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Table Of Contents
Provisioning Manager Architecture
Provisioning Manager Features and Functions
How Will I Use Provisioning Manager?
Managing Existing Voice Services
Deploying a New Voice Infrastructure
Deploying a New Site on an Existing Voice Infrastructure
Customizing Provisioning Manager to Meet Your Needs
Performing Large Provisioning Activities
Working with Provisioning Manager Resources
Administering Provisioning Manager
Logging Out of Provisioning Manager
Adding the Provisioning Manager Home Page to the Internet Explorer Trusted Sites Zone
Accessing the Provisioning Manager User Guide
Introduction
What Is Provisioning Manager?
Cisco Unified Provisioning Manager (Provisioning Manager) provides a scalable web-based solution to manage a company's next-generation communication services. Provisioning Manager manages IP communication services in an integrated IP telephony, voicemail, and unified messaging environment that includes Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, Cisco Unity, Cisco Unity Express, and Cisco Unity Connection systems.
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Starting with versions 4.3, 5.1, and 6.0, the product we formerly referred to as Cisco Unified CallManager will be called Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Versions earlier than 4.3 and 5.1 retain the Cisco Unified CallManager name. Throughout this document/online help, any reference to Cisco Unified Communications Manager can also be understood to refer to Cisco Unified CallManager, unless explicitly noted.
Provisioning Manager is a product from the Cisco Unified Communications Management Suite. It provides provisioning for Cisco Unified Communications initial deployments and implementations, and then remains deployed to provide ongoing operational provisioning and activation services for individual subscriber changes. Provisioning Manager provides a single, consolidated view of subscribers across the organization. It provides a set of business-level management abstractions, which are policy-driven through the use of automation, for managing subscriber services across the Cisco Unified Communications infrastructure.
A template capability permits defining standard configurations that can be reused for new sites or location deployments. Batch provisioning permits the rollout of large numbers of subscribers at the same time.
Administrators can configure policy at various levels to determine who can do delegated management, for whom that delegation applies, how business-level services apply to Cisco Unified Communications voice and messaging applications, and which types of end users (subscribers) are permitted to order which standard services. Through the use of this policy and standard configuration approach, provisioning and activating subscriber services is greatly simplified, while retaining the overall ability to manage and provide services that make use of the underlying Cisco Unified Communications applications.
Provisioning Manager Architecture
Provisioning Manager is a web-based application based on the J2EE architecture. It resides on a separate Windows-based computer and uses various interfaces to connect with Cisco Unified Communications applications (see Figure 1-1). It does not need to deploy any agent software onto those applications' platforms. Provisioning Manager uses open interfaces such as HTTP, HTTPS, AVVID XML Layer (AXL)-Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), SSH, and Telnet to remotely configure or query the applications being managed. Different levels of user access can be configured by the administrator.
Figure 1-1 Cisco Unified Provisioning Manager Interoperability
Provisioning Manager Features and Functions
Provisioning Manager permits standard services (for example a phone, line, or voicemail) to be ordered for a subscriber (the owner of the individual phone, line, or voicemail). Provisioning Manager processes all changes to the underlying Cisco Unified Communications applications as a service requests or orders. An order may be created to make a subscriber-level change (to a phone, a line and so on), or an IP communications-level infrastructure change (such as provisioning a new calling search space or route pattern). All orders in the system are tracked and viewable, both across orders and by subscriber name or ID. The order records show who initiated the order, the times of various process steps, and what the order contained. Provisioning Manager allows delegation of the order management capability so that requests for service additions, changes, or cancellations can be done without requiring an underlying knowledge of the voice applications that are delivering those services. Provisioning Manager provides the same ordering experience regardless of the technology delivering the Cisco Unified Communication services.
These topics briefly describe Provisioning Manager functions that will be used frequently:
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What Are Processors?
In Provisioning Manager, you create Call Processors and Unified Message Processors. Call Processors are proxies for each instance of Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express. Unified Message Processors are proxies for each instance of Cisco Unity, Cisco Unity Express, or Cisco Unity Connection.
You synchronize the data in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Cisco Unity systems with the Call Processors and Unified Message Processors, and then synchronizing with the Domains, which populates Provisioning Manager with the existing active users and services, and provides a consolidated view of all of the infrastructure and subscriber information.
For more information about Service Areas, see Configuring Processors, page 5-1.
What Are Domains?
Domains are groupings of subscribers. For each grouping, one or more system users can be authorized to manage services for subscribers within that Domain. In addition, rules or policies may be set on a Domain. Those rules and policies will apply to services for subscribers in that Domain. Common policies can also be applied on operations within a Domain.
For more information about Domains, see Working with Provisioning Manager Domains, page 5-10.
What Are Service Areas?
Service areas are groupings within a Domain that are used to structure and manage IP telephony and messaging services. The Service Area typically acts as a service offering location and provides a template mechanism that determines provisioning attribute values used during order processing. Administrative users may configure Service Areas. This helps ensure that service orders follow company policies and best practices for configuring subscribers. A Service Area also handles Cisco Unified Communications Manager partitioning and class of service by directing which location, device pool, calling search space, and route partition assignments to use for any user provisioned into that Service Area.
For more information about Service Areas, see Working with Service Areas, page 5-16.
What Are Provisioning Attributes?
Provisioning attributes are configuration settings that are applied to services on an order during activation. The system administrator can assign and configure provisioning attributes throughout different levels within the system (at the Domain, Service Area, or Subscriber type levels, or on an individual order basis). At order time the system takes into account the configured provisioning attribute assignments in addition to the Service Area settings to determine the final product configuration to be provisioned. The combination of Service Area settings and provisioning attributes gives administrators the flexibility to customize the provisioning policies for subscriber services.
For more information about provisioning attributes, see Configuring Provisioning Attributes, page 6-13.
What Are Infrastructure Configuration Templates?
Configuration Templates enable you to consistently auto-configure the Cisco Unified Communications voice infrastructure. In Provisioning Manager, you can create templates to initially configure or reconfigure Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, and Cisco Unity Express. Templates can contain an unlimited number of objects. This is limited only by the time required to execute (push to a device) the template.
Provisioning Manager templates can contain up to twenty different types of objects, such as device pools, route partitions, calling search spaces, route lists, route groups, or route patterns. Objects placed in a template may have embedded keywords within their attributes. When pushing a template to a device, you may specify an optional keyword, which defines the values of the keywords to be used (replaced) during the provisioning operation. Templates may contain subtemplates as well, permitting reuse of common types of configuration information across higher level templates. Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express and Cisco Unity Express templates contain Cisco IOS software text or CLI text with keywords. Configuration Templates enable you to define a standard set of configurations that you can use in multiple situations, such as rolling out new offices, locations, remote sites, or organizational overlays.
For more information about provisioning attributes, see Using Templates—Infrastructure Configuration, page 5-23.
What Is Batch Provisioning?
You may order subscriber services on an individual basis for a single subscriber. But when deploying a large number of services, you should combine them into a single batch. Batch provisioning enables you to create a single batch that contains multiple types of orders (Add, Change, or Cancel orders). You can also combine multiple types of services into a single batch operation. For example, a batch can contain a combination of phone and voicemail additions or changes.
Batches can be run immediately upon uploading to Provisioning Manager, or they can be scheduled to run at a later time.
For more information about provisioning attributes, see Using Batch Provisioning, page 5-42.
What Is Role-Based Access?
Provisioning Manager provides two dimensions to roles, depending on whether you are a system user or a service subscriber. User roles define access to certain functions available to Provisioning Manager users. The subscriber role refers to the role that a subscriber will have within an organization. This role dictates the services for which the subscriber is entitled. User roles are pre-defined in the system. Subscriber roles are configured by the administrator.
For more information about provisioning attributes, see the following:
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What Is Inventory Tracking?
Provisioning Manager tracks the information about all services and subscribers in an internal asset management inventory system. This information can be viewed by an administrator, who can create and save advanced searches that permit producing report templates in HTML or Microsoft Excel format. Sample reports for configuration and phone information are provided.
For more information about provisioning attributes, see Searching Inventory, page 7-13.
How Will I Use Provisioning Manager?
This topic describes some common scenarios for using Cisco Unified Provisioning Manager. This is not an all-inclusive list.
You can use Provisioning Manager for the following:
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Also, you may want to perform several advanced activities to meet the needs of your Cisco Unified Communications deployment.
Some of these activities are described in the following:
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Managing Existing Voice Services
If you have existing Cisco Unified Communications devices (Cisco Unified Communications Manager, Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, Cisco Unity, Cisco Unity Connection, or Cisco Unity Express) that you are managing through their respective interfaces, but want to delegate management of a subset of these voice services to other users, see the following:
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Deploying a New Voice Infrastructure
If you are adding a new Cisco Unified Communications Manager or Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express and related voicemail systems, and you want to use a standardized approach that can be applied to every deployment, see the following:
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Managing Subscriber Services
If you will manage services for subscribers in your office, see the following:
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Deploying a New Site on an Existing Voice Infrastructure
If you have an existing Cisco Unified Communications Manager to which you want to add a new location or site, see the following:
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Customizing Provisioning Manager to Meet Your Needs
If you want to change the default setting for how Provisioning Manager applies various policies, see the following:
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Performing Large Provisioning Activities
If you are deploying a large number of services, you may want to combine these activities into a single batch. See the following:
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Working with Provisioning Manager Resources
When you need to manage Provisioning Manager resources, see the following:
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Administering Provisioning Manager
For information on performing administrative activities, see the following:
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Starting Provisioning Manager
You can access Provisioning Manager on the system where Provisioning Manager is installed, or remotely from a client system.
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http://<system name>/cupm/Login.
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Logging Out of Provisioning Manager
In the top right corner of the Provisioning Manager home page, click Log Out.
Adding the Provisioning Manager Home Page to the Internet Explorer Trusted Sites Zone
If Enhanced Security is enabled on the Windows 2003 system, you must perform the following procedure before you can access the Provisioning Manager's home page.
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Accessing the Provisioning Manager User Guide
On the Provisioning Manager home page, click the Help button in the top right corner. A PDF version of User Guide for Cisco Unified Provisioning Manager opens.
Posted: Wed Jul 18 16:23:02 PDT 2007
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