Cisco & Calabrio WFO Call Recording

Hard Phone and Soft Phone Call Recording

Cisco UCM Phone Extension

Registering a Phone with CUCM

Before anything can be done with a phone it needs to be registered with CUCM. Only after a phone has registered with CUCM can it be assigned an extension and user profile. There are several steps required to get a phone to register with CUCM and to also be usable:

• The MAC address of the phone is listed on the back as well as the model number. These things are required to configure new phones
• Create an extension
• Creating a phone profile and assign it the extension above
• Create a user profile and assign it the extension above assuming we’re interested in extension mobility
• Link the Active Directory account of the user with the phone profile and device profile if necessary

If the phone reads “registration in progress” upon connecting it to the network – this is fine. If it reads this message continuously then the switch port is likely configured incorrectly. The phone is only receiving POE  and not talking to CUCM.

CUCM Call Flow

CUCM Call Routing Elements

Like many Cisco configurations you have statements and groups that are contained within one another and won’t do anything by themselves until joined together. The following components are required for CUCM to able to handle inbound and outbound calls:

Troubleshooting General CUCM & Contact Center Issues

Troubleshooting General Contact Center Issues

The following are in regarding to Cisco CUCM and Contact Center version 11.5.1.12900-21 and IP Phones 7841 and 7861. There may be other reasons or solutions but these steps helped in these particular cases:

Exchange Migration

Exchange Migration 2013 to 2016

Getting Set Up

I don’t always do networking things. Canada being 90% small companies you get saddled with projects like this and often don’t have any single area of expertise. One of the first projects in 2019 is to migrate the on prem Exchange server from 2013 to 2019. We have the 2019 image as well but Microsoft is migrating the on prem Exchange to the cloud some time in the 2020s so our next Migration project of 2019 will be cloud based. Plus, we don’t have the user CALs required for Exchange 2019.

Company Move Project

Late April, 2018

The company purchased a newer building across town with about double the office square footage with the intention of helping the company expand. There was regular ongoing demolition and construction to accommodate departmental requirements and needs such as the addition of a couple new meeting rooms, and reconstruction of office space to partition departments accordingly. While this was occurring, we still had the opportunity of knowing what infrastructure was left behind by the previous company after a building tour in February and March, we made our plans to design our network and proceeded building it mid-April, 2018.

EIGRP Q & A

Common questions others including myself I’ve had and encountered over years, and their answers:

EIGRP Theory

EIGRP Quick Facts

Creating a Highly Available VM

A highly available VM is a cluster storage term in that if there is any sort of server disruption or failure, this triggers the mechanism to transfer the host with little to no noticeable downtime. It’s similar to Cisco’s HSRP for L3 switching. Doing so is relatively easy assuming the Host cluster is online and has full communication, and the cluster itself has been validated. Cluster storage can be localized on the Host servers or connected via SAN or NAS iSCSI or fiber channel. In this case, a Dell Equallogic SAN is used to house the cluster storage via iSCSI connections.

MPLS

Multiprotocol Label Switching

MPLS is an IP routing method commonly employed by ISPs to replace legacy Frame Relay. It segments a routing path, like a private circuit,  from the rest of the Internet and therefore it’s a paid service by ISP customers to be used between two or more remote sites. DSL, T1, fiber, cable can be used at each site, or a mix of the communication methods, it doesn’t matter. Simply, it is another way of connecting sites together over a private connection.