Solved: Monitoring/Recording of CAD installed on Terminal Server

dborota · ‎08-13-2007

Hello all!

We have IPCCX 4.0 installed with CCM 4.2 and CAD installed on Terminal Server. Agents log into 7940 phones using Extension Mobility and then using Remote desktop connectin they log into CAD. Everything works perfectly well.

Supervisor Desktop is installed on separate machine, and it works well for Intercept/Barge in. However, when we try to monitor/record a call no audio is beeing recorded. Does this has anything to do with the fact that "Agent's PC has to be plugged in IP phone beeing monitored" as instructed in manuals?

Does anyone have an idea how to overcome this situation and be capable of monitoring/recording?

Just for note: we have two NIC's installed on CRS server, one for Monitoring/Recording and SPAN has been configured correctly on switch. Terminal Server is not included in SPAN. Does it have to be included?

shane.orr · ‎09-20-2007

Great! Glad to hear you got things working. Thanks for posting your results.

View solution in original post

shane.orr · ‎08-23-2007

I just got done fighting this battle several months ago. I was implementing IPCCX 4.0(4) with Call Manager 4.1 and Citrix but pretty much the same situation you are experiencing when it came to getting monitoring and recording working.

If you read carefully in the SRND it states that monitoring/recording is supported in a Terminal Services Environment but you cannot use the default configuration where the agent desktop software captures the voice stream from the PC Port of the phone because the software resides on the Terminal Server. So you are on the right track in that you have to Span. However, you DO NOT need to span the Terminal Server, in fact that would not be a good idea. You simply need to span all the agent phones and send the spanned traffic to the port where the second NIC of the IPCC Server is plugged into. I then followed sections of this document talking about the Cisco Desktop Administrator but had to ignore most other sections of the document because it was really targeted for standard Desktop Monitoring configuration.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/ps1846/products_tech_note09186a008075025a.shtml

Unfortunately there is no good doc out there that I could find that talks about how to setup and utilize Spanning for IPCC 4.X so I had to muddle through a combination of 4.X and 3.X IPCC documents.

Here is a doc that I just used as a reference because it is for IPCC 3.X so most of it does not apply but it did help me figure out a few things.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/voicesw/ps556/products_tech_note09186a00801a62a8.shtml

I also had a few NICS that had 802.1q capabilities that gave me some troubles.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/ps427/products_tech_note09186a00801f42f9.shtml

The good news is I was able to get it to work and even though you may talk to first level TAC and they might not understand why you are spanning due to Terminal Services being in the picture, it is actually supported according to the fine print in the SRND.

dborota · ‎08-23-2007

Thank you very much for very helpful notes!

One thing, however, remained unclear to me. In several documents in order to be able to record/monitor it is stated:

"Confirm that the Agent PC Network Interface Cards (NICs) are plugged into the backs of the IP phones (daisy-chained)."

Does it has to be the case in this scenario i.e. do terminal server client computers have to be plugged in the backs of the spanned IP phones.

Thank you in advance!

shane.orr · ‎08-24-2007

No, in a spanned IPCC Environment in reference to Monitoring and Recording it does not matter if the PC or Thin Client is "Daisy Chained" to the back of the IP Phone via the PC Port. In fact it is irrelevant for Thin Clients runnning Citrix because the CAD Software cannot directly capture spanned packets from the Client Machine's NIC. In my install I had a mix and match of Thin Clients that were plugged into the PC Port of the IP Phone and some that were plugged directly to the Catalyst Switch.

Here is the snippet of info from :

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/cad_enterprise/cadenterprise7_2/installation/guide/CADCitrixMTS.pdf

"Desktop monitoring and recording are not supported. SPAN port-based monitoring

and recording, however, are supported."

And I also gathered that info originally from the "Monitoring and Recording Components" section of the URL Below. It breaks it down into 2 Sections. One is the Spanned method and the other is the Desktop Monitoring method. In the Spanned Method, no mention of needing PC's plugged into the PC Port of the IP Phone.

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps1846/c1609/cdccont_0900aecd80331ee7.pdf

Hope that Helps!!

dborota · ‎09-20-2007

Thank you very much for all the help!

I got it solved following the instructions you gave me. Finally, it is a battle, but once I arranged all configuration it took servers to be restarted fully(which is a problem in a productional environment). Once restarted, it works perfectly.

Not to mention that we used totally non-brand-name NIC with no intervention on drivers.

Thank you very much for the notions of two sections how monitoring can be done, it is a pitty that Cisco documentation did not explain it in a simple way.

So, thanx once more - it solved my problem!

shane.orr · ‎09-20-2007

Great! Glad to hear you got things working. Thanks for posting your results.