New Business Automation Capabilities Coming to VOSS-4-UC

October 4, 2019

Keith Bareham, Director Solutions Engineering, VOSS

Constantly seeking opportunities to implement increasing levels of automation, many of our VOSS customers are integrating their UC and VOSS UC management platforms with LDAP servers. This allows automation of user creation and deletion in the UC domain, based on data available in the LDAP server. The “top-down” deployment model synchronises VOSS-4-UC directly with the LDAP server. Whilst this is a powerful method due to its access to the full LDAP data and possible subsequent service provisioning, it is not the method used historically by many customers. The more commonly used model has been one where the CUCM is directly synchronised with the LDAP server. In this “bottom up” model, this data is then synchronised into VOSS-4-UC.

Once the data has been passed into VOSS-4-UC, the user may then be managed as an existing user in the normal way. However, the synchronisation of data from the LDAP server to CUCM and from CUCM to VOSS-4-UC occur on a scheduled basis, and this leads to uncertainty about where the data exists at any point in time. Specifically, the user data for a new user may be in CUCM, and if so may be in VOSS-4-UC but this will depend entirely on whether a synchronisation has occurred since the LDAP data was changed. Due to this uncertainty, the results of attempting to add services to this new user can give varied results.

The good news is that VOSS-4-UC user operations enhancements bring predictability to these operations.

The following cases now offer an improved and consistent user experience.

1. In this case the user has been added to the LDAP server, but has not yet synchronised into CUCM. When we attempt to add the user using Quick Add Subscriber, the user will be added to CUCM as a local user, along with any services such as phones that were requested. A new hidden flag is available for API and bulk load operations that indicates that the user must only be processed if the synchronisation has occurred. This avoids the creation of a local CUCM user where this may not be desired due to local CUCM authentication preventing access to services with the LDAP credentials.
2. In this case, the user has been synchronised into CUCM but not into VOSS-4-UC. The attempt to add the user using Quick Add Subscriber will cause a targeted sync to import the new user data from CUCM into VOSS-4-UC. If this is successful, the user data will be created in VOSS-4-UC, and the user moved to the site hierarchy before adding any UC services requested.
3. In this case, the user has been synchronised into CUCM and into VOSS-4-UC but not moved to the site hierarchy. The attempt to add the user using Quick Add Subscriber will cause the user data will be created in VOSS-4-UC, and the user moved to the site hierarchy before adding any UC services requested.
4. In this case, the user has been synchronised into CUCM and into VOSS-4-UC, and also moved to the site hierarchy. The attempt to add the user using Quick Add Subscriber will cause the addition of any UC services requested.
5. In this case, the user has been synchronised into CUCM and into VOSS-4-UC but moved to a different site hierarchy. The attempt to add the user using Quick Add Subscriber will cause the user to be moved to the correct site hierarchy before adding any UC services requested, provided there are no phones, devices profiles or SNR associated with the user. If any of these services exist, the request is rejected.
6. The final case involving Quick Add Subscriber finds the user synchronised into the wrong CUCM cluster in a multi-cluster customer. In this case, the correct user is imported and moved and the home cluster flag is updated to reflect the true home status of the user.

In other operations, further resilience has been introduced. For example, when adding a phone, it is possible that the phone has already been connected and auto-registered with CUCM. When adding a phone, a check is performed to find out whether the phone is present on CUCM and whether it is associated with another user. If available and of the correct phone model, the phone will be added as requested.

These enhancements will provide an improved user experience for GUI and bulk loader users, and API application users by automatically resolving issues created by spurious platform data.

Please contact VOSS for further information and availability.