Thursday, January 1, 2009

Cisco Presence Products

When talking about Cisco presence products, we usually refer to BLF (Busy Lamp Field) and CUPS (Cisco Unified Presence Server).

BLF is a built-in feature of CUCM (CallManager).  It allows you to see a person's phone status (off hook / on hook) on a speed dial button or in phone directory.


BLF: Pone 6001 is on-hook (idle)

BLF: Pone 6001 is off-hook (active)

For more information regarding CUCM presence, please see: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/admin/6_1_1/ccmfeat/fsprsnc.html

CUPS (Cisco Unified Presence Server) is a standalone products.  It requires a separate server, it cannot coresident with CUCM.  For supported server models, see: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cups/7_0/english/compatibility/cupcompatibility.html

Usually, CUPS is used with a presence client - CUPC.  The official name of CUPC is "Cisco Unified Personal Communicator".  Some people also refer it as "Cisco Unified Presence Client".

CUPC can run on Windows and Mac OS.  CUPC is a multi-function client.  It can send IMs (like MSN Messenger).  It can display your buddies' presence (on the phone, in a meeting, etc.).  It can retrieve voicemail.  It can control your desk phone.  It can act as a soft phone as well.  It support video calls.  It can also be a outlook plugin.  So you can "click-to-dial" from Outlook.


For more information regarding CUPC, please see: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6844/index.html

5 comments:

  1. Michael, Thanks for creating this blog. I've had your help numerous times throughout 2008 with new-install presence/cupc start ups. A lot of the info in your blog would have been awesome to have early last year! most of this had to be figured out at the seat of our pants.

    I have a quick question...CUPC isn't very colorful. We have a gray, a green, a yellow, and a red icon to indicate status. Thats 4 colors/icons. yet there's actually 8 possible statuses. In A Meeting and Logged in, In a meeting and offline,Idle,On The Phone, In a meeting + on the phone, Available, Do Not Disturb, Offline, and Away. The problem is that there's esentially 3 colors and 1 of them means potentially 3 or 4 different things. We've had issues of adoption with several customers because end users think that 'yellow' means you can't IM the person. We try to convince them that yellow means 'you might be able to IM them' which is kinda funky.

    And yes i submitted this information a couple of survey's, I'm wondering if this may be introduced either in a 7.1 client or 8.0 etc.

    I also noticed, the SkinArt folder C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\Cisco Unified Personal Communicator\SkinArt\Icons\Presence Contains these other statuses that would be so handy to have, yet the client doesn't use them. I believe it's been like this since 1.2(x). I know it's more of a developer question but, Is it possible to edit a registry key or ini of some sort to change the icon behaviors?

    Thanks Again?

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  2. Michael,
    I am trying to research when presence 8.0 will be released. i was told 8.0 will have the ability to setup a chat room, not just sent one-to-one messages. IS this true and do you know when we can expect to see 8.0?
    Thanks

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  3. CUPS 8 was supposed to release by the end of this year. I don't have too much details on it. Group chat should be available.

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  4. Hi Michael,
    I have you book for deploying Presence V6.x and it has been an excellent resource. I would l=ove to get hold of your Version 7.x book but am unable to gain access to Lulu.com Is this book available anywhere else?
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. It should be available on book resellers like Amazon.com, Barns and Noble, etc. I don't know why they haven't updated with the new version yet. I'll check with LuLu. By the way, version 8 will be released soon. It'll be available on Lulu.com first. Other resellers would have a couple weeks delay.

    ReplyDelete