Can you hear me now? Tales from a Cisco voice instructor » Intercom Tales from a Cisco voice instructor Mon, 18 Nov 2013 18:04:55 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Configuring CUCM Intercoms (Part 1) Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:38:45 +0000 In my last post we looked at the intercom feature that is available in the current version of Communications Manager. In this post we are going to take a look at the actual steps that are required to configure an intercom.  Four things must be done to configure an intercom. They are:

1. Create intercom partitions.

2. Verify/Modify auto-generated calling search spaces.

3. Create intercom directory numbers.

4. Assign intercom directory numbers to the phone.

Let’s start with configuring an intercom partition. Here are the steps for creating one:

1. Navigate to Call Routing > Intercom > Intercom Route Partition from within CCMAdmin.

2. Click Add New.

3. In the Name field of the new screen that appears, enter the name and description of the new intercom partition. A comma must be placed between the name and description.

4. Click Save.

When you create an intercom partition, an intercom Calling Search Space (CSS) is automatically created. When the CSS is automatically created, it is given the same name as the partition followed by a “_GEN.” For example, if the partition was named Tech_Intercom, the CSS would be named, Tech_INtercom_GEN. You may want to edit this CSS if the line that you use as the intercom line is going to be allowed to dial destinations other than another intercom in the same partition.

The following steps show how to modify the CSS.

1. Navigate to Call Routing > Intercom > Intercom Calling Search Space from within CCMAdmin.

2. Click Find.

3. A list of intercom CSSs appears. Select the one you want to modify by clicking on the name of it.

5. From the Available Intercom Partitions field, highlight the partition you want to add to the CSS and click the down arrow below the field. The selected partition should appear in the Selected Intercom Partitions field.

Remember that the order that the partitions appear in the CSS is the order in which they will be searched.

Now that the partitions and CSSs are configured you need to create the intercom directory numbers and assign them to the phones. The steps to configure this will be cover in my next post.

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Understanding CUCM Intercoms Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:01:39 +0000 In earlier versions of Communications Manger there was no real intercom feature. You had to create speed dial buttons and set lines for auto-answer to emulate an intercom. While this worked for the most part, it did have issues. The biggest was when the phone auto-answered,  it created a two-way audio stream. The problem was that if the called party was in the middle of a conversation and didn’t realize the line auto-answered, the calling party might overhear something they shouldn’t. The other issue was that if the called party was on a call, the intercom line did not auto-answer, making the intercom line non-functional.

In current versions of CM, a true intercom feature was added to audio stream. This feature allows you to configure intercoms that setup a one-way until the called party pressed the intercom button, at which time a two-way audio stream is setup. The one-way audio is refereed to as “audio whisper.” Another nice feature is if the called party is on another call, the audio whisper is still setup and the called party can hear the intercom caller.

There are basically four steps required to setup the intercom feature. They are:

1. Create intercom partitions.
2. Verify that the auto-generated calling search space is created.
3. Create intercom directory numbers.
4. Assign intercom directory numbers to the phone.

While there are only four steps, most of these steps require that a number of parameters be configured. In future posts we will take a look at the details for each of these tasks.

As you can see, the intercom feature has solved a number of the issues that the old work around had. One thing that some people do not like about the intercom feature is that it requires one of the phone buttons be dedicated for intercom use. I was recently showing a customer how this new feature worked. When I finished showing them they said, “that’s great, but all of the phones we have only have two buttons and they are already used.” That kind of took the winds out of my sails. I guess I could have looked at it as a sales opportunity. Besides telling them to buy all new phones (not a real solution) there wasn’t much I could do. While the new intercom feature isn’t perfect, it is a lot better than the old work around.

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