Presence Sync between Microsoft Teams and Cisco Call Manager

Recently, I was asked an interesting question: Can the Microsoft Teams app automatically update a user’s status—like showing when they’re on a call or set to “Do Not Disturb”—based on activity from a Call Manager-registered phone?

It’s such a cool idea that I wanted to dive into it here on the blog!

While this feature isn’t a simple switch you can turn on, it’s definitely possible. It requires several integrations and functions as a kind of "bypass" by integrating Webex Calling with Microsoft Teams. In this post, I’ll walk you through the necessary steps for those integrations, and highlight the extra features you can unlock along the way.

What you’ll need for this to work:

• Call Manager
  •    Versions 11.5, 12.0, 12.5, 14 and 15.
• Webex Tenant
  •    We need to deploy Webex Connected UC
• Microsoft Webex Integration.

For the Call Manager, I had a Call Manager 14 in the lab, but since I’m trying out new things I figured let’s update it to version 15. One thing I found out for this upgrade is that you can’t just tweak the existing VM’s parameters to suit CUCM 15. You need a whole new OVA Template suitable for CUCM v15.

1. Login to Cisco software download.
2. Download CUCMv15 OVA template
3. Import it to vSphere
4. Change OS to Centos 7
5. Install Call Manager v14
6. Backup production CUCM v 14 and restore on CUCM v14
7. Shut down VM and change OS to Other Linux version 4.
8. Update CUCM v14 to CUCM v15.

Now that we have our CUCM ready, we need to deploy Webex Connected UC.

Webex Connected UC builds a bridge between the on prem Call Manager and Webex Control Hub. It offers the following features:

• Visual representation about your on prem deployment:
  1.    Endpoint Inventory
  2.    Headset Inventory
  3.    Call Quality
  4.    Call Status

• Centralized Certificate Management
• Web RTMT
• Webex App Auto provisioning (Webex App registered to CUCM)
• Troubleshooting Workflows.

In order to deploy Webex Connected UC you need to have a Webex Tenant available, reach out to your Cisco Partner should you require any assistance in doing that.

Network Requirements, firewalls and proxies allow access to the following URLs:

1. *.ucmgmt.cisco.com
2. *.webex.com

Start setting up Connected UC

In CUCM versions 12.5SU4 and later, the agent COP file is bundled with the Call Manager software. You don’t need to create agent COP file and upload to CUCM to get Connected UC to work. Since I’m running version 15, all I need to do is run a couple of CLI commands on the Call Manager. If you require the steps to create agent COP file you can find them at the below link:

https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/nzt6c0b/Set-up-Webex-Cloud-Connected-UC-for-on-premises-devices

Onboard CUCM node using the admin CLI:

• SSH to the Call Manager Node
• On the admin CLI prompt type utils ucmgmt organization “organization_id”
  1.     To find your organization ID, login to admin.webex.com
  2.     Under Management on the left tab, click on Account
  3.    You will see your organization ID under the Organization Profile section.

• Type utils ucmgmt agent enable
• Repeat the above steps on all nodes in the cluster.

Once you activate the agents on the Call Manager node, you need to verify and assign clusters. The cluster may take up to 10 minutes to appear in Webex Control Hub:

• Login to admin.webex.com
• Go to services à Connected UC and on the UC management card Click Inventory.
• If any of the clusters groups shows the need verification, Click Resolve next to the cluster group.
  
• A new page will open with cluster name and status Needs Assignment. Click Verify
  
• A pop window will open. Select Change Cluster, and if there isn’t a cluster available click Add Cluster Group.
  1.    Name the Cluster.
  2.    Enter Description.
  3.    Click Save.
• Click the check mark next to the verification code and Save.
  

Cloud Connected UC is now configured. After 24 hours of cloud connected UC being configured, you will have plethora of features available to you as mentioned at the beginning of this blog. We will leave the details of those to a future blog.

The last step in making this feature work is the Microsoft-Webex Integration, what this step can also achieve is have a Webex Icon in your Microsoft Teams App and from there you can make and receive calls over the Webex App. Webex App can be registered to either Call Manager or Webex Calling.

End result is seamlessly placing Webex Calls from Microsoft Teams without interrupting your workflow or switching between applications.

However, our main interest and goal here is achieve Presence synchronization between Call Manager registered phones and Microsoft Teams.

To be to make Webex Calls from Microsoft Teams, you need to have the Webex App installed as well on your computer, however in our lab we didn’t see the need to have app installed to have presence synchronized.

We also verified that you do not need Call Manager to be synchronized to an Active Directory, however you do need Webex to be synchronized to Entra AD.

• Call Manager Configuration

To enable presence synchronization, you need to associate the line configured with your Call Manager Phone to an user that has the same Mail ID as the Webex User.

1.    Login to CUCM administration
2.    Go to User Management and then End Users
3.    Find the End User you want to enable Presence Sync or you can manually add it.
4.    Make sure the Mail ID for the user is the same as the Mail ID in Webex Control Hub.
5.    Once that is confirmed, we need to associate the Directory line for the phone with this     end user.
6.    Go to Device > Phone and click on the phone you want to have presence sync enabled       for.
7.    Click on the Directory Number and scroll all the way to the bottom.
8.    Click on associate user and select the user you want to associate with.

• Enable Presence Sync on Webex Connected UC
  1.    Login to admin.webex.com
  2.    Under services click on Connected UC
  3.    Under UC Management Card, Click Inventory
  4.    Click Details next to the Cluster Group
  5.    Click the checkbox next to the Cluster, and click on details
  6.    Click on the three dots on the top right corner and select service                           management.
  7.    Make sure Presence sync toggle is on.
  8.    Click submit.

• Synchronize Entra ID users into Control Hub
•    Follow the steps in the below link to synchronize users between Microsoft and Webex         Control hub:

https://help.webex.com/en-us/article/6ta3gz/Synchronize-Entra-ID-users-into-Control-Hub#id_105581

• Add Webex App to Microsoft Teams Tenant and add needed permissions:
  1.    Login to admin.teams.microsoft.com
  2.    On the Left go to Teams apps> Manage apps.
  3.    In the Search Box enter Webex Calling and select the App name, then click>          allow
  4.    Click on the Webex Calling App and then Click the Permissions Tab and then         Grant admin consent.
  5.    Check if the following permissions are included:
     1.       Read Presence Information of all users in your organization
     2.       Read and Write Presence Information for all users.
     
     
     
  6.    Click Accept to accept the permissions.

Once the above is completed, whenever you place the phone on Do not Disturb or are on a call , you should see a status change both in Webex and Microsoft Teams. I deleted Webex app from my PC, and the presence sync still worked with Microsoft Teams.

Below are the status translation between Webex and Teams:

As always if you have any questions and would like to schedule a free consultation with us, please reach out to us at sales@lookingpoint.com and we’ll be happy to help!