A new design—You are presented with a reflection of the baseline dial plan, which you can modify and commit to the network.
An existing design—You are presented with the dial plan design that was previously saved:

Explicitly from a design session
Explicitly when a baseline dial plan is exported
Implicitly when a design is successfully committed

Important Information

Read this information before you begin to use the Design View functions.

You can expand the Administrative Domain (AD) in this view to show all elements of your network.

You can view all elements in the dial plan. However, you can only modify dial plan components that are in your scope. These components appear highlighted in blue font.

You can perform administrative tasks for the entire AD or a particular region. Your scope is the piece of the network over which you have administrative privileges. Only one user can administer a particular scope at a given time. For more information, see User Administration.
Administrative changes made in the Design View are not applied to the baseline dial plan or distributed to the network until the design is committed.
Changes to a dial plan design can be saved and resumed at a later login session.
When you are in the Design View, you can right-click a selected scope to:

Add elements to the dial plan
Check existing elements
Reactivate elements
Export the dial plan design to a browser window

This chapter contains the following sections:

Opening a Saved Design

This section describes how to open a previously saved dial plan design. The list of previously saved design files can be any of the following file types:

Archive files—Automatically created from the baseline dial plan, prior to each commit operation.
Design Files—Produced when you close an active design session and choose to have the design saved for later recall.
Import files—Found in the /tftpboot/clientinput directory on the server. Use this file type to open a new design from a previously exported dial plan.

To open an existing dial plan design, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the VRC window, click the Design menu and choose the Open Saved Design option. The Open Stored Design File window appears and displays a list of previously saved dial plans (Figure 5-1).

Figure 5-1: Open Stored Design File Window

Step 2 Select the dial plan and click Open Design File. A design session opens and the saved dial plan is displayed.

Note You receive an error message if you are not authorized to open the selected dial plan. For more information, see "CNS Security Services Administration."

Step 3 To see the scope of the AD, expand the regions and the elements within the regions.

Step 4 Modify the dial plan design.

Use the tabs in the right window pane to edit the attributes and add parameters to your dial plan entities.
Use the right-click menu to add elements to the dial plan.

Step 5 You can close and save the design session again if you want to complete the dial plan.

Discovering a Dial Plan

VRC uses the Discovery operation to create a new design based on the current actual configuration of the network elements. The discovered dial plan design does not become part of the baseline until it is committed. When you execute a Discovery from the Baseline View, a Design View session opens with the discovered dial plan displayed.

Note You must execute your first Discovery at the AD level.

During the Discovery operation, VRC does the following:

Queries each device for its dial plan and displays the results in the window
Reports and flags all errors to help you resolve inconsistencies

Prerequisites

Read this information before you begin the Discovery operation.

When you execute the Discovery operation from the Design View, the baseline dial plan is not automatically updated. You can view the discovered dial plan in a discovery design session and make changes without affecting the baseline dial plan. To change the baseline dial plan, you must commit the dial plan.
When a network element is discovered by VRC, and its running configuration is not already in the directory /opt/cisco/vnm/gdpm/data/dialplan/origconfig, the element's running configuration is saved in that directory. If you need to restore an element's original configuration, you can manually retrieve it from this location.
If you begin using VRC by discovering an existing operational network and you want to revert to the network as it was before the VRC Discover was executed, you can execute a Rollback operation from the VRC console. This operation installs all files found in the origconfig directory as the running config on the respective elements.

To discover a dial plan, follow these steps:

Step 1 Select the AD.

Step 2 Right-click the AD and choose Discover from the menu. The Open Discovery Design Session dialog box appears. You are prompted for the CSR route type.

Step 3 From the drop-down menu choose the CSR route type. Values are None (the default), Carrier, and Trunk-Label.

If you choose:

None—VRC disables all CSR-related dial plan features in the AD.
Carrier—VRC assumes that all CSR-related dial plan features utilized in the dial plan are carrier based.
Trunk-Label—VRC assumes that all CSR-related dial plan features utilized in the dial plan are trunk-label based.

Step 4 Choose a normal or forced Discovery operation. Checking the box results in a forced Discovery.

Normal Discovery—The VRC looks for the dial plan and if any of the following errors are encountered, the process stops and informs you of the errors:

If the element is unreachable.
If the running configuration for the element does not match the element defined in topology. Two examples of this are: The running configuration is for a gateway but the topology lists this element as a gatekeeper. There is an IP address mismatch where the running configuration does not contain the voice-enabled IP address that the element should have.
For gateways only—A gateway has no voice ports defined.

Forced Discovery—The VRC looks for the dial plan and the process continues regardless of any errors. The errors are listed on the VRC server in a user log.

Step 5 Click Discover. The VRC reads the running configurations for the elements and the dial plan information for the AD. Or click Cancel to cancel the operation.

Step 6 Click Continue to display the dial plan in a discovery design session window.

Important Information about Discovery

During the Discovery operation, VRC might rename your route scope. To change the route scope name back after Discovery, you must manually edit this attribute in the Design View.
The VRC reads the running configurations for the elements and the dial plan information for the AD. Dial peers that are shut down are ignored.
VRC constructs routes based on dial peers. It creates an ingress route for every outbound-VoIP dial peer by associating an inbound-pots dial peer to it using a destination pattern. If there are dial peers that cannot be put into association because there is no destination pattern match, VRC creates ingress routes for each of those dial peers provided they have some parameters. In this case, VRC generates multiple routes.
Similarly, VRC creates an egress route for every outbound-pots dial peer by associating an inbound-VoIP dial peer to it using a destination pattern. If there are dial peers that cannot be put into association because there is no destination pattern match, VRC creates egress routes for each of those dial peers provided they have some parameters. In this case, VRC generates multiple routes.
Even though VRC generates multiple routes and route scopes, the network configuration reflected in the client after Discovery is equivalent to the actual configuration of the discovered network. You can commit the dial plan design as it exists after Discovery or you can manually consolidate the routes in your design session before committing it.
From a discovery design session you can:

Commit the Discovered dial plan. This overwrites the baseline dial plan. If VRC detects any errors during Discovery, you might be required to edit the dial plan before you can commit a design.
Edit the Discovered dial plan and commit the modified dial plan to the baseline. This overwrites the baseline dial plan and distributes the modified dial plan to the network elements affected by the modifications.
Exit the Discovery design session and discard any changes.

Note The running configuration for all discovered elements is stored in the origconfig directory, even if the Discovery is discarded.

Note The discovery process produces a design that is comparative, but not identical, to the configuration that is generated by VRC. If you want the configuration stored on the VRC server to exactly reflect the discovered dial plan, use the Distribution process. For more information on Distribution, see Distributing the Dial Plan.

Starting a New Dial Plan Design

A new dial plan design allows you to add elements, make administrative changes to a new dial plan, and apply those changes to the elements.

Prerequisites

All managed regions and elements that are affected by your new design must be identified in the topology.
If an element is not identified in the topology, you must add it before it can be in the new design.

To configure a new dial plan design, follow these steps:

Step 1 Choose the Design From Baseline option from the Design menu. The Open New Design View window appears (Figure 5-2).

Figure 5-2: Open New Design View Window

Step 2 Select a Design Scope. Choose the AD or a particular region.

Step 3 Click Open. A Design View session opens.

Note You can close and save the design session if you want to complete the dial plan design.

Adding to the Dial Plan Design Using Copy and Paste

You can use the copy and paste command to add certain entities to the dial plan. For example, if you have one gatekeeper group in a region and want to add another gatekeeper group with the same attributes, use copy and paste.

The copy command creates a gatekeeper group with the same attribute information. The paste command adds this new gatekeeper group to the dial plan. After you paste the gatekeeper group, you must change the Name entry field. You cannot have two entities with the same name.

You can only use copy and paste to add like entities to the appropriate parent in the dial plan. For example, you cannot copy a server trigger and paste it into a region, you cannot copy a gatekeeper group and paste it into the AD, or you cannot copy a gatekeeper group and paste it in a region as a directory gatekeeper group.

The following dial plan entities can only be added by using the right-click menu:

Gateways
Gatekeepers
Directory gatekeepers
Managed regions
Gateway parameters, such as voice ports, Ethernet ports, trunk groups, or access lists

Note You must be in the Design View to copy and paste entities into the dial plan.

To copy and paste dial plan entities, follow these steps:

Step 1 Expand the AD to view the entities in the dial plan.

Step 2 Select the dial plan entity that you want to duplicate.

Step 3 Right-click and choose Copy from the menu.

Step 4 Select the appropriate parent in the dial plan you want to add this duplicated entity to.

Step 5 Right-click and choose Paste from the menu.

Step 6 Click the Attributes tab.

Step 7 Right-click and choose Edit from the menu.

Step 8 Edit the attribute information. You must edit the Name attribute. You cannot have two dial plan entities with the same attribute information.

Step 9 Choose Refresh Display from the Window menu to update the design session display. The duplicated entity is added to the dial plan.

Previewing a Dial Plan Design

This section describes how to preview a new dial plan design before you commit the design to the elements.

Note You must be in the Design View to preview a design and the design must be open.

To preview a new dial plan design, follow these steps:

Step 1 Choose the Preview option from the Design menu and then choose either the Normal Preview or Forced Preview option.

Normal Preview—Displays how your changes affect the elements and you are notified of errors that might occur.
Forced Preview—Displays how your changes affect the elements despite any errors.

Step 2 The Creating design preview window appears. Wait until the system is finished loading the design. VRC creates a design preview. The location of the preview files on the VRC server is displayed.

Note You must Telnet to the VRC server to view the preview files.

Exporting a Dial Plan Design

You can export a dial plan for an AD or for a region.

Note You must be in the Design View to export a design and the design must be open.

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for an AD

To export a dial plan design for an AD, follow these steps:

Step 1 Locate the AD.

Step 2 Choose the Export Design option from the Design menu.

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for a Region

To export a dial plan design for a region, follow these steps:

Step 1 Expand the AD to view all elements.

Step 2 Select a region to export the dial plan from.

Step 3 Right-click the region and choose Export from the menu.

The Exporting design dial plan window appears during this process. An information message indicates that the operation was successful.

Step 4 Click OK. A browser window opens showing the dial plan in a text format.

Validating a Dial Plan Design

Validation is the mechanism by which VRC detects and prevents illegal or inconsistent data from being written to the dial plan or sent to the network elements. This action validates the entire design scope. VRC also validates the dial plan design during the Discovery and Commit operations.

Note The dial plan design that you want to validate must be open.

To validate a dial plan design, follow these steps:

Step 1 Choose the Validate option from the Design menu. An information dialog box appears, informing you that the design is being validated.

Note During the validation process, VRC does not check the state of an element in a foreign region.

If the validation is successful, a confirmation message appears. Click OK.
If the validation is unsuccessful, a warning message appears and tells you the source of the error. Click OK.

You are returned to the Design View to make any necessary changes.

Validation Issues

Validation is the mechanism by which VRC detects and prevents illegal or inconsistent data from being written to the dial plan or sent to the network elements. When errors are detected by validation, messages are produced and presented to the user through the client and through the server logs (system, audit, and internal).

Validation is executed implicitly as part of some design operations and explicitly when Validate is chosen from the Design menu. The appropriate recourse for troubleshooting validation errors and warnings depends on the type of operation being performed.

Design Modification Operations—Include the addition, modification, or removal of any dial plan component from the Design View. When a design modification operation is executed, the validation process checks the affected object only, and determines if the modification being made is valid. If not, the modification is rejected and you are presented with an explanation.

: To correct validation errors produced by design modifications, retry the modification in a way that addresses the conditions described in the error message.

Dial Plan Generation Operations—Dial plan generation operations include the commit, distribution, or preview of CLI generated from the Design or Baseline View. When a dial plan generation operation is executed, the validation process checks the full dial plan before generating the CLI. If the validation fails, the operation does not continue and you are presented with an explanation.

: To correct validation errors produced by dial plan generation, review each error and manually correct the dial plan using the Design View for your modifications. The validation message should direct you to the components that require correcting, and which attributes are in violation.

Certain elements (gateways, gatekeepers, directory gatekeepers, managed regions, foreign regions, managed zones, ingress routes, and egress routes) have "status" attributes which indicate the severity (Fatal, Warning, Ok) of the most significant validation message produced for those components. Those in a "Fatal" or "Warning" state are flagged in the GUI dial plan tree as either red or yellow, respectively.

For network elements, you might only be able to correct certain errors by reactivating the element. For example, if a gateway has the "reactivate" attribute set as "yes", or an element has a required read-only field such as "h323id" not set at all, then an error is produced during validation. In these examples, the failed element must be explicitly reactivated by the user to set these attributes to a state in which they can be committed.

Dial Plan Discovery Operations— Include activation, reactivation, discovery, and import. For these operations, validation is performed implicitly as an audit of the modifications made to the dial plan. Error messages produced by implicit validation of dial plan discovery operations notify you that the design is no longer in a state that can be committed to the elements.

: Validation errors produced by dial plan discovery operations do not need to corrected immediately, because the operations succeed despite any errors.
: Address issues raised by dial plan discovery validation errors in the Design View before you commit the design to the elements.
: You can also use the tips listed above for dial plan generation operation errors.

Explicit Validation—Triggered when you choose "Validate" from the Design menu. This executes a validation of the entire design scope, the same as for dial plan discovery operations. An explicit validation provides an audit of what changes must be made before you commit the design to the network.

When you encounter validation error messages, use the console to set the debug of the Validation subsystem to On.

Validation Flags

Cisco VRC sets a flag next to an element in the client if an error is encountered during the validation process. The status field for that element indicates whether the Cisco VRC server can contact the element during the Validation process. The following flags can be set to an element:

Red—One or more FAILURES during the validation process. The dial plan element is put into a FATAL state.

Note You cannot commit a dial plan design that has red flags.

Yellow—One or more WARNINGS during the validation process.

Note You can commit a dial plan design that has yellow flags, but you should modify your design to correct the problem indicated by the warning message before you commit the design to the network.

Blue flag—Indicates if the validation process has not been executed for that element.

Note You can commit a dial plan design with blue flags.

Generating a CLI Description

Before Cisco VRC can send a dial plan configuration to an element, the software must convert the dial plan model to a format that an element can understand, the command line interface (CLI).

During CLI generation of an element, VRC extracts all dial plan information that is relevant to that element and dynamically creates an XML file for that element. For example, during CLI generation for a particular gateway, VRC must extract all dial plan information that directly affects the configuration of that gateway. This information can include voice class codecs assigned to the region where the gateway resides, translation rules or profiles assigned to the managed zone in which the gateway resides, and voice ports on that gateway.

A static configuration file for each element type, which is located on the VRC server, defines how the information in the XML file is translated to CLI. VRC uses this static configuration file and the information in the XML file to generate the CLI configuration. The generated CLI configuration is used to distribute the dial plan to the running configuration for that element.

VRC distributes the configuration to the network elements in the following order:

1. Gatekeepers

2. Gateways

3. Directory gatekeepers

Each time you make a change to your dial plan, the CLI-generated configuration for the elements affected by the dial plan changes. To see how changes in your dial plan have affected the CLI-generated configuration, you must generate a new CLI to view.

Viewing the Generated CLI

This section describes how to view a generated CLI of an element. The generated file is displayed in text format. You can view a generated CLI for an element in the Baseline View or the Design View.

To view a CLI, follow these steps:

Step 1 Expand the Administrative Domain (AD) to view all elements.

Step 2 Locate the element that you want to generate a CLI configuration for.

Step 3 Right-click the selected element.

Step 4 Choose View Generated CLI. A generated CLI for the selected element is displayed in a separate browser window.

Opening a CLI Session

This section describes how to open a Telnet session from the CLI to communicate with a specific element.

Note You must be in the Design View to open a CLI session for an element.

To open a CLI session, follow these steps:

Step 1 Expand the AD to view all elements.

Step 2 Locate the element that you want to open a CLI session for.

Step 3 Right-click the selected element.

Step 4 Choose Open CLI Console from the menu. A CLI console window opens and you are prompted for the password.

The Telnet application registered with your browser presents a standard Telnet session interface to allow you to perform direct administration on the selected network element.

The CLI console window closes.

Committing a Dial Plan Design

This section describes how to commit a dial plan design to your network and establish a baseline dial plan.

Prerequisite

We recommend that you use the Preview option before you commit a design.

Note When you commit a design, VRC replaces the existing dial plan configuration for all elements in the design whose dial plan configuration has changed and updates the baseline dial plan. For example, changing a dial plan in one region might affect elements in other regions.

Note The dial plan design that you want to validate must be open.

To commit your dial plan to the network, follow these steps:

Step 1 When your design is complete, choose the Commit This Design option from the Design menu.

A Confirm dialog box appears. When you commit a design, the baseline dial plan is also updated.

Step 2 Click OK to confirm your commit or click Cancel to return to the Design View window.

During the dial plan commit process, the VRC validates the elements and then generates a baseline dial plan for the affected elements.

During the dial plan generation process, VRC:

Determines which elements should be deleted, added, or need to be shut down so that the dial plan configuration can be modified.
Enters a paused state so that you can view the generated CLI as the dial plan generation is taking place.
Displays a list of elements added, deleted, or modified in the dial plan, or shut down during dial plan generation.

Note If you have one or more gateways with the Reactivate field set to Yes, you cannot commit a design. To reactivate a gateway, right-click the selected gateway and choose Reactivate from the menu.

An information message indicates that the operation has successfully completed.

Step 3 Click OK. The Design View window closes.

Deleting a Dial Plan Design

This section describes how to delete a dial plan design from the server storage.

Note You can delete a design file in any view.

To delete a dial plan design, follow these steps:

Step 1 Choose the Delete This Design option from the Design menu. The Delete Stored Design File window appears.

Step 2 Click the desired dial plan from the list that you want to delete.

Step 3 Click the Delete This Design File button. You are asked to confirm the delete. Click OK.

Finding Terminating Gateways

Use this option to find terminating gateways, for a given dial string, using the baseline dial plan.

To find terminating gateways, follow these steps:

Step 1 From the Baseline menu, choose Find Terminating Gateways.

A dialog box appears (Figure 5-3).

Figure 5-3: Find Terminating Gateway Window

Step 2 Enter the incoming dialed string that you want to find the terminating gateway for. Use only digits in your dial string, leaving out dashes and dots. You can enter only a prefix for your string.

Step 3 If the CSR route type for the AD is set to carrier or trunk-label, select a target carrier. Choose a target carrier from the drop-down menu.

Step 4 Click OK. VRC displays the gateways used to terminate routed calls for this dial string.

Step 5 Click Cancel to return to the VRC window.

Closing a Dial Plan Design

When you finish working on a dial plan design, you can either store the design or discard the design.

Note You must be in the Design View and have a design open to perform this procedure.

To close a dial plan design, follow these steps:

Step 1 Choose the Close This Design option from the Design menu.

The Closing Design dialog box appears.

Step 2 Choose one of the following closing methods:

Save—The design is stored on the VRC server. The saved design is named according to the date and time it is closed. The next time you open a design, this saved design is one of your selections.

Note If your Design session originated using the Discovery operation, you cannot save the design.

Discard—The design is discarded and the Design View window closes.
Cancel—Returns you to the previously opened Design View.

A message appears to indicate that the operation was successful.

Step 3 Click OK to close the Design View window.

Table of Contents

Important Information

Prerequisites

Important Information about Discovery

Prerequisites

Prerequisite