Unified Communications

Hello -

I am looking to see if anyone else here is using the Avaya J Series SIP Phones off of Avaya Session Manger/CM, who does their provisioning through the Avaya CM for those SIP Phones. We are an Avaya 8.1.3 shop right now.

The reason I am asking this question is, we have these phones mocked up in our lab, and it's been our experience that if you change buttons and/or add phone features to the SIP Phone, if you do it through SMGR it shows up on the phone some time (I think I read it can take up to 10 mins), but if you do the same change through CM (like using ASA) it never updates the phone (Even after the sync between SMGR/CM is completed).

What I find interesting is, talking to a fellow engineer I work with about this - the place she came from, used Avaya SIP phones (9611) and they did all their provisioning in CM, and the phone updated at some point. So I am a bit stumped, if this can be done both ways (Through SMGR and CM), why is our system not picking up those updates and sending them to the phones.

Hoping someone here could confirm what my fellow engineer says work, and/or has some ideas as to why changes in CM for SIP Phones, never get passed down to the phone. (I fully understand that SMGR/SM is the source of that PPM data, but I do know that SMGR and CM have a sync between them as well to make sure things are kept up to date - just wanted to clarify that, since I know CM no longer has power to directly configure the SIP Phone)

------------------------------
James Davis
Voice and Data Senior Engineer
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha NE
------------------------------

Hello -

I am looking to see if anyone else here is using the Avaya J Series SIP Phones off of Avaya Session Manger/CM, who does their provisioning through the Avaya CM for those SIP Phones. We are an Avaya 8.1.3 shop right now.

The reason I am asking this question is, we have these phones mocked up in our lab, and it's been our experience that if you change buttons and/or add phone features to the SIP Phone, if you do it through SMGR it shows up on the phone some time (I think I read it can take up to 10 mins), but if you do the same change through CM (like using ASA) it never updates the phone (Even after the sync between SMGR/CM is completed).

What I find interesting is, talking to a fellow engineer I work with about this - the place she came from, used Avaya SIP phones (9611) and they did all their provisioning in CM, and the phone updated at some point. So I am a bit stumped, if this can be done both ways (Through SMGR and CM), why is our system not picking up those updates and sending them to the phones.

Hoping someone here could confirm what my fellow engineer says work, and/or has some ideas as to why changes in CM for SIP Phones, never get passed down to the phone. (I fully understand that SMGR/SM is the source of that PPM data, but I do know that SMGR and CM have a sync between them as well to make sure things are kept up to date - just wanted to clarify that, since I know CM no longer has power to directly configure the SIP Phone)

------------------------------
James Davis
Voice and Data Senior Engineer
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha NE
------------------------------

As usual Nick, you are extremely helpful, I appreciate you answering that question! Thank you... the missing part I needed was the CM Notify part.

It appears that was never setup properly during the install so I will go tackle that now. 

I did find a cool document from Avaya about that too for others that might be faced with the same perplexing question (Search for CM Notify):

https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101079155

One last question, reading through that document, there is some Cert Work that will need to occur in CM, the book referenced above doesn't spell out if any of that is service affecting to CM, does anyone know if adding a Trusted Cert into CM for Communication Manager and Remote Logging will impact any service? I thought if adding one to CM, a reboot would be required (But I am no cert expert - it's all smoke and mirrors for me) :)

------------------------------
James Davis
Voice and Data Senior Engineer
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha NE

Original Message:
Sent: 01-18-2022 01:16 PM
From: Nick Kwiatkowski
Subject: General Question about Avaya PPM data and methods to provision Avaya SIP Phones

So, the difference between SIP and H.323 when working with SMGR is that in the SIP world, all the provisioning data is 'owned' by SMGR, where in H.323 it's 'owned' by CM and pushed out to SMGR.

If you are making changes to a SIP station in CM, the expectation is that CM will have to 'notify' SMGR that a change occurred.  If you do this via Element Cut-Through, SMGR is watching the comms in realtime and will know to pick up those changes.  If you are making the changes via a terminal emulator or ASA, there is additional programming that needs to happen in the CM and SMGR side to have CM "notify" that a change on the station occured.  If that notification does not happen, SMGR may not pick up on the change (or it may be 24 hours later when it does its true-up).  Simply doing a "incremental" sync between SMGR and CM won't be enough to pick up all the changes -- expect it to be haphazard if the CM Notify hasn't been setup.

The way the system is designed and engineered is that Avaya expects you to make your SIP based station changes in System Manager.  Doing them in CM should only be on occasion, and needs some of those other processes in place to make it work right.

So -- I guess, make sure your CM Notify is working.  There won't be any obvious errors if it isn't -- but one test is to make a change in CM, wait 5 minutes (300 seconds), then edit the user associated with a station in SMGR.  If the change isn't there, the sync isn't working, and you will need to investigate how to get it to setup right.  The second test is if it failed, try doing an "Init Sync" in SMGR.  After that is complete (it can take an hour on some larger systems), see if the change made it to SMGR.

BTW, if you are seeing the change in SMGR but not on the phone, try and force a "Full Reload" on the phone.  This is done via the User Registrations section of Session Manager.  It's not service affecting, but it will try to force to pull the latest configs into the phone, including button and contact data.  The phone should reflect what is shown in SMGR within about 30 seconds.   If the phone never gets the update there is most likely an issue with PPM or the HTTPS service in Session Manager.

------------------------------
Nick Kwiatkowski
Director of Design and Engineering
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI

Original Message:
Sent: 01-18-2022 12:44 PM
From: James Davis
Subject: General Question about Avaya PPM data and methods to provision Avaya SIP Phones

Hello -

I am looking to see if anyone else here is using the Avaya J Series SIP Phones off of Avaya Session Manger/CM, who does their provisioning through the Avaya CM for those SIP Phones. We are an Avaya 8.1.3 shop right now.

The reason I am asking this question is, we have these phones mocked up in our lab, and it's been our experience that if you change buttons and/or add phone features to the SIP Phone, if you do it through SMGR it shows up on the phone some time (I think I read it can take up to 10 mins), but if you do the same change through CM (like using ASA) it never updates the phone (Even after the sync between SMGR/CM is completed).

What I find interesting is, talking to a fellow engineer I work with about this - the place she came from, used Avaya SIP phones (9611) and they did all their provisioning in CM, and the phone updated at some point. So I am a bit stumped, if this can be done both ways (Through SMGR and CM), why is our system not picking up those updates and sending them to the phones.

Hoping someone here could confirm what my fellow engineer says work, and/or has some ideas as to why changes in CM for SIP Phones, never get passed down to the phone. (I fully understand that SMGR/SM is the source of that PPM data, but I do know that SMGR and CM have a sync between them as well to make sure things are kept up to date - just wanted to clarify that, since I know CM no longer has power to directly configure the SIP Phone)

------------------------------
James Davis
Voice and Data Senior Engineer
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha NE
------------------------------

As usual Nick, you are extremely helpful, I appreciate you answering that question! Thank you... the missing part I needed was the CM Notify part.

It appears that was never setup properly during the install so I will go tackle that now. 

I did find a cool document from Avaya about that too for others that might be faced with the same perplexing question (Search for CM Notify):

https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101079155

One last question, reading through that document, there is some Cert Work that will need to occur in CM, the book referenced above doesn't spell out if any of that is service affecting to CM, does anyone know if adding a Trusted Cert into CM for Communication Manager and Remote Logging will impact any service? I thought if adding one to CM, a reboot would be required (But I am no cert expert - it's all smoke and mirrors for me) :)

------------------------------
James Davis
Voice and Data Senior Engineer
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha NE

Original Message:
Sent: 01-18-2022 01:16 PM
From: Nick Kwiatkowski
Subject: General Question about Avaya PPM data and methods to provision Avaya SIP Phones

So, the difference between SIP and H.323 when working with SMGR is that in the SIP world, all the provisioning data is 'owned' by SMGR, where in H.323 it's 'owned' by CM and pushed out to SMGR.

If you are making changes to a SIP station in CM, the expectation is that CM will have to 'notify' SMGR that a change occurred.  If you do this via Element Cut-Through, SMGR is watching the comms in realtime and will know to pick up those changes.  If you are making the changes via a terminal emulator or ASA, there is additional programming that needs to happen in the CM and SMGR side to have CM "notify" that a change on the station occured.  If that notification does not happen, SMGR may not pick up on the change (or it may be 24 hours later when it does its true-up).  Simply doing a "incremental" sync between SMGR and CM won't be enough to pick up all the changes -- expect it to be haphazard if the CM Notify hasn't been setup.

The way the system is designed and engineered is that Avaya expects you to make your SIP based station changes in System Manager.  Doing them in CM should only be on occasion, and needs some of those other processes in place to make it work right.

So -- I guess, make sure your CM Notify is working.  There won't be any obvious errors if it isn't -- but one test is to make a change in CM, wait 5 minutes (300 seconds), then edit the user associated with a station in SMGR.  If the change isn't there, the sync isn't working, and you will need to investigate how to get it to setup right.  The second test is if it failed, try doing an "Init Sync" in SMGR.  After that is complete (it can take an hour on some larger systems), see if the change made it to SMGR.

BTW, if you are seeing the change in SMGR but not on the phone, try and force a "Full Reload" on the phone.  This is done via the User Registrations section of Session Manager.  It's not service affecting, but it will try to force to pull the latest configs into the phone, including button and contact data.  The phone should reflect what is shown in SMGR within about 30 seconds.   If the phone never gets the update there is most likely an issue with PPM or the HTTPS service in Session Manager.

------------------------------
Nick Kwiatkowski
Director of Design and Engineering
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI

Original Message:
Sent: 01-18-2022 12:44 PM
From: James Davis
Subject: General Question about Avaya PPM data and methods to provision Avaya SIP Phones

Hello -

I am looking to see if anyone else here is using the Avaya J Series SIP Phones off of Avaya Session Manger/CM, who does their provisioning through the Avaya CM for those SIP Phones. We are an Avaya 8.1.3 shop right now.

The reason I am asking this question is, we have these phones mocked up in our lab, and it's been our experience that if you change buttons and/or add phone features to the SIP Phone, if you do it through SMGR it shows up on the phone some time (I think I read it can take up to 10 mins), but if you do the same change through CM (like using ASA) it never updates the phone (Even after the sync between SMGR/CM is completed).

What I find interesting is, talking to a fellow engineer I work with about this - the place she came from, used Avaya SIP phones (9611) and they did all their provisioning in CM, and the phone updated at some point. So I am a bit stumped, if this can be done both ways (Through SMGR and CM), why is our system not picking up those updates and sending them to the phones.

Hoping someone here could confirm what my fellow engineer says work, and/or has some ideas as to why changes in CM for SIP Phones, never get passed down to the phone. (I fully understand that SMGR/SM is the source of that PPM data, but I do know that SMGR and CM have a sync between them as well to make sure things are kept up to date - just wanted to clarify that, since I know CM no longer has power to directly configure the SIP Phone)

------------------------------
James Davis
Voice and Data Senior Engineer
University of Nebraska Medical Center
Omaha NE
------------------------------