Design View

Design View
Design View Basics
Opening a Saved Design
Starting a New Dial Plan Design

Adding to a Dial Plan Design Using Copy and Paste

Deleting a Saved Dial Plan Design
Exporting a Dial Plan Design

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for an AD

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for a Region

Committing a Dial Plan Design
Finding Terminating Gateways
Previewing a Dial Plan Design
Validating a Dial Plan Design

Validation Issues

Validation Indicators

Generating a CLI Description

Viewing the Generated CLI

Opening a CLI Session

Closing a Dial Plan Design

Design View

This chapter describes the Design View in the Cisco Voice Routing Center (VRC) application.

The Design View is where you make administrative changes to a baseline dial plan or element list or create a new dial plan and apply those changes to the elements.

From the Design View you can:

Browse and edit the dial plan for the active design session
Delete a saved design from the server storage
Export the current design to a browser
Save your design for later use
Commit your design for distribution to the network
Validate your dial plan design
Find terminating gateways
Preview your design

Design View Basics

The design view reflects the active design session, whether it is a new dial plan design or a previously saved design. Use this view to introduce network elements with no previous dial plan configuration into a dial plan and modify the existing dial plan configuration in the network elements.

Use the following guidelines when manipulating a dial plan in the Design View:

To view all the elements in your dial plan design, expand the dial plan tree for the Administrative Domain (AD).
In the Design View 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. The 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.
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.

From the Design View right-click menu you can:

View the VRC-generated command line interface (CLI)
Open a Telnet session or CLI console for a particular element
Generate Reports
Export the dial plan for a region or the AD
Verify call paths
Add or delete elements in the dial plan, copy and paste element attributes
Check element accessibility
Reactivate elements

Use the Design View to open a new design or make changes to an existing design. When you open:

An existing design—You are presented with the dial plan design that was previously saved either:

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

A new design—You are presented with a reflection of the baseline dial plan, which you can modify and commit to the network.

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/gdpm/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:

Step 1 Choose Open Saved Design from the Design menu. The Open Stored Design File window appears and displays a list of previously saved dial plans (Figure 4-1).

Figure 4-1 Open Stored Design File Window

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

Step 3 Expand the dial plan tree to view the regions and elements within.

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 complete the dial plan later.

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.

Before you begin, verify that all managed regions and elements affected by your new design are identified in the topology.

Note If an element is not identified in the topology, it cannot be added to a dial plan design.

To configure a new dial plan design:

Step 1 Choose Design From Baseline from the Design menu. The Open New Design View window appears (Figure 4-2).

Figure 4-2 Open New Design View Window

Step 2 Select a Design Scope. Choose the AD or a select a region from the list of regions in the topology.

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 later.

Adding to a 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:

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.

Deleting a Saved 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:

Step 1 Choose Delete Saved Design 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 Saved Design File button. You are asked to confirm the delete. Click OK.

Exporting a Dial Plan Design

You can export a dial plan for the entire 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:

Step 1 Select the AD in the dial plan tree.

Step 2 Right-click the AD and choose Export. Alternately, you can choose Export This Design from the Design menu.

The dial plan is exported to a browser window to view and save.

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for a Region

To export a dial plan design for a region:

Step 1 Expand the dial plan tree to view all elements.

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

Step 3 Right-click the region and choose Export. A browser window opens showing the dial plan in a text format.

Committing a Dial Plan Design

This section describes how to commit a dial plan design to your network and establish a baseline dial plan. We recommend that you preview the design before you commit it to the network elements. See Previewing a Dial Plan Design for more information

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:

Step 1 With your design session open, choose Commit This Design from the Design menu.

Step 2 A Confirm dialog box appears. 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.

Finding Terminating Gateways

Use this option to find terminating gateways, for a given dial string. You can find terminating gateways for the baseline dial plan or for the dial plan in your active design session.

To find terminating gateways:

Step 1 Choose Find Gateways from the Baseline menu or the Design menu.

A dialog box appears (Figure 5-3).

Figure 4-3 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.

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:

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

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.

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:

Step 1 Choose Validate 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 Indicators

After a design validation, VRC uses color coded indicators to inform you that there is an error in the dial plan design. These indicators appear in the dial plan tree and on the tabs in the user interface.

VRC validation indicators are displayed:

In the dial plan tree - Each entity in the dial plan is color coded to indicate the severity of any errors encountered during validation. A down arrow in the dial plan tree indicates that problems exist with sub-components of that dial plan entity.
On the user interface Attributes tab - The tab displays a color coded symbol (red stop sign or yellow yield sign) to further point you to the source of the dial plan errors.
In the table summary column - When you generate a route report, the validation status of the element is listed at the bottom of the report.
In the Validation Status field - This is usually the last field on the Attributes tab. The validation status field indicates whether the Cisco VRC server can contact the element during the validation process.

Table 4-1 Validation Indicator Colors

Color	Meaning	Comments
Red	One or more FAILURES occurred during the validation process. The dial plan entity is put into a FATAL state.	You cannot commit a dial plan design that has red indicators.
Yellow	One or more WARNINGS occurred during the validation process.	You can commit a dial plan design that has yellow indicators. The design is valid, but the network might behave in an unpredictable manner.
Blue	The validation process has been executed and the validation status is OK	You can commit a dial plan design with blue indicators.
Gray	Validation has not taken place for this dial plan entity.	—

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 the VRC-generated CLI:

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

Step 2 Locate the element that you want to view 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 to execute CLI with a specific element.

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

To open a Telnet session:

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.

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:

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

Design View

Design View Basics

Opening a Saved Design

Starting a New Dial Plan Design

Adding to a Dial Plan Design Using Copy and Paste

Deleting a Saved Dial Plan Design

Exporting a Dial Plan Design

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for an AD

Exporting a Dial Plan Design for a Region

Committing a Dial Plan Design

Finding Terminating Gateways

Previewing a Dial Plan Design

Validating a Dial Plan Design

Validation Issues

Validation Indicators

Generating a CLI Description

Viewing the Generated CLI

Opening a CLI Session

Closing a Dial Plan Design