Create Generated Prompt and Create Container Prompt Steps in UCCX Scripts

In many UCCX scripts a developer can meet a task to spell or pronounce some phrases from intermediate variables whose values are dynamically determined based on runtime script information. For example, the customer enters his information like his credit card number or zip code etc. and the script must confirm it by spelling this value back to the caller. Very often these spoken phrases should be concatenated with other existing prompts (wav-files). There are some interesting steps in the UCCX script editor such as Create Generated Prompt step and Create Container Prompt step. Let's see how they can help you to spell string values and concatenate prompts. 

Saving Information to a Text File in UCCX Repository

Being a Cisco Instructor, I often receive practical questions from my students and customers about some configurations of Cisco UC products. Many scenarios are not clearly described in Cisco documentation and therefore can be found only during real work with Cisco equipment and products. One of these question was related to UCCX. Our customer wanted to save some information like date, time, calling number, etc. in a text file. Actually, the best choice to keep such data is a Database of course, but for some reasons they preferred to save all this in txt format. It is not a problem to do it, but their case was a bit complicated, because they want to update the content of the file after each call and add new rows there with new data. I created a demo UCCX script with such functionality for them and tested it in UCCX 12.5. And in this post we are going to discuss it. 

Understanding Cisco Voice Gateways - Part 4. Digital Voice Ports

In the previous parts of our Cisco Voice Gateway story we identified what analog voice ports are. Also we talked about different types of analog supervisory signaling. Now let's see how we can use our Cisco voice gateways with digital lines such as T1, E1 and BRI. These types of connection are still widely available worldwide. This post maps out the various digital interfaces and explains the differences between them.

Understanding Cisco Voice Gateways - Part 3. Loop-start and Ground-start Signaling (FXS and FXO Ports)

Now you already know what Cisco Voice Gateways are and which types of analog voice ports they can use. It is time to discuss signaling processes on FXO and FXS ports. As it was shown earlier, voice ports on routers and gateways physically connect them to telephony devices such as telephones, fax machines, PBXs, and PSTN CO switches. These devices may use any of several types of signaling interfaces to generate information about on-hook status, ringing, and line seizure. Traditional two wired FXS and FXO voice ports typically use so called Loop-Start and Ground-Start supervisory signaling. I am going to explain how these types signaling work in the in the next few paragraphs.

Voice and DTMF input in UCCX Script with Nuance ASR

Some days ago I helped one guy to solve his problem with the voice menu in his UCCX script. He had UCCX integrates with Nuance ASR and he was asked to provide a menu with both voice and DTMF input in his UCCX Script. Let me show you, how it can be configured. 

Pinging Multiple IP addresses with Python

Recently, we talked with you about using Python for network programming. Let me share you an simple example of a Python script, which helps me a lot in my work. Before every course the trainers have to check the lab operation. The next week I will deliver the CCEA (Cisco Contact Center Enterprise Administration) course to seven students, and every student will use his individual lab pod. In the pod there are 13 virtual machines and hardware devices. Before we start the course I have to be sure that all VM are accessible through the network, so I have to connect to every lab pod and ping all the VMs and devices there. Of course, I can do it manually, however, it is time consuming. Let's use Python to automate this and save our time.

Understanding Cisco Voice Gateways - Part 2. Analog Voice Ports

Today we are going to continue our conversation about Cisco Voice Gateways. In the beginning we defined what the voice gateways are, and now it is time to see how we can connect our VoIP infrastructure to traditional analog lines or devices. Yes, it is 2022, however the analog connections are still implemented. That's why you have to know how to use analog voice ports on your voice gateways. 

Unlock CUCM Application Administration account

This post I'd like to write mostly for myself as a reminder, because I have to deal with such a situation very often during the labs on our Cisco UC courses. Unfortunately I always forget the CUCM CLI commands and have to search them in the net 😀. The problem is that the students enter wrong passwords for the CUCM CM Administration account several times, and the CUCM simply locks the administrator account after unsuccessful attempts. Then it is not possible to enter the CM Administration for some time. Let's see how we can unlock the account (we use CUCM 12.5).

Understanding Cisco Voice Gateways - Part 1

The previous topic about Caller ID issues on Cisco FXO ports was of interest to many readers, and that's why I decided to write series of posts about Cisco Voice Gateways for beginners. I see in our classes that the Voice Gateways are always a kind of a "dark horse" to our students, especially when we talk about traditional telephony interfaces, so let's talk about these devices in more detail. 

Caller ID doesn't work at FXO port on Cisco Voice Gateway

This morning I participated in a discussion on Cisco Community about a problem with Caller ID on FXO port. And this discussion reminded me my recent experience with a similar problem, which one of my customer faced in his Cisco PSTN voice gateway. It was new configuration for a voice gateway in a small branch office. The symptoms of the issue were exactly the same - he couldn't see any Caller ID (Calling Number) on his Cisco IP phones, when the call arrived to FXO ports of the gateway (they used H323 signaling). However, when he connected a traditional analog phone to the PSTN line, the phone showed the Caller ID without any problems. It was new configuration for a voice gateway in a small branch office.