Conference Bridge

[art.lacie]

Does CUCM 11 come with the ability to set up free dial-in bridges for conference calling? Someone mentioned this to me a while back, and I'm hoping to look into setting it up if possible. Are there any setup guides online for it?

Thx

[Jaime Valencia]

CUCM has always provided a SW CFB that you can use for ad-hoc, meet-me, and on your version, conference now. It only support G711 codec.

[art.lacie]

So basically, we can get rid of our 3rd party bridge supplier who we pay by the call, and set up conference now, and there is no charge for calls, including external callers dialing in? Simply plant a DID on it?

[Jaime Valencia]

Having no idea of what that 3rd party offering is providing you featurewise, I cannot answer. I suggest you try conference now, or meet-me, again, no idea how your system works right now, and then compare it to find out if it's a suitable replacement, or not.

[art.lacie]

I guess what I'm saying is, this works just like a regular bridge service, providing you add a DID to it, but the benefit is there are no per call charges because the conferencing is handled internally on our Cisco system.

Is each person dialed into conference now, its own connection over our PRI - thus reducing the number of available calls in our system?

[Jaime Valencia]

Yes, all outside users will use your trunk(s) to join the bridge.