Presence for Сall Manager Express

Hi folks,

Today we are talking about how to set up Presence feature on the CUCME (Call Manager Express). Presence allows a user (watcher) to monitor the real-time status of another user at a directory number or SIP URI from the device of the watcher. Before making a call, one can visually see whether the other party is busy or whether it is free. Viewing the status of the DN can be configured for speed-dial buttons (Speed ​​Dials) or for call lists (Placed Calls, Missed Calls, Personal and Corporate Directories). Moreover, you can also view subsriber’s status of the remote PBX. It is possible if you have a trunk with SIP signaling between those PBXs.

ДFor Cisco Call Manager and Call Manager Express, there are three status of lines:

– Phone line is free, and the speed dial button lamp is off, speed dial and call list icons are displayed as a phone on-hook;
– Extension is busy, a the speed dial button lamp is red, and on the other hand speed dial and call list icons are displayed as a phone off-hook;
– Line status is unknown, phone is not registered or viewing its status is prohibited. In this case, the speed dial button lamp is off, but the icon looking like small cubes is displayed.

To configure Presence on CUCME do the following:

1. Enable Presence in sip-ua:
   sip-ua
    presence enable

2. Globally enable Presence feature for Call Lists:
   presence
    presence call-list

3. Allow watching status of SCCP/SIP directory numbers:
   ephone-dn 1
    allow watch
   !
   voice register dn 1
    allow watch

4. Allow Presence in Call Lists:
   ephone 1
    presence call-list
   !
   voice register pool 1
    presence call list

5. Configure a speed-dial button which watches required DN status (BLF – Busy Lamp Field):
   ephone 1
    blf-speed-dial 1 3001 label Sales
   !
   voice register pool 1
    blf-speed-dial 1 3001 label Sales

6. For watching lines status of the remote PBX (for example, CUCM) add following commands (assume that the remote  PBX has all necessary settings for Presence):
   presence
    server 177.1.10.10 – IP-address of the remote PBX
    allow subscribe
    watcher all

Have a nice Sunday!