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TMS and Conductor issue - Using Lecture type conferences to improve security

Paulo Souza
VIP Alumni
VIP Alumni

Hi folks,

At this moment, I am implementing some projects involving Cisco Telepresence Conductor and I am wondered the benefits that Conductor brings to the video network, it is really a great solution!

Exploring the advantages of Conductor, I have created the following deployment:

Conductor - Improving security for external users.png

It works fine! The customer is very satisfied with the security level reached when using this deployment. Their multipoint conferences is safer now.

Well, when I created this topology I was not considering how the enviroment would work when having schedule conferences with TMS and Conductor, because this customer does not have TMS, yet. Then I was just shocked when I opened TMS e Conductor deployment guide and found the following statement:

Note: The TelePresence Conductor conference type Lecture is not supported in Cisco TMS. Only conference templates using the Meeting conference type are supported.

Page 13 - http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/telepresence/infrastructure/tms/config_guide/TelePresence_Conductor_with_Cisco_TMS_Deployment_Guide_XC1-2_TMS14-1.pdf

I almost jumped out of the bridge... Now I know that my great topology won't work anymore with TMS.

Well, these are my questions:

Why do we have this limitation?

Does Cisco have plans to fix that?

The guide is related to Conductor XC1-2 and TMS 14-1, has any thing been changed  in TMS 14.2.2 and XC2.1?

I would really appreciate any help, really!

Thanks in advance.

Paulo Souza

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Paulo Souza Was my response helpful? Please rate useful replies and remember to mark any solved questions as "answered".
1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Kjetil Ree
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Paulo Souza wrote:

[...] I am wondered the benefits that Conductor brings to the video network, it is really a great solution!

Agreed! The TelePresence Conductor truly is a great product.

Why do we have this limitation?

Because the feature was never implemented on the TMS side. It was decided that other features were more important and had to be prioritized. There is nothing about the "Lecture" conference type that is inherently incompatible with TMS, but the work has to be done first.

Examples:

  • The Conference Control Center: You'll most likely see duplicate conference entries if you use a "lecture" conference.
  • TMS does not differentiate between chairpersons and guests when creating scheduled "lecture" conferences on the Conductor.

None of these are very hard to solve from a development point of view, but they wouldn't be trivial to implement or test either.

Does Cisco have plans to fix that?

Nothing specific is being planned, no. As always: If this is a problem to your customer, raise a feature request through your account manager or other Cisco point of contact.

The guide is related to Conductor XC1-2 and TMS 14-1, has any thing been changed  in TMS 14.2.2 and XC2.1?

Conductor XC 2.1 and TMS 14.2.2 is an unsupported combination, but nothing has been changed for

XC 2.2 and TMS 14.3: "Lecture" conference types are still not supported.

Best regards,

Kjetil

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13 Replies 13

Kjetil Ree
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Paulo Souza wrote:

[...] I am wondered the benefits that Conductor brings to the video network, it is really a great solution!

Agreed! The TelePresence Conductor truly is a great product.

Why do we have this limitation?

Because the feature was never implemented on the TMS side. It was decided that other features were more important and had to be prioritized. There is nothing about the "Lecture" conference type that is inherently incompatible with TMS, but the work has to be done first.

Examples:

  • The Conference Control Center: You'll most likely see duplicate conference entries if you use a "lecture" conference.
  • TMS does not differentiate between chairpersons and guests when creating scheduled "lecture" conferences on the Conductor.

None of these are very hard to solve from a development point of view, but they wouldn't be trivial to implement or test either.

Does Cisco have plans to fix that?

Nothing specific is being planned, no. As always: If this is a problem to your customer, raise a feature request through your account manager or other Cisco point of contact.

The guide is related to Conductor XC1-2 and TMS 14-1, has any thing been changed  in TMS 14.2.2 and XC2.1?

Conductor XC 2.1 and TMS 14.2.2 is an unsupported combination, but nothing has been changed for

XC 2.2 and TMS 14.3: "Lecture" conference types are still not supported.

Best regards,

Kjetil

Hi Kjetil,

Thank you very much for your help. I really appreciate it. I was already expecting you or another expert from Cisco to tell me that I need to open a feature request.  =(

Well, if I schedule a conference with TMS selecting Conductor as MCU, and then selecting a conductor alias that points to a conference template with Lecture type configured, will I be able to at least schedule the call or will I receive some error message?

I don't want TMS to give an option to configure guest ID, guest PIN, guest or something when scheduling, I just want TMS to allow to schedule by using alias that points to lecture conference template. So I would use a alias condigured in Conductor apart from TMS alias match the calls coming from guest participants from internet. Is that possible?

Thanks once again.

Paulo Souza

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Paulo Souza Was my response helpful? Please rate useful replies and remember to mark any solved questions as "answered".

Paulo Souza wrote:

Well, if I schedule a conference with TMS selecting Conductor as MCU, and then selecting a conductor alias that points to a conference template with Lecture type configured, will I be able to at least schedule the call or will I receive some error message?

That is untested behavior, so I don't really know. But I think that there isn't any built in check in TMS that explicitely disallows scheduling such conferences, so it might work.

-Kjetil

Thank you very much. I will try!

There is just one problem, it is a not a Cisco solution, it is paulo's "workaround". I am always running around the same thing, using something not supported to cover some limitation, that's always my case rsrs...

Thanks

Paulo Souza

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Paulo Souza Was my response helpful? Please rate useful replies and remember to mark any solved questions as "answered".

Re: Conductor 2.2 and TMS 14.3 - will this support TMS scheduling of Telepresence server?

Conductor seems like it has real potential, but according to the documentation I can support scheduling via TMS in 1.2 *or* support TP server in 2.X, but not both.  As 90% of our conferences are scheduled via Outlook and 90% of our conferencing resources are TP server blades, it's a bit of a deal breaker


Conductor XC 2.1 and TMS 14.2.2 is an unsupported combination, but nothing has been changed for

XC 2.2 and TMS 14.3: "Lecture" conference types are still not supported.

It makes no sense for me. Has Cisco removed some feature in the newer releases of TMS and Conductor? I don't understand why the old releases work but the new one does not. I know that there is only a deployment guide for version 14.1 and XC1.2, but can you point some reference in the documentation telling me that I cannot use XC2.1 and 14.2.2?

I didn't find anything checking at the TMS Administrator Guide 14.2. It only says I can use Conductor, but nothing specific regarding the version.  =(

Paulo Souza


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Paulo Souza Was my response helpful? Please rate useful replies and remember to mark any solved questions as "answered".

Nick Halbert-Lillyman wrote:

[...] Conductor seems like it has real potential, but according to the documentation I can support scheduling via TMS in 1.2 *or* support TP server in 2.X, but not both. [...]

Paulo Souza wrote:

[...] I know that there is only a deployment guide for version 14.1 and XC1.2, but can you point some reference in the documentation telling me that I cannot use XC2.1 and 14.2.2?

I didn't find anything checking at the TMS Administrator Guide 14.2. It only says I can use Conductor, but nothing specific regarding the version.  [...]

Nick,

Conductor XC 2.2 will be fully supported in TMS 14.3, which is scheduled to be released in about a week. You'll then be able to schedule TelePresence Servers (3.0 and 3.1, the latter strongly recommended).

Paulo,

We do not state explicitely that you cannot use XC 2.1 with TMS 14.2.2, but we have never stated that it supported either! Until a new deployment guide is published, the old one (TMS 14.1 / XC 1.2) is authoritative, and the limitations in it still apply.

Regards,

Kjetil

Kjetil, where can we find a compatiblity matrix, showing fully supported, posssibly working, or non working

combinations incl. lists and kind of limitations of products and its verisions?

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Hi Martin,

Apart from the TMS product support document (which isn't too frequently updated), no such compatibility matrix is published.

-Kjetil

But it should be, how should we even know that something is unsupported, ...

Just to base it on if I can find a deployment guide feels not really great.

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I totally agree!

For example, I am working on a new project involving TMS cluster, Conductor and many 8710 blades, I didn't install anything yet, but I am plainning to begin to install and configure the equipaments soon, in one week I guess. I have designed the project considering TMS 14.2.2, Conductor CX 2.1 and TPS 3.

Now I know this setup is not official and I may have some problems. So I will have to change our calendar in order to wait for the version 14.3 and XC 2.2. That's no so bad, because it will be released in one week, but if it was 3 months? What about my project and our calendar?

Using a common logic, anybody would think, "well, if the old version works, why not the new one (if the documentations does not point any limitation)?". I thought that, even though there is not deployment guide for the version 14.2.2 and XC2.1. And I am not a end user.

If the documentation does not point explicitly, I can suppose it works, once the old version worked.

Paulo Souza


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Paulo Souza Was my response helpful? Please rate useful replies and remember to mark any solved questions as "answered".

It would seem to be that anything even just slightly off the beaten track is unsupported.

A support matrix would be really helpful! Even for TMS, TMSPE, TMSXE and endpoints!

In the UC environment this is also there, and there are more products included, so why not also crete one for Telepresence?

Regards, Paul
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