UCCE/PCCE ICM Components Processes - Peripheral Gateway (PG)

The next part of our UCCE/PCCE story is about the ICM Peripheral Gateways or PGs (click ICM Router Processes or ICM Logger Processes to find appropriate information). ICM PGs provide the data interfaces between the ICM Central Controller and foreign devices (peripherals), such as an ACD (CUCM), IVR system (CVP), or any other device that distributes contacts such as calls, email, or web.

Each peripheral communicates with the ICM software through a Peripheral Gateway. The

peripheral gateway is a server (a virtual machine) that communicates directly with an ACD, PBX, VRU/IP IVR, or Cisco Unified Communications Manager at a contact center, monitoring status information from the peripheral, and sending it to the Central Controller. 

Each peripheral can be configured as a routing client, allowing the peripheral gateway to send routing requests to the ICM Central Controller. This type of route request is known as a postroute request.

The peripheral gateway can be a single (simplex) computer or a pair of computers running in

duplex mode. A single peripheral gateway can service more than one peripheral; however, each

peripheral only connects to one peripheral gateway.

- The PG reads status information from the peripheral and sends it to the Central Controller.

- The PG is also capable of sending routing requests to the Central Controller and receiving a

route response back. The PG converts peripheral language to Cisco language and viceversa.

- It does not have to be duplexed, but can be for fault tolerance.

- Standard PG – has up to 32 Peripheral Interface Managers (PIMs) for like devices.

- PG Generic – PIMs can connect to one of any supported ACD and one of any supported

VRU/IVR.

Here come the main processes running on a Peripheral Gateway:

- Open Peripheral Controller (opc) - acts as the brain for the peripheral gateway, including acting as a central collection and distribution point for all interaction with peripherals. OPC also ensures that all synchronization is accomplished with the other side. It also prepares and sends termination call detail (TCD) records as well as 5 minute and 30 minute reports. OPC provides for uniform message sets between the Central Controller and peripherals.

- Message Delivery Service (mdsproc) - is used to provide message delivery between processes that

reside within a node. In the case of a duplex node, MDS extends between the nodes for purposes of synchronization and fault tolerance.

- Peripheral Gateway Agent (pgagent) - manages the interface between the peripheral gateway and the central controller.

- Cisco Unified CM Peripheral Interface Manager (eagtpim) - manages the interface between OPC and the JTAPI Gateway. Multiple PIMs of the same type can be enabled for a PG. VRU PIMs and Unified CM PIMs may be co-resident on a PG as well. This is very common in Unified CCE deployments but may not be present on all PGs. There may be multiple instances of this process running.

- VRU Peripheral Interface Manager (vrupim) - works between OPC and a Voice Response Unit (VRU) or Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. Examples are CVP and Cisco IP IVR servers. There may be multiple instances of this process running.

- Media Routing Peripheral Interface Manager (mrpim) - is the integration point for the Outbound Option Dialer, Cisco Email Manager (CEM), Cisco Collaboration Server (CCS) and the Email Interaction Manager (EIM) and Web Interaction Manager (WIM). There may be multiple instances of this process running.

- JTAPI Gateway (jtapigw)- manages the interface to the Unified Communications Manager IP PBX via the JTAPI client to the CTI Manager on the Unified CM. On the other side, the JTAPI Gateway connectsto the Unified CM PIM and translates JTAPI messages and events into a format expected by the PIM.

To be continued...