Tuesday 16 October 2007

Upgrading from Cisco CallManager 5.x to 6.x

Due to the fact that I have to roll out CallManager 6.0 for a customer in the UK before December this year we have now taken the plunge in the office!

Upgrading was a fairly simple matter - however (as usual) wasn't the same as the documentation described. Basically we were supplied with an upgrade disc and license PAK, with which you use to move to the new platform by way of a tar.gz file on the upgrade disc. Nicely, this had the big advantage of upgrading the CallManager server through the 5.1 GUI (in the same manner that you would any CM 5.x upgrade patch) and then simply rebooting into the new partition. All phones upgraded themselves - Robert's your father's brother. It wasn't quite as smooth as that though because our PAK code didn't work so we had to raise it on Cisco TAC.

So first impressions for me? Well the interface is a nice blue colour and the two great things about the 6.x GUI are the fact that the drop down box on the top right of the page now fits into a 1024x768 screen; and thankfully Cisco haven't moved things around too much - yay.

I think the first impressions were good as i'm used to the 5.x interface though those upgrading from 4.1 will find it quite tricky to navigate through for the first time.

The phones (when rebooting) now show the new Cisco logo as part of the device pack!

After the upgrade we did have a few niggles - the CM service stopped working and the service needed a kick; our MPE integration stopped answering calls because for some reason it had changed the Route List to something other than the MPE trunk; and Presence status stopped working in Cisco Unified Presence Server 6.0 and the server needed a reboot.

The only thing we haven't been able to fix is a service URL that's on everyone's Extension Mobility device profile to unlock the front door; which bizzarely has been replaced with the Extension Mobility service. In CallManager, the device profile shows the correct service URL applied to the speed dial but the phone shows otherwise. Removing the service URL and re-adding it before logging in/out of EM also does not solve the issue.

Update: None of the help pages work! They all give 404 errors - odd.

So that's the bad stuff. The good stuff is:

  • We now have syncronization between the Publisher and the Subscriber so that if the Pub goes down we don't lose functionality such as CallForward status, Extension Mobility, and others
  • We have mobility and single number reach built in! Also comes with new 'mobility' softkey
  • Improved SRST support
  • An intercom feature has cropped up in the list (woo!)
  • Directed Call Park has turned up
  • VERY IMPORTANT: Pickup Group Notification is back! It was missing from all CallManager 5 versions and in alot of instances this is a must have for customers!
  • Slightly improved BAT tool

I'll be configuring Mobility and Single Number Reach soon! More to come!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The license upgrade for version 6.x is not automatic while the software is on "New Product Hold"

Anonymous said...

CM6 tries to be smart and autodetect your language from your browser. If your english is anything other than en-us then you'll get 404 errors. Changing your browser's language to en-us (or hacking the URL) fixes this.

Anonymous said...

what did "The only thing we haven't been able to fix is a service URL that's on everyone's Extension Mobility device profile to unlock the front door" mean?

how does your CM unlock the front door? can you share? could be of use in my organization..

thanks a ton!

Anonymous said...

Please be aware that there are several errors in the UK Number Plan documents.

See http://www.aa-asterisk.org.uk/index.php/Errors_in_Cisco_UK_Numbering_Plan_Documents for details.

Anonymous said...

The new Cisco version 18 GB number plan file (GBNP) for 2012 has very many errors.

There's some details here...
supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2171992.