Minimum 40 GB HDD
100/1000 Ethernet Cards

Connection to remote SQL is required where the Skype for Business LCSCDR , QOEMetrics and LCSLog databases are hosted.
The reporting URL is published on MS SQL port which is usual 1433 but it can be changed based on the requirement.

Their Team would be happy to organise a demonstration of the solution or a completely free of charge trial and you can reach them through their website www.codesoftware.net

Thanks & Regards

Sathish Veerapandian

Custom address list for Unified Messaging and update speech grammar file in Exchange 2013

Exchange2013, Unified Communications July 21, 2015 Leave a comment

In this article lets have a look at few important things that we need to consider before enabling Unified Messaging feature for the end users.

When the Unified Messaging server feature is enabled it requires a grammar file to provide voice user interface (VUI) that uses Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). It updates the grammar for the UM enabled users through global address list based on the speech grammar filters , languages that are configured.

Its better to create a custom address list for the UM auto attendant and allow callers to send voice messages only to this custom address list.

There are few benefits of doing this.

1) You add only the users who require UM enabled on this custom address list.

2) You create the custom address list only with the mailbox users so that the contacts present in the address list will be excluded.

Now lets have a look at how to accomplish this task.

Run the below command to create a custom address list for the Unified Messaging.

New-Addresslist -Name UMVoice -IncludedRecipients MailboxUsers

IMP: For a grammar file to be generated for a distribution list, the distribution list must not be hidden.

Later scope the UMAutoAttendant only for this custom address list created as below.

Open EAC – Navigate to Unified Messaging –

Select the Transfer & Search option and choose only the address list which was created for UM .You can add only the users for whom you have UM feature enabled.

You can run the below command as well to accomplish this task

Set-UMAutoAttendant -Identity MyUMAutoAttendant -ContactScope UMVoice

By this way you can exclude the contacts.

Exchange Unified messaging role gets the Speech inputs from users to perform directory look-ups. Then it looks the display name of the UM enabled user in the GAL and then inserts into the speech grammar.

When the Display Names had periods then the speech inputs might not be recognized properly at times in Exchange 2010 UM servers.

You can run the below command to rectify this issue for exchange 2010:

Set-Csuser -Identity sathish@exchangequery.com -PhoneticDisplayName ‘Sathish Ravi’

After performing the above you need to ran Galgrammargenerator.exe/GGG.exe

For Exchange 2010 run this command – Galgrammargenerator.exe -d MyUMDialPlan

For Exchange 2013 as there is no commands to perform this action.

For Exchange 2013 the GAL speech grammar file is stored in the arbitration mailbox and then later downloaded to all Mailbox servers in that Exchange organization.

By default, the Mailbox Assistant runs every 24 hours. You can adjust the frequency by using the Set-MailboxServer -ManagedFolderWorkCycle assistant cmdlet and change the frequency.

But the better way to address this is to just restart the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Assistants after you create a new dial plan and leave the generation cycle as such to 24 hours.So when we restart t all the GAL speech grammar files will be updated.

Thanks
Sathish Veerapandian

MVP – Exchange Server

Configure new UM Dial Plan and UM IP Gateway in Exchange 2013

Exchange2013, Lync, Unified Communications September 20, 2014 Leave a comment

UM server is the one that provides Voice Mail, Outlook Voice Access and other Exchange voice features. Integrating the UM functionality along with the existing telephony system or lync is one of the challenging role that admin would face. Planning should be done properly according to the enterprise voice plan which is used in the organization.

As we know from Exchange 2013 there is no separate role for UM. Their services are running in CAS server and Mailbox server and below are the list of services that are handling UM processes.

Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging Call Router service

Routes the incoming SIP traffic from Lync server or any other IP-PBX or SBC which sends only SIP traffic. This traffic can come from a VoIP gateway, Session Border Controller (SBC), PBX or IP PBX. . Any media traffic sent to the Client Access servers would be redirected to a Mailbox server since the Client access servers are not capable of handling RTP and SRTP media traffics.

Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging service

These servers will handle the initiating Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) traffic from the Lync server for voicemails are left over the Unified Messaging service. It accepts the connection either in port 5061 or 5060 (depends on your config secure or unsecure) and then redirects to Worker process in port 5065 or 5066 . This service does not do any media conversion.

Microsoft Exchange Unified Messaging Worker Process

Worker process receives the SIP requests only on port 5065 or 5066. Which means the actual media conversion takes place in this port. It does the following below thing

1) Does Registration of the process with Unified Communications Managed API 4.0 and converts all the required information for media processing for SRTP and RTP protocols.

2) Does the Initialization of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) message Submission and submits the voice message to the user’s mailbox who has UM enabled.

In this article we will have a look at the steps to configure UM and steps to integrating with Lync or existing telephone system in Exchange 2013.

Open EAC Click on Unified Messaging and select UM dial plans as shown below

Give it a name and provide the extension length that the users need for the subscriber access number to be used by Enterprise Voice users.

Select the Dial Plan type according to your Lync / IP-PBX or SBC settings you have.

Select the VoIP Security mode according to your enterprise voice plan settings that you have.

Select the appropriate country region and click save

Once finish click save and select configure the dial codes

Specify the codes according to your requirement.

Configure Outlook Voice Access as per requirement

Select settings and configure the options about searching the names when users are directed to the voice mailbox .

Configure the transfer and search options

Configure the transfer and search option according to the requirement and click save we are done.

Now we need to create a New UM IP gateway.

Things to consider before we create a new UM IP gateway

Run ExchUcUtil.ps1 and OcsUmUtil.exe only if you do not have any IP-PBX or SBC and if your are going to integrate your UM functionality with Lync or OCS pool. If you have multiple dial plans associated with different enterprise voice plan then you need to plan accordingly.

If you plan to integrate with Lync pool then run ExchUcUtil.ps1 on all Exchange Mailbox servers

Note : The ExchUcUtil.ps1 script creates one or more UM IP gateways for Lync integration. You must disable outgoing calls on all UM IP gateways except one gateway that the script created. This includes disabling outgoing calls on UM IP gateways that were created before you ran the script

Run OcsUmUtil.exe script on the Lync server

OcsUmUtil.exe Creates contact objects for each auto-attendant and subscriber access number to be used by Enterprise Voice users.

Verifies that the name of each Enterprise Voice dial plan matches its corresponding unified messaging (UM) dial plan phone context. This matching is necessary only if the UM dial plan is running on a version of Exchange earlier than Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

If you are going to integrate UM with any IP-PBX or SBC directly then you can skip the above step.

Now we need to create a new UM IP gateway.

Open EAC click Unified Messaging and select New UM IP gateways

Give a name for the IP gateway

In the address tab give the FQDN or the IP address of the SBC or the IP-PBX that you have

Note: When you specify the FQDN on the IP-PBX or SBC then you need to create a Host A record for the same on DNS and map it to its IP.

Now select the associated dial plan that you need

Now enable the option the allow outgoing calls and allow message waiting indicator. Also set forwarding address if you wish to set forwarding address.

Click on save and we are done configuring UM dial plan and UM IP gateway in Exchange 2013.

Note: Unified Messaging requires enterprise CAL licensing.

There is no mandatory requirement for Public UM certificate.UM cert can be internal as you do not need to publish this service to the outside world, since you’ll connect via Lync to it and therefore the communicationss are all internal in that respect.

References :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398193.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125151(v=exchg.150).aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj966276(v=exchg.150).aspx

Cheers

Sathish Veerapandian