Ad Hoc Conferencing on the CUCM - Basic CUCM Configuration

hello and welcome to the channel and today we're going to be talking about ad-hoc conferencing resources now the idea with ad-hoc conferencing is that I can set up a point-to-point call but then add in a third party and convert it into a multi-point call as necessary or ad hoc that's what ad hoc means is I can create a conference call whenever it's needed so just to give you an example of how this works let's say endpoint a was going to call endpoint B now at this point all the call setup goes through the CCM so we're talking about sip call set up the invite message the trying SDP all of that okay but once the ports are opened then the media the audio and the video the media is point-to-point between a and B however if a at some point in the conversation while talking to B that decides that he or she wants to bring C into the conversation there's a conference button on the phone that can be pressed and that will put B on hold and allow a to set up a new call leg over to endpoint C now once that call sets up the media will be direct between end point a and end point C and even though it looks like there are two calls going on there's actually only one because audio and video are not being sent between endpoints a and B because that call is on hold so there's still a connection between them but there's no media being sent the only media being sent is between a and C but if the user behind in point a presses that conference button a second time it will put in point C on hold and open up a new communication to the CCM and this communication says I want to merge these two calls that I have on hold into a multi-point call where we can all talk to each other so the CCM will select a media resource based on the settings that are configured for endpoint a because in point a is initiating the communication and then once the CCM has selected that resource it will do a call set up to transfer all three of these endpoints over to that audio bridge and then the media will actually go from each of these endpoints to the audio bridge rather than between each other's before so the audio bridge processes the audio and sends it out to each of these endpoints so that everybody can hear each other okay at this point it's important to understand the process that the cesium goes through to decide which media resource it should use to set up the conference column okay so to start with we have something called media resource group lists media resource groups and of course our individual media resources okay and just to clarify a conference bridge is a type of media resource now when the CCM selects a media resource it all happens sort of top-down meaning that it looks at the media resource group list first then it looks at the media resource groups and then it chooses a media resource in that group so all this happens top-down but when you go to build your media resource group list you have to configure them from the bottom up so this means that you have to start with the individual media resources and this is just a random sampling of the possible conference bridges that I threw together okay so we have our media resources and the next thing we need to do is put these media resources into different groups okay so let's say we're gonna put the CCMS built in audio bridge that's cfb - and Cisco's meeting server into one group okay so that's Group one now let's say we want to put the iOS conference bridge and the enhanced conference bridge in another group okay that's Group two and then we'll put the telepresence MCU and the telepresence conductor in a third group and that's Group three okay now we just need to put our groups into a list of groups and this will be our media resource group list so let's say we want Group one and group two to be one list okay that's list one and then let's say we want group 2 and group three to be a second list and that's list 2 okay so what this means is that when we press the conference button a second time the cesium is going to work top-down meaning it's first going to look in the media resource group list okay but here we've created two different lists so how does a CCM know which list it should use well we can configure this one of two ways we could either add the media resource group list to the device pool that the phone uses or we could just add the list to the phone directly and I'll show you how to do both in just a few minutes and for now let's just say that we added list 1 to the endpoints device pool so then in that case the cesium is going to go ahead and choose list one okay next the CCM is gonna look at the groups within that list in this case these are groups one and two now remember these groups are in a prioritized order so whatever group is listed first the CSM will try that one first so let's assume that the resources in that group are available so then the final step is to choose a media resource from that group and then set up the conference column okay so now let's bring all this together and let's configure an ad hoc conference bridge on the CCM and to keep things simple just so you can see how this works I'm gonna configure it for audio only now the audio conference bridge is built into the CCM the one that we're going to use it's built into the CCM however this particular resource is a feature service and all feature services are disabled by default so if you wanted to use the same audio bridge the first thing you'd have to do is enable it under service activation so let me show you how to do that let's go up to navigation and go to unified serviceability and then click go now you want to go to tools and then click service activation you'll select your server then click go then you can scroll down just a little bit you should be able to see it here under Cisco IP voice and media streaming app so if it's unchecked you'll want to check it here and then of course click Save and after that you should be all set now I've already got a setup here so I'm just going to go back to the main administration page and remember the first step is to configure your media resources so for that we're gonna go up to media resources then conference bridge and if we click fine we can see that we already have some listed here and notice these two CF b2 and CF b3 there's no checkbox here to select them you can't remove them or do anything with them and that's because these are audio bridges that come built into the CCM one is for the publisher and one is for the subscriber these are the ones that we just turned on so we're gonna actually use both of these to save us the trouble of configuring our own but later a few videos down the road I'm gonna start a new series on CMS cisco meeting server and so for that we'd want to create one specifically for CMS not to do that you just click on add new and configure it there but again I don't want to get too sidetracked here so we'll just save that for a future video so for now since our audio bridges cfb 2 and cfb 3 are already set up for us we're good to move on to the next step and that's creating our media resource group so to create the media resource group we'll go to media resources and then media resource group we're gonna click add new and we'll give it a name we'll say ad-hoc underscore Audio underscore MRG and we'll choose CF b 2 and CF b 3 and then add both of those to the list now notice that I can't change the order here there are no arrows on the side that allow me to order these and that's because the media resource group isn't prioritized so the order doesn't matter we're just adding all the resources that we might want to use and then we're going to click Save okay next we'll create a media resource group list so we'll go to media resources and media resource group list we'll choose add new and we'll call this one ad hoc underscore audio underscore M RG l and then here we want to add the media group we just created ad hoc audio MRG and now notice that there are arrows on the side where we could order the groups that we want to add to our list because these are prioritized the order does matter of course we're only putting in one group so for this demonstration it's kind of a moot point but if you had multiple groups here it certainly would matter okay we'll go ahead and click Save okay we're almost done but remember we need to tell the CCM which media resource group list it should use when we press the conference button even if you have only one media resource group list configured you still have to go through this step so we can do that either by adding it to the endpoints device pool or we can add it to the phone directly to add it to the device pool you'll first want to go to system and then device pool then we'll click find now you can either create a new one from scratch or you can just add it to an existing one which is what I'm gonna do I'm gonna add it to our TP phone here so I'll click on that then just scroll down to this second section here and you'll see media resource group list then you can just add yours to the drop-down list and then click Save simple as that now one really important thing to keep in mind is that if you decide to add the media resource group list to the device pool any phone that uses this device will will also have access to these media resources so if you don't want that if you only want certain phones to have access to these media resources then you should add it to those phones directly to do this just go to device then phone and you can add a new one or add it to an existing phone I'm just going to choose a Mackenzie here and just add it to his phone then again just scroll down a little bit here where it says media resource group list you'll select yours from the list then click Save and you're all set and real quick I just wanted to demo this to show it in action so I've registered 399 seventy-one phones a on the bottom be in the middle and C on top so I'm going to come over to endpoint a and first I'm going to dial in point B I'll answer it then I'm gonna come back down here to in point a and press this conference button here once okay this put the middle phone on hold and gave me a new dial tone so now I'm going to dial in Point C then I'll enter in Point C so remember at this point only a and C are connected but then I'm going to go ahead and come down here and press the conference button one more time and now the CSM has transferred all three endpoints to the audio bridge and we can see this because all of the phones say conference okay and that's ad-hoc conferencing okay if you liked this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't already that's it for now thanks for watching

Channel: Collab Crush

Views: 3,725

Keywords: Cisco collaboration, Cisco collaboration videos, cisco collaboration training videos, cisco collaboration lab, 300-801 CLCOR, 300-801, CLCOR, CUCM, cisco unified communications manager, collab crush, collabcrush, cisco, Media Resource Groups, Media Resource Group Lists, MRG, MRGL, Ad hoc conference, ad hoc conferencing, audio bridge, sip, ad hoc cucm, audio conference bridge

Id: SbtQA5UXYpY

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2019