UCCX.net

Today I had an interesting and challenging ticket come my way.  The problem was the customer wanted to change their unity ( voice mail only ) accounts to conform to their corporate naming structure.  Funny enough, there is no “magic pill” to correcting this problem.  In fact, some firms would probably just say it cannot be done, or would tell the customer they would need to delete then recreate their VM boxes in Unity.  It absolutely can be done with a little attention to detail. 

The first step in the process is to configure the Active Directory information properly.  This includes changing the e-mail field which can be found on the General tab,  the User Logon Name which is under the Account tab, and the exchange alias ( which is the most important for the purposes of this blog entry ) and is located under the Exchange General tab.   

Once I had all the AD account information set up the way I wanted, I had to run a tool located in the Cisco Unity Tools depot, called DG/GC.  This tool allows you to sync the Unity accounts to the AD directory manually.  By default this sync occurs on a regular time interval ( in most cases it is run every 15 minutes ). 

DC GC can sync both the Domain Controller and the Global Catalog by pressing the “Force Reconnect” option.

Either way, I found this process to be a little cumbersome because I had to manually touch 32 accounts, but in the long run, it would have saved me loads of time from deleting the VM box account and recreating it in AD, then re-importing it into Unity.  Best of all, the users are not aware this occurred at all, and they were able to save all their mailbox settings including greeting, pin, and voice mails. 

Food for thought, enjoy!

I have had several requests for an RSS feed for UCCX.net.  To all those readers who have suggested it, sorry for the delay.  But below you will find the link to the RSS feed.  ~Enjoy!

http://www.uccx.net/rss.xml

Q2 of this year will bring about the biggest change in Cisco Unified Contact Center Express since the move from version 3 to 4.  We will be migrating from a Windows 2003 platform to a Linux based hardened IPT OS.  This operating system is under the hood the same OS which runs all the current Cisco UC applications such as Unified Communications Manager, Unity Connections, Presence, etc. 

Recently as part of PACE ( Partner Alignment and Collaborative Excellence ), I was able to do a hands on 4 hour demo lab of UCCX 8.  By the way, if you have not heard of PACE, ask your Cisco CAM or SE for more information.  I am attaching a PDF listing out the big changes for UCCX 8.

UCCX 8 Lab Presentation.pdf

I hope to have a Beta VM Image built and put up some tutorials on this subject soon!   

I had a user who recently registered on the site who mentioned he used to work for Cisco when they acquired Selsius, the company who designed the first IP Phone.  Below is a pic of the first Cisco acquired IP Phone.  I personally had never seen one before, so I figured I would share with the UCCX.net community. 

For those of you who don’t realize what a  significant role Selsius played in the modern day IP Telephone, I am attaching a link to Wikipedia, check it out, it’s worth a good read.

Background Selsius Information

Selsius Systems, Inc. was organized in July 1997 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Intecom, a Dallas-based PBX (Private Branch Exchange) manufacturer

The first commercially available IP phone was the Selsius 30SP. In November 1997 the company sold five 30SP phones to the TRI lab of Southwestern Bell in San Antonio.

For those of you who don’t realize the importance of Selsius, everytime you log into a older CUCM server and create a new phone, have you noticed that in front of the MAC Address it always shows “SEP”?  That is legacy code standing for Selsius Ethernet Phone. 

Food for thought. 

UCCX.Net Team,

I am proud to announce that as of January 19, 2010, I have successfully completed the Cisco CCIE Voice lab at Research Triangle Park (RTP) in North Carolina, becoming CCIE Voice #25853.  Below is a video showing you my home lab setup, and also a story on how I studied and completed the lab. 

I began studying for the exam over two years ago in 2007 and have been deploying Cisco Voice for over 6 years.  Over the course of the last two years I/my employer have spent roughly $17k for equipment, preparation materials, travel, and the cost of 6 attempts to pass the lab at $1500 per attempt.  Now some might be laughing while reading this saying why did it take 6 attempts, I took 3 attempts on the old version 2 CCIE blueprint and 3 on the new version 3 blueprint.