How To Understand The Class Of Service Function In The Avaya Aura Communication Manager System

Transcription

1 Expert Reference Series of White Papers Avaya Aura Communication Manager System Class of Service (COS) COURSES

2 Avaya Aura Communication Manager System Class of Service (COS) James Husted, Global Knowledge Instructor, ACSS Introduction This white paper provides a summary of the of the Class of Service (COS) function in the Avaya Aura Communication Manager System. It contrasts COS with a similar sounding (but very different) function called Class of Restriction (COR). Both COS and COR are applied to endpoints (stations), so I will start there. If you wish to follow along, I will refer to the graphically enhanced definity interface (GEDI) screens within Avaya Site Administration (ASA). If you enter the add (or change, or display) Station XXXX command and look on the upper right-hand side of the Station form, there are four entries that were fished out of the bowl of alphabet soup that I lovingly call Avaya Aura Communication Manager (CM) programming. They are: BCC, TN, COR, and COS. The focus of this paper is the last item, but first, here is a brief description of the others. Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 2

3 Figure 1. Station Form BCC (Bearer Capability Class) refers to the type of traffic that the terminal supports. The types are the numbers 0 to 4, M (multimedia), and W (wideband). The Type 0 (zero) is the default for most telephones and identifies this device as being able to support voice-grade data and voice. This item has no bearing on COS, but I thought you might find it interesting. You can find more about this in the Avaya Aura Communication Manager Feature Description and Implementation Guide. TN (Tenant Number) refers to the ability to partition CM into 100 different tenants. This is similar to the Customer Number in the CS1K world. The Tenant Number is closely related to COS. We will see later in our discussion of Classes of Service that it is no coincidence that there are also 100 different COS Groups (1-100). The good news is that, for most of us, we never have to do anything about Tenant Partitioning. Tenant 1 is the default for all systems, and it is a sort of master key to creating all of the other tenants. If you don t turn on Tenant Partitioning under system - parameters customer options, you don t get to use anything other than Tenant 1. For that reason, there isn t any reason to program any other COS group than COS Group 1. Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 3

4 Figure 2. Tenant Form COR (Class of Restriction) refers to what objects (telephones, trunks, agent login IDs, data modules, other CORs, etc.) you can access. CORs restrict communication between Point A and Point B. If you are in COR 1, programming can prevent you from gaining access to someone or something in COR 2, and vise versa. I finally got the difference between COR and COS to stick in my mind when I remembered all of the years I have spent teaching students about restriction filters. These filters were programmed against telephones, trunks, and even remote access to trunks. (Interestingly enough, the COS feature is not applicable to trunk groups except for the Remote Access feature). Never, in all the time that I ve been doing this, can I recall seeing restriction filters applied to feature access, but that is exactly what COS is. Now, when I hear of COR and COS, I know that COS is the other thing. change cos-group 1 Let s start. When you are in GEDI and enter change cos-group 1, you will see that there are two tabs that list 20 features that, upon your say-so, can be accessed by endpoints in the system. To the right of each of these features are 16 (0-15) yes or no decisions that you can make. Many of the features displayed on these two tabs are addressed in detail in the Global Knowledge course, Communication Manager Administration (see Learn More below). Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 4

5 Figure 3. COS Group Form - Tab 1 Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 5

6 Figure 4. Figure 3. COS Group Form - Tab 2 I will take a moment here to give at least a nod and a wink to some of the features that we do not cover in depth in the course but that may be important for you to know about. Data Privacy. This applies to both voice and data calls for the users that are part of this COS feature. The intent is to prevent these calls from being disturbed by any overriding or ringing features (tones) during the call. This would include call-waiting calls extended to the user from the attendant, or intrusion by the attendant. Calls extended to the user would follow the coverage path. There are a number of exceptions described in the Feature Description guide such as: when a user transfers a call, is bridged to a call, or disconnects a call. Normally, you would see this for modem access where an unwanted tone could disrupt the process. Off-hook alert. This is a feature that may be helpful in a hospital setting. There may be cases where a phone is left off-hook as the result of a patient in distress. It could also be useful in a hotel environment. The system will first generate an intercept tone that would be heard over the telephone handset after which an emergency call is generated to the attendant. Basic Hospitality or Emergency Access to the Attendant must be active on the system. Client Room. If you travel, like I do, you likely arrived (at least once) at the front desk before 2 p.m. Since I have Priority, status my room has already been assigned (with my welcome Champaign and caviar waiting). The front Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 6

7 desk clerk had to check to see if my room was ready. Now you know how they could know if it were available (at least in larger hotels). After the room had been cleaned, the maid or housekeeping supervisor dialed a code from the phone in the room that had a COS allowed for the Client Room feature. This feature allows users to access the Check-In, Check-Out, Room Change/Swap, and Maid status functions. In addition, Client Room is required at consoles or telephones that are to receive message-waiting notification. You can administer a COS for Client Room only when you have Hospitality Services and a Property Management System (PMS) interface. Restrict call fwd-off net. The intent of this feature is in its name. By default it is set to y across all 16 COS designations. This will then prevent all users from being able to forward calls to the public network. For security reasons (toll fraud) you may want to limit this ability to select users by changing the value to N. Trk-to-Trk Transfer (restriction) override. Essentially, this feature would allow a user to override any system COR-COR (that other guy again) calling-party restrictions that would otherwise prohibit a trunk-to-trunk transfer. As with the Restrict call fwd-off net feature, this could pose the threat of toll fraud. The default of N would have to be changed for those users. QSIG call offer originations. QSIG is an ISDN based signaling protocol for signaling between PBXs in a private network. Some of you might remember the proprietary SL-1 protocol from the Blue World. Avaya chose to use the industry standard protocol QSIG instead. Call Offer (also called Attendant intrusion) would allow the attendant to offer (intrude) on an existing call across the private network. You can find more information in the Administering Network Connectivity on Avaya Aura Communication Manager manual. Contact closure activation. The Screen Reference Guide describes contact closure as a relay that sends a pulse to an electrical device like an electric door lock. I wonder if it could also be used to turn on that fabled coffee pot that sales people have been promising customers for years. Masking CPN/name override. This feature has some truly delicious noodles: MCSNIC (Mask Calling Number/Station Name for Internal Calls). They combine to allow a user to override the condition where an internal calls Calling Party name has been blocked and replaced with a hard-coded, system-wide text string like Info Restricted. Priority IP Video. Bandwidth for audio is consumed by all IP endpoints. When video is added to the call, the demand for bandwidth can really climb. When configuring an IP Video Softphone endpoint for certain users, you may want to ensure that there is an increased likelihood of receiving bandwidth sufficient to support the call. This could mean that users without priority are not able to support video calls if bandwidth demand is high. Ad hoc video conferencing. This feature enables or disables Ad-hoc Video Conferencing, so that up to six users can participate in a video conference call. Make sure that you verify the number of ad-hoc ports available to the system in system-parameters customer-options. In addition to the change cos-group 1 form there, are several other forms that can be programmed to implement COS. They include: Attendant Console, Console-Parameters, Data Modules, Remote Access, and Station. Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 7

8 How do I apply this knowledge to a station? This brings us back to where this paper began; the Station form. The default COS for all stations is 1. That means that all I really have to do is go right down the COS 1 column in the change cos-group 1 form and enter Y to everything I want, right? Not so fast. Do you really want to give everyone the right to Call Forward all Calls (even the lunch room phone), Console Permissions (do what the attendant can do), or to perform Priority Calling (hey, you that three-burst ring you hear means that your boss is calling), or to have Priority when placing IP Video calls? If the answer is yes, then you are already done when you make all of column 1 Y. Most customers would probably have answered no to some of them for some of their endpoints at least. I think that most customers will use no more than six of the sixteen Class of Service columns. Since your endpoints default to COS 1, you will need to carefully consider which features you need the bulk of your people to access. Then you can customize as many other additional COS entries as circumstances require and apply them to the endpoints. In the end, I think most of you will have 1 tenant, 1 COS Group, and about a half-dozen COS entries to customize and apply. Conclusion I hope that this paper has helped to demystify the COS (Class of Service) feature and how it is applied to a station. As I have shown, COS can be a helpful tool for enforcing system feature access security and for segmenting users into functional groups according to their feature access requirements. Learn More Learn more about how you can improve productivity, enhance efficiency, and sharpen your competitive edge through training. Avaya Aura Communication Manager Administration (5U0004I) Avaya Aura Communication Manager Fundamentals (ATI01672VEN) Visit or call COURSES ( ) to speak with a Global Knowledge training advisor. About the Author Jim Husted has been in the Telecom industry since 1977 in a variety of capacities. His career as an educator began when he worked as a substitute teacher in the Las Vegas school system. After three and a half years, he determined that his real niche was teaching adults, so in 1996 he began as a contractor for Nortel teaching Norstar. Two things happened in 2000; Global Knowledge bought the training division from Nortel, and the BCM was introduced. He began teaching BCM and soon began teaching some CS1K installation courses as well. Along came the IPO, and he added that system into his portfolio. He also teaches Communication Manager Administration. Since 2000, except for a two-year period between 2004 and 2006 (when he returned to contracting) he has been a full-time employee of Global Knowledge. Copyright 2013 Global Knowledge Training LLC. All rights reserved. 8