Cisco Unified Presence End-User GUI Characteristics

Cisco Unified Presence End-User Interface

Our final end user interface is for Unified Presence. This is a secure connection, so HTTPS the node name are IP address of your present server and then CUP user (https://node-ip/cupuser). That gets into the main login page and if you are wandering, do I have to manage another group of end users, no. This now gets synchronized from your Cisco Unified Communications Manager Solution. We do not have to create more end users here. Just as a side note, I want you to know you need to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 6 or later any other web browser with some exceptions.

End-User Authentication

Where are the end users for our Presence? Well, with Presence publisher, that is going to communicate directly with the Communications Manager Publisher and they’re going to be using an API (Application Programming Interface), Simple Object Access Protocol, or SOAP. When we first set up the Presence environment or set up that Presence publisher, there is an initial sync of the entire Communications Manager User and Device Database. So, now all of our Cisco Presence Users are configured on the Communications Manager and User Environment and during the sync, the Cisco Unified Presence Server populates these users into its database and now the Communications Manager Database does not provide any end user configuration from that interface.

One other side note, remember we have been talking of synchronizing with LDAP, External LDAP Servers and Authentication. Well, if your Presence Communicator Users log into a Unified Presence an LDAP Authentication is enabled via the Communications Manager your Unified Presence Capabilities will go directly to the LDAP Server for the personal communicator user to authenticate. It is going to use a bind operation to do this and after your Unified Personal Communicator is authenticated then the Unified Presence forwards the information to your Unified Personal Communicator to continue the log in progress. So, it is little different if we are tied into that External LDAP Environment versus if we’re just creating users on our Communications Manager then we just sync and everything is good. There is no extra steps behind the scenes that are taking place.

Contacts and Privacy Policies

Presence is all about the ability to see if people are available, so with contacts and privacy policies that’s really what we are managing here. We have a default policy that we setup on the system and this applies to all the watchers who are not included in any other rule. So end-users cannot assign watchers to the default policy, its good thing for the security reasons because you may not want to have CEO being able to watched by everybody, etcetera. We also have a blocked policy, so what happens is any watcher that added to the blocked policy always sees their status unavailable. Custom policies this is where the end user can create multiple custom policies and they can define the associated watchers and devices. Again, privacy configuration determines who can view the current availability and end users have two required privacy lists. There is a default in the block that I just mentioned, but we could create custom list. End users can add on entire domain to the blocked policy, but anybody who set to be blocked is going to show as unavailable unless that user has been explicitly allowed. So this is the way that we can allow the end user to create custom policies but for the most part we as Administrators still maintain control, because we are allowed to say who can watch who so that they can for example look at that CEO and know the status of that individuals phone. So, this is the nice way for them to manage their own capabilities and yet they still have their defaults in the blocked policies.

IPPM and Broadcast Messages

With voice mail, we could setup a situation were we can send out kind of a broadcast message to everybody, it is a recorded version of it. With our Presence capabilities and our IPPM broadcast and response message, basically we do this, but we are doing this in text format. Here the end users can configure a message and send it out to everybody that they are allowed to. We can setup settings that allow users to create a message that can go out and we can control who that goes to, it is a maximum of 150 characters and that can be sent to some or all contacts in the contact lists. We’re kind of controlling the situation here, not allowing them to, send it to everybody unless they are a responsible party and they are allowed to do that. And end users can then create a personal response message to avoid typing a text message each time they want to send a message. So, users can create up to 15 personal responses and the system Administrator can create an additional 10 predefined messages that they can then use to respond to any message.

Our Recommended Premium CCNA Training Resources

These are the best CCNA training resources online:

Click Here to get the Cisco CCNA Gold Bootcamp, the most comprehensive and highest rated CCNA course online with a 4.8 star rating from over 30,000 public reviews. I recommend this as your primary study source to learn all the topics on the exam. Cisco CCNA Gold Bootcamp
Want to take your practice tests to the next level? AlphaPreps purpose-built Cisco test engine has the largest question bank, adaptive questions, and advanced reporting which tells you exactly when you are ready to pass the real exam. Click here for your free trial. Cisco CCNA Gold Bootcamp