How to Integrate Cisco Call Manager with CIC

March 5, 2015

It’s no secret that the enterprise telephony world has been dominated by the Cisco Call Manager platform in the past few years. According to Frost Sullivan, “Cisco accounted for 22.6 percent of the total enterprise communications platforms and endpoints market revenue, 19.5 percent of the total IP line license shipments, 36.7 percent of the IP desktop phone unit shipments, and 37.0 percent of the desktop client units sold.” Call Manager offers some really unique features in the IP telephony arena. Most competitors focused their efforts on delivering PC client-based solutions for call features, but Cisco added the most functionality directly to the phone (EG Extension Mobility, IP Agent ETC) and really focused on remote offices/sites (EG SRST, E911) by adding redundancy features to the existing networking infrastructure. At present, with the addition of Jabber and WebEx, Cisco is on track to maintain market domination for the foreseeable future. 

I have worked with several customers that were very pleased with CUCM for their enterprise telephony, but required a more comprehensive solution for their contact centers. Interactive Intelligence’s CIC platform excels in this area by offering a single server, all software, easy to manage solution built from the ground up. Mindsight  has integrated CIC with CUCM several times and I have always found the integration docs that Interactive Intelligence provides a bit overwhelming. This is partially because the doc tries to cover all the possible integration scenarios. In reality, most organizations just want calls to be front-ended by CUCM and the Cisco phone to ring when Interaction Client receives a call. Most organizations don’t want their agents to have voicemail on CIC or notify the CIC client for outbound calls placed from the phone. 

How to Integrate Cisco Call Manager with CIC

High Level Steps for CUCM Serving as the PBX and CIC Handling Contact Center Calls (using Cisco phones registered with CUCM as endpoints)

Call Routing:

RTP: Gateway/SBC <-> Media Server <-> Cisco Phone

Signaling:

Gateway/SBC <-> CUCM <-> IC Server <-> CUCM <-> Cisco Phone

High Level Integration Steps (more details can be found here):

Define a range of Extensions that will be used for the CIC line on the Cisco phones

Create a SIP trunk Security profile in CUCM and populate the following fields

• Profile Name:  CIC_SIP_SecurityProfile
• Security Mode: Non-secure ü  Incoming Transport Type: TCP+UDP
• Outgoing Transport Type: TCP
• Incoming Port: 5060
• Checked: Accept Presence Subscription, Accept Out of Dialing REFER, Accept Unsolicited
• Notification, Accept Replaces Header
• Checked: Send send-receive SDP in mid- Call Invite
• Checked: Allow Multiple codecs in answer SDP
• Checked: Early offer support for voice and video calls (insert MTP if needed)
  

Create a normalization script for regionalization of calls. The Interactive intelligence doc provides an example.

• If you have CUCM server on multiple geo locations, make sure to check the Run on All CUCM server check box. These will allow each CUCM to send the SIP invite to CIC and  CIC in return will use the correct SIP lines and Media Server for RTP

Create specific CSS (Calling Search Spaces) and partitions for CIC trunks.

Create the SIP trunk with the following settings:

• SIP Trunk Named CICTrunk
• MTP resource not required
• Inbound Calling Search Space = CIC_CSS_Inbound
• Select Unattended Port ü  SIP Information Destination Address =<IC Server 1 IP Address>
• Set the SIP Trunk Security Profile to CIC_SIP_SecurityProfile
• DTMF Signaling Method = RFC2833

Create a second Directory Number on the Cisco phones only used by CIC – preferably using a predefined range or access key

Add them to your standard phone partition and make sure that the CIC CS has access to that partition

On the CIC administrator – Create a SIP line called

• Set  Audio Path to Always In
• Set Media and Re-Invite Timing to Normal
• Set the Proxy to the IP address of CUCM server
• Add the CUCM IP address in the Access List

Create a Station in CIC named the same as the Cisco Ext.

• Set Identification Address to the DN configured in the Cisco phone
• Under “Use the following settings” portion add the CUCM SIP line and extension.

Configure the dial plan to send all outbound calls and Cisco Station calls over the CUCM SIP trunk

Add a “DelayedHoldAllowed” parameter in Sever Parameters to allow call holding initiation from the Cisco phone.

Login into the CIC client using the new station and test by placing an inbound call. The call should cause the Cisco phone to ring before connecting the outside party. Answer the call by picking up the phone. You can’t pickup calls from the interaction Client, because Cisco doesn’t support the TALK event. We usually remove the PickUp button/rights from the client and set the Cisco phones to auto answer. The only annoyance is that the Pickup text still shows up in the Toast Pop Alert, but is grayed out.

As you can see, there are many integration scenarios that could apply for each customer. The above instructions only apply to a particular scenario where CUCM is used as the PBX and Cisco phones are primarily used to answer calls on the CIC platform. Mindsight is one of the few consulting firms that specializes in the Cisco suite of products and the Genesys/Interactive Intelligence platform. Our extensive expertise in networking, data centers, private clouds, Cisco products, application development, contact centers and business intelligence can be the key differentiator to a successful project and mitigate the vendor finger pointing. Contact us today to speak with an engineer or learn more about how Mindsight can help with your business needs.

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For Further Reading

Simplifying CUCM Upgrade and Migration Tasks Using Cisco PCD – Prime Collaboration Deployment

Interactive Intelligence Test Lab, IC 4.0 SIP INTEGRATION TO CISCO UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER 10.X, Feb 19 2015, Dec 10 2014