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Ask the Expert: Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (Unified CCX) 11.0 and Beyond: Feature Design, Deployment, and Troubleshooting

Monica Lluis
Level 9
Level 9

This topic is a chance to discuss more about  the new features in Unified Contact Centre Express 11.0 and what to expect in 11.5. The discussion will be focused around the new features and functionality such as Finesse IPPA, Remote Expert Mobile integration and so on. This is also a chance to discuss about upgrade mechanisms and planning for the 11.0 upgrading, while also positioning your customers for the 11.5 release coming in the next few months.

 

To participate in this event, please use the Join the Discussion : Cisco Ask the Expert button below to ask your questions

Ask questions from Monday, July 25 to August 5th, 2016

Featured Expert

Abhiram Kramadhati is a Technical Solutions Manager with the Contact Centre business unit. He has been working with Cisco Contact Centre since he joined Cisco. During his five years at Cisco, he has built his expertise around Cisco UCCX telephony applications, Java Telephony API (JTAPI) integration, Cisco UCCX system behavior, LDAP components, and Cisco UCCX as IP interactive voice response in Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) environments. He also works on other technologies, including Unified Communications Manager and UCCE. He has been involved in many technical escalations in the Asia Pacific region. Abhiram also holds a CCIE in collaboration (40065).

Abhiram might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the  Contact Center Community 

Find other  https://supportforums.cisco.com/expert-corner/knowledge-sharing.

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I hope you and your love ones are safe and healthy
Monica Lluis
Community Manager Lead
62 Replies 62

Anthony Holloway
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Wooho, first!

1. Can we expect to see a tighter integration with PCD soon, or are there no plans to allow PCD to do, say, a Network Migration Task?

2. Can we get rid of the phone requirement for Supervisors in Finesse?  It's kind of sad to have to take away a Manager's Jabber CSF, or set their line settings to 2/1 just so they can monitor/manage the call center through Finesse.  CSD never had this requirement and it was nice.

3. Can we get rid of the 1:2 Premium Seat:Port ratio?  Customers with low Agent counts, but ambitious uses for their system (Deeper Queues, Callback, Self Service IVR, etc.) should be able to use the horse power of their server all the same as the lower paying customers on Enhanced and Standard.  After all, Callback and Self Service IVR can be had without using Premium features.

4. What work is being done to bring back the Inactive Agents feature in RmCm, so that a small DirSync glitch in CUCM doesn't trigger an automatic deletion of 100% of our Agents?  If none, then may I request we bring this feature back?

5. Can we please get some kind of link to Finesse/Finesse Admin on the UCCX landing page like how CUIC is on there?  It's kind of awkward having to memorize and type in https://servername.domainname.com:8445/cfadmin all the time.  And while I'm on the topic, what about removing the special ports for everything that users will interact with?  Get rid of 8445 and 8444, and just make it all 443 so it's easy to use.  Feel free to keep using 12015 for Live Data because no user would ever type that in.

6. Can the BU publish something similar to this for Finesse HA?  Or maybe it's out there and I just haven't seen it?

http://www.ciscounitytools.com/Applications/CxN/WebClientRedirector/WebClientRedirector.html

7. I just wanted to use #7 to say thank you for what you do for all of us out here in the field Abhiram!

Hi Anthony,

Thank you for the first question and I am glad its from you! We really do appreciate the work you do on the forums and all the help you provide, so thank you for that.

1) Currently, we have had a number of successful use cases of PCD being used with UCCX for upgrade and administrative purposes; we recently had a customer who upgraded 30+ clusters of theirs using PCD. The current supported tasks are:

Single Node and High Availability Installations •  Linux to Linux and Refresh Upgrades •  Switch Versions •  IP Address and Hostname Changes •  Sever Restarts

However, some of the others such as migration are not supported on UCCX and Unity Connection mainly because of the multiple instances of databases that we have as part of the design and also the schema used by different applications made it very difficult to have a compatible path. For now, 11.0 does not support it like you have pointed out but let me have a chat with the right team to understand how this gap is going to be (if) addressed.

2) I would not like to set a wrong expectation by saying that there might be something for this, but unfortunately there is nothing in the foreseeable roadmap where this design will be changed. One of the fundamental reasons is that the phone line is needed for some of the most basic features - monitoring, barge and intercept. Although one approach would be to let a supervisor login to just utilize the LD and the reporting capabilities, since some of the more basic functionalities are missing - it will continue to remain as a requirement. But I fully understand the challenge and this is not new, let me see if I can provide more technical details because many of the subsystems already have 'extension' as one the fields that is used for the role 'supervisor', so it will be a massive change to do so and that is very unlikely. For now, the answer is that this design will continue.

3) There have been a couple of announcements around licensing for 11.5, the same can be viewed here: https://communities.cisco.com/docs/DOC-66937
But for the specific question around seat to port ratio, I will check with the product manager and get back to you on how they advise customers with such scenarios.

4) This is something we have requested for 12.0 - based on bandwidth reasons, not sure if this will be added in 12.0 but this is something definitely already on our list. Thanks for reinforcing it!

5) The Finesse Administration link is currently there as part of the drop-down for administrators:

The rationale is that the Finesse Administration page is used by a UCCX Administrator so it is provided after you enter the UCCX Admin section in the welcome page, but the CUIC can be accessed by just a report administrator who does not bother about the UCCX configurations. Adding that should not be too much of trouble, but that is the rationale but the UI/UX will change and continue to evolve from 11.5 and through to the next release. So hopefully that will be make it better!
As far as the ports are concerned, the challenge is that these applications are developed as individual applications and then baked into one product - so they will come with their sets of back-end doors and windows. And also because each of the UI/UX changes happen independently and then get ported into the UCCX (for quicker development), the webpages and the web server instances remain independent. But certainly good feedback from a UX perspective.

6) I really like this and I can also see why partners and customers would like this! Leave this with me, and I will see if we can do something on these lines. It might probably be beyond the scope and timelines of this event but I will certainly keep in touch with any updates on this.

I will get back with the pending questions, but please feel free to let me know if you have more questions. Thanks again!

Regards,
Abhiram Kramadhati
Technical Solutions Manager, CCBU
CCIE Collaboration # 40065

Hello Abhiram,

This is enhancement request from my part, i need to know if this is worth it.

Adding new Data-store for DB connection: when we make a DB connection we can only add, edit or delete, when we add a completely new DS, we have to rely on logs or make an actual tests to make sure that the parameters from username to password to URL are correct, do you think it is a good idea to add a request for enhancement to add a test button before saving, it will really save us alot of time and efforts.

Amer

Hi Amer, 

That is certainly good feedback. Are you referring to the adding a datasource connection on CUIC? If so, there is an option to test the connection where you can check the connectivity to the datasource before and adding it:


If you are referring to the option of adding a datasource on the UCCX Admin page which allows the UCCX script to access external databases, we do have an option to test the connection:

The moment you add a datasource, the UCCX will save it and automatically make a test to show you the result as well:

One thing we could do is automatically display the status of a datasource when it goes offline so that you can monitor it from the webpage and you don't have to rely on the logs for that. I have filed an enhancement request for that: CSCva62783

Hope that helps! Do let me know if you have more questions, thank you. 

Regards,
Abhiram Kramadhati
Technical Solutions Manager, CCBU
CCIE Collaboration # 40065

Hi Abhiram,

I'm new to UCCX and to the cisco support community in general so I don't know if this is the appropriate discussion to place my question (hope you can direct me to the proper one if it's not :-) ):

I Just installed CUCM and UCCX 11.01. I followed the installation guide and the admin guide and did the initial configuration tasks. But my Finesse Admin console is not online. utils service list shows the Cisco Finess Tomcat service as started but i get a 404 when i browse the cfadmin.

In the https://10.1.1.11:8445/finesse/logs/admin/Container-admin.2016-07-29T09-22-06.264.startup.log i can see this error:

---AppStartUpListner.AppStartUpListener() done with pre-load ResourceBundleManager for /opt/cisco/desktop/finesse/webapps/cfadmin
log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.apache.http.impl.conn.tsccm.ThreadSafeClientConnManager).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
log4j:WARN See http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/faq.html#noconfig for more info.
log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationUtils).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
log4j:ERROR Could not create the Layout. Reported error follows.
java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout cannot be cast to org.apache.log4j.Layout
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.parseLayout(DOMConfigurator.java:556)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.parseAppender(DOMConfigurator.java:269)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.findAppenderByName(DOMConfigurator.java:176)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.findAppenderByReference(DOMConfigurator.java:191)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.parseChildrenOfLoggerElement(DOMConfigurator.java:523)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.parseCategory(DOMConfigurator.java:436)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.parse(DOMConfigurator.java:999)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.doConfigure(DOMConfigurator.java:867)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.doConfigure(DOMConfigurator.java:755)
	at org.apache.log4j.xml.DOMConfigurator.configure(DOMConfigurator.java:891)
	at com.cisco.ccm.dbl.Log4j.initLogs(Log4j.java:52)
	at com.cisco.ccm.dbl.Log4j.initLogs(Log4j.java:41)
	at com.cisco.ccm.dbl.Connector.initLogs(Connector.java:315)
	at com.cisco.ccm.dbl.Connector.<init>(Connector.java:327)
	at com.cisco.ccm.dbl.ConnectorPub.<init>(ConnectorPub.java:17)
	at com.cisco.ccm.admin.utilities.CCMConnector.<init>(CCMConnector.java:27)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.finesse.adapter.vosdb.VosDbAdapterImpl.init(VosDbAdapterImpl.java:72)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.finesse.core.CoreImpl.initCore(CoreImpl.java:534)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.finesse.core.CoreImpl.init(CoreImpl.java:372)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.finesse.subsystem.AWSSubsystem.startInternalDependency(AWSSubsystem.java:383)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.finesse.subsystem.AWSSubsystem.changeLocalState(AWSSubsystem.java:439)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.finesse.subsystem.AWSSubsystem.handleStateChangedEvent(AWSSubsystem.java:537)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.infra.central.state.SubsystemStateManager.executeListener(SubsystemStateManager.java:34)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.infra.central.state.SubsystemStateManager.executeListener(SubsystemStateManager.java:13)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.infra.central.state.GenericStateManager$StateChangeNotifier.run(GenericStateManager.java:358)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.infra.threads.InstrumentedRunnable.run(InstrumentedRunnable.java:92)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
	at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
	at com.cisco.ccbu.infra.threads.ThreadPoolThread.run(ThreadPoolThread.java:164)
log4j:ERROR No layout set for the appender named [Dbl2jCommonAppender].
log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationUtils).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationUtils).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.

Can you help me get the cfadmin online?

What can I do to troubleshoot this issue?

Thanks in advance,

Pedro Antunes

Hi Pedro, 

Thanks for posting the question, the support community is certainly a good place to check for this issue. However if this is something that is service impacting and needs urgent assistance, I would strongly suggest contacting TAC becuase they provide an SLA driven assistance. 

Now for this issue, is this a new system or an upgrade? Also, can you post the licensing information and the screenshot of the services page from the UCCX. Secondly, are you able to get the admin page after multiple refreshes or are you unable to get the page at all? Do you get this error when you load the admin page or after you try to login to the admin page?

Lastly, can you obtain the output of this from your browser:
http://<UCCX IP>:8082/finesse/api/SystemInfo [Repeat for both the UCCX nodes if this is HA]. 

And if we are unable to get a resolution before the end of this event, please feel free to unicast to me with the details. 

Regards,
Abhiram Kramadhati
Technical Solutions Manager, CCBU
CCIE Collaboration # 40065

Hi Abhiram,

thank you very much for your reply :-)

This is a LAB enviroment. We are starting to experiment with UCCX in order to integrate e create custom developments.

This is a new system. Single node. Screenshots in attach.

I'm not able to get the page at all. I've tried several browsers and cleared the cache several times.

the error is on loading.

/finesse/api/SystemInfo:

<SystemInfo><currentTimestamp>2016-08-02T08:37:07.634Z</currentTimestamp><deploymentType>UCCX</deploymentType><license>Cisco Unified CCX Premium</license><peripheralId/><primaryNode><host>vCCX1101.GRAYCELL.BIZ</host></primaryNode><secondaryNode><host/></secondaryNode><status>IN_SERVICE</status><timezoneOffset>60</timezoneOffset><uri>/finesse/api/SystemInfo</uri><xmppDomain>vCCX1101.GRAYCELL.BIZ</xmppDomain><xmppPubSubDomain>pubsub.vCCX1101.GRAYCELL.BIZ</xmppPubSubDomain></SystemInfo>

Thanks!!

is it possible to configure both GVRP and MSTP on the one switch???????????????? plz reply me plz.........

Hi Abhiram,

still working on this but with little success...

I'm examining the finesslogs and i can find a few errors but don't know what to do to fix them or even if they're relevant for the situation at hand...

at https://10.1.1.11:8445/finesse/logs/admin/

there is a log4j exception in the logs. I don't think it's relevant but...

at https://10.1.1.11:8445/finesse/logs/desktop/

there is a file not found error on the logs

the logs are attached to this post. I know you're probably head deep in work, but if you could give me any advice on what to try next it would be great!

thanks!

Hi Pedro, 

There definitely an issue with the log4j initiation and the files hosted by the webserver. I am suspecting that there could have been an issue with the initialization of the services. Are you able to open the Finesse Desktop?

You could try the following:
1) Recreate RmCm user
2) Restart the Engine
3) Restart Cisco Tomcat (utils service restart Cisco Tomcat)
4) Restart Cisco Finesse Tomcat (from the GUI)

If the issue persists, we could try to look at this from the root where we can manually replace the JAR files which are showing up in the errors.

Do you have the TAC case open? If so, I can put in notes there for the engineer to perform those actions because only TAC will have root access.

If the event ends before we find a resolution, do drop me an email and we'll continue working on this: akramadh@cisco.com

Regards,
Abhiram Kramadhati
Technical Solutions Manager, CCBU
CCIE Collaboration # 40065 

Hi Abhiram,

thank you for your reply! Your interventions have been a very important factor in keeping motivation and continuing to troubleshoot. It's a good feeling not to be alone :-)

So, i found the problem. It was a DNS misconfiguration. the fqdn was not resolving correctly. Basic mistake... the fact that all other admin pages were working but cfadmin threw me a bit off course. 

This was also the cause for the log4j and file not found errors.

Learned a lot with this issue though (as always).

Thanks again for your help!

Kind regards,

Pedro

That great, Pedro! It is a very important thing to consider as well with Finesse - all Finesse API calls happen with hostnames and not IP addresses. So unlike previous versions, the unavailability of DNS actually affects the system in ways that you have just seen. 

Thank you for your efforts on this, do let me know if you have any issues with other features on UCCX while you explore it!

Regards,
Abhiram Kramadhati
Technical Solutions Manager, CCBU
CCIE Collaboration # 40065

I don't use UCCX a lot, maybe 1-3 projects a year, so some of these might be rather basic.

- Are there any significant improvements within CUIC and displaying more customized real time data on the Finesse desktop?

- The sample callback script which a lot of people use as a poor man's CCB has a lot to be desired (reporting, long queue times without calls timing out, use with multiple queues), are there any plans to build a more native system into UCCX to handle this better?

- Double clicking on a script editor step to bring up it properties, any plans of implementing this?

Thank you!

Hi David, 

Thank you for your questions. 

Are there any significant improvements within CUIC and displaying more customized real time data on the Finesse desktop?

There has been quite a lot of work done on the CUIC real time reports and the way they have been displayed on Finesse. For starters, the UCCX 11.0 has a completely new architecture for real time reports based on SocketIO and this is real real time with the data directly received from the engine and the reports computed on the browser side (reducing load on the server to create a report and then dish it out to the clients). You can read about the live data reports available on the CUIC here: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/crs/express_11_0/design/guide/UCCX_BK_U3AF2742_00_unified-ccx-design-guide-11.pdf

You cannot create a custom live data report, but you can customize the current ones to an extent. You can hide columns, add thresholds and display those reports on Finesse.

Now, on Finesse side there are enhancements too on the live data gadget. The gadget toolbar has been provided that can accommodate 5 reports views at the same time, thus saving a lot of real estate on Finesse. You can sort columns, display only thresholds and also pause a live data report. A quick snapshot of how that would look:

The sample callback script which a lot of people use as a poor man's CCB has a lot to be desired (reporting, long queue times without calls timing out, use with multiple queues), are there any plans to build a more native system into UCCX to handle this better?

The sample callback script is a custom script created, so there are no out of the box reporting options. However, a custom report can be created. With 11.0, a standalone CUIC can now be setup to work with the UCCX and if you have a premium CUIC license, you can create your own report that reports on this. That being said, there are proposals to make this out of the box but nothing concrete as of now. 

Double clicking on a script editor step to bring up it properties, any plans of implementing this?

I will create an enhancement request for this, so that we can look at it in one of the future releases. It is currently not in the immediate roadmap. 
*Update* - enhancement request filed: CSCva61063 (will take a few days to be visible on the Cisco Bug toolkit).

Do let me know if you have any other questions! Thanks. 

Regards,
Abhiram Kramadhati
Technical Solutions Manager, CCBU
CCIE Collaboration # 40065

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