Expressway 8.8 - Video Endpoint registration

This is something that catches my attention in the release notes.  In the previous release, one of the major difference between VCS and Expressway is the ability to register video endpoints.  While VCS allows endpoint registrations, Expressway works together with UCM and all the endpoints are registered to UCM as single call control.  For UCM centric customers with 3rd party video endpoints, they will need to deploy a pair of VCS just for 3rd party video endpoints registration.

Now with Expressway 8.8, it allows endpoint registrations, which means you can have your DX, SX and MX endpoints register directly to Expressway.  It also allows 3rd party endpoint registration, however for this release, only SIP endpoints are supported.  H323 will be supported in future releases.

The licensing model for Expressway registrations will follow the UCM UCL / CUWL / Telepresence room systems licensing, instead of the VCS way.  It allows you to starts small with relatively less investment.  It also makes it easier for existing UCM customers to understand this new licensing model on Expressway.

Can you run Expressway alone without UCM for video centric deployment?  Technically you can, however you will lose advance UCM capability such as Jabber, Extension Mobility, SNR, Shared Line, Multiline, VM/UM, etc.  If you want to have these capabilities in your environment, registering these endpoints to the UCM is suggested, with Expressway as your collaboration edge for B2B, MRA, CMR Cloud, etc.

Release notes:
http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/expressway/release_note/Cisco-Expressway-Release-Note-X8-8.pdf

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Related post:
Collaboration Edge - Step-by-Step integration guide with UCM:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.com/2014/06/collaboration-edge-expressway-step-by.html

Warning: Less than a month to order add-on UCM licenses

Check this out, all of the version before 8.6 will be end of sale its add on license options which means you are not able to order add on license after 31 Jul 2016
https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-57172

Associate Existing Phones to Users with SQL statement

I have come across a case which is a licensing issue for the new 9.1.2.  The customer is using desk phone for extension mobility, while they have users using CSF device as the main phone.  All those desk phone are not associated with user because it doesn't make sense to do it, however all the EM desk phone and CSF devices will count as Enhanced UCL instead of CUWL, as there are no multiple device associate to single users and thus double counting the license, as those Enhanced UCL are "borrowed" from CUWL standard.

As an interim solution we need to update the phones to associate it with an "owner", although BAT can do the job, it imposes risk in overriding phone settings.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/products_tech_note09186a0080affd4d.shtml

An alternative is using cURL with AXL.  So the first thing I need to do is to dig out what SQL statement I need to issue before writing the batch job.

Firstly I need to find out the PKID of a particular user.

admin:run sql select pkid from EndUser where userid = 'dannywon'

pkid                                 

==================================== 

61b76ad9-7a1b-405c-bb70-b9850397635d 

Then I can check out how many and what devices is associating to that particular user.

admin:run sql select name from Device where fkenduser = '61b76ad9-7a1b-405c-bb70-b9850397635d'

name            

=============== 

CSFDANNYWON     

TABDANNYWON     

TCTDANNYWON     

ECPDANNYWON     

SEP503DE57D87F8 

EMDANNY1        

EMDANNY2        

SEPF84F5794013A 

I also want to know all the unassociated devices.

admin:run sql select name from Device where fkenduser is NULL

name                                               

================================================== 

MTP_2                                              

CFB_2                                              

ANN_2                                              

MOH_2                                              

MTP_3                                              

CFB_3                                              

ANN_3                                              

MOH_3                                              

SEPAABBAABBAABB                                    

VCB0003D6012D4C 

OK, next thing I want to do is to update the Device table, so that the device SEPAABBAABBAABB is associated to the desired user dannywon.

admin:run sql update Device set fkenduser = '61b76ad9-7a1b-405c-bb70-b9850397635d' where name = 'SEPAABBAABBAABB'

Before the UPDATE statement it shows Anonymous under the device settings:

After the UPDATE statement it shows that this device is associated to an user:

But it will not shown in the End User page as "Controlled Device", we are just changing the Owner ID of that particular device to trick the ELM.  With all these SQL statement you should be able to develop your XML file and post the SOAP request via cURL.

Note:  An optimized SQL statement with sub-query:

admin:run sql update Device set fkenduser = ( select pkid from EndUser where userid = 'dannywon' ) where name = 'SEPAABBAABBAABB'

My next post is going to create a shell script to do it in batch:
http://pandaeatsbamboo.blogspot.hk/2014/01/shell-script-to-update-device-user.html

Unity Connection Licensing Explained

My environment:  CUC 8.5.1.10000-26

I've found that the Unity Connection Licensing quite confusing.  For a CUC cluster, it will ship with 3 PAKs, 2 of them contains mailboxes, ports and feature license, the HA PAK contains port licenses only.

The first 2 PAKs should be registered with the publisher license mac, and upload from the CUC publisher admin page.

The HA PAK should be registered with the subscriber license mac, and upload from the CUC subscriber admin page.

At the end you should have port licenses evenly distributed across the pub and sub, and mailboxes and features bind to the publisher.

If you found the license file is invalid when you upload to CUC, make sure you are NOT using Mac OS X + Entourage and download the files via Entourage.  It will corrupt the file, the workaround I've done is to download the license files via OWA, and it works!

Hope it will make it clear and save some time to deal with the licensing team!