5 Benefits of UCaaS and CCaaS Solutions for Modern Businesses

In this blog post, we’ll be discussing the benefits of UCaaS and CCaaS solutions for modern businesses. As technology continues to evolve, companies are increasingly turning to cloud-based solutions for their communication needs. UCaaS and CCaaS are two such solutions that offer a range of benefits to businesses of all sizes.

Increased flexibility: One of the key benefits of UCaaS and CCaaS solutions is the flexibility they offer. These solutions can be customized to meet the specific needs of businesses, allowing them to scale up or down as required. With UCaaS and CCaaS, businesses can easily add or remove users, features, and functionalities as needed.

Cost savings: Another major benefit of UCaaS and CCaaS solutions is the cost savings they offer. By eliminating the need for expensive on-premise hardware and software, businesses can save money on capital expenditures. Additionally, with UCaaS and CCaaS, businesses can easily predict and manage their monthly communication costs.

Improved customer experience: UCaaS and CCaaS solutions can help businesses provide a seamless customer experience. With features such as call routing, IVR, and call queuing, businesses can ensure that their customers are always able to connect with the right person or department. Additionally, with features such as screen sharing and video conferencing, businesses can enhance the customer experience by providing more personalized and engaging communication.

Increased productivity: UCaaS and CCaaS solutions can also help businesses increase productivity. With features such as presence status, instant messaging, and collaboration tools, employees can easily communicate and collaborate with each other, regardless of their location. This can lead to faster decision-making, improved project management, and more efficient workflows.

Enhanced security: Finally, UCaaS and CCaaS solutions offer enhanced security features that can help businesses protect their sensitive data. With encryption, multi-factor authentication, and other security measures, businesses can rest assured that their communication and collaboration tools are secure.

UCaaS and CCaaS solutions offer a range of benefits to modern businesses, from increased flexibility and cost savings to improved customer experience and productivity. As more and more businesses move to the cloud, UCaaS and CCaaS are likely to become increasingly important for staying competitive in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace.

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New Adventure! Today marks the beginning of Cloud Revolution!

 

I know many of you have been wondering what I’ve been up to the last few weeks.  For those of you that don’t know read on!

Modernization with technology is something that I am deeply passionate about.  Maybe it’s a generational thing but when companies are not embracing technology to modernize their services, better engage with their customers, they are set up to fail, big time. This same concept applies for the company you work for as well as companies you don’t.

My entire career has been focused on technology that improves the users and customer experience. I started my career in IT management, and right as telephony and communications systems were merging in to the application space I made a jump in to the contact center and PBX space.  After a few years integrating contact centers, voicemail, and PBX’s in to Microsoft-based applications I made a move in to creating a Microsoft-focused practice.  This was my first try at creating a practice and helping customers realize the potential of what Microsoft solutions can bring to their company.  I shifted to an awesome team at ExtraTeam, and then spent some time at some very large SIs (via acquisition) running very successful global Microsoft practices.  Then I realized that what we were doing wasn’t enough for me.  I wanted to focus on more than just the UC side of the Microsoft business.  As you probably know digital transformation and Microsoft’s modern workplace solutions are the critical components to really charging forward and helping customers re-think how they radically change their mindset and implement modern solutions and services that attract and retain talent, engage with their customers differently that allows them to compete and win.  So, over the last few years I’ve/we’ve had ideas around how we could build a Microsoft company that focuses on these specific areas and really make a difference.

Today Adam Ball @adamCBall and I launched @cloudrevollc Cloud Revolution.  A Microsoft Modern Workplace Silver Partner that seeks to do everything we’ve aspired to do.

Welcome to Cloud Revolution! We have a desire to help companies revolutionize the way people communicate and collaborate!

Our focus is on connecting people through technology and we do this with our hands-on approach and focus on people-empowerment. We’re a boutique, Microsoft focused cloud company and have 40+ combined years of technology consulting and implementation experience.

As a Microsoft Silver certified partner with 4 competencies including Communications, Messaging, Collaboration and Content, and Windows and Devices – we’re passionate about connecting people through modern technology. Traditional, antiquated corporate processes, and technology are what really drives us to encourage change within companies. For us, this starts with collaboration. When people are empowered with modern workplace collaboration solutions that’s when they truly achieve more. We strive for excellence, and that is reflected in the people that are part of our team. With Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals and Microsoft Certified Masters we have the experience with breaking through technology and corporate barriers. From leading executive sessions, working with procurement, and enabling collaboration transformation with people – we’ve seen it all. The 4th revolution is the Cloud Revolution.

 

Follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudrevolutionllc/

Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadmcgreanor/

Follow Adam Ball on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamball/

www.cloudrevolution.us

Stay Tuned…

Okay I’ll admit I’ve taken a bit of a break. You know kids, 2 acquisitions, a public company oh and this new position leading the best Microsoft Practice in the world….

The content will be different than before, but will be relevant and interesting.

Talk to you all soon!

New blog URL

I decided to give my blog URL a more personal touch for 2015.  You can now access my blog via http://blog.mcgreanor.com

The current URL cmcgreanor.wordpress.com will still be active for those of you that have it saved.

No ring back in PSTN to Lync calls

Today a colleague of mine was having an issue with ring back on calls originating from the PSTN to Lync. You would basically here dead air or if you listened close enough you could hear the “Comfort Noise”.

Background:

The PSTN connectivity is being provided by Comcast via a SIP trunk that terminates to an Adtran. From the Adtran there is a T1/ESF/B8ZS trunk to a Sonus UX 1000. The Sonus is configured to pass calls to the mediation server in Lync Server 2013.

Issue:

When a call was placed to a Lync Enterprise Voice user from the PSTN you would not hear ring back and you could hear comfort noise if you listened hard. In the UX log traces we saw the SIP 180 and 183 messages being sent and received. The issue was related to a SIP 180 being sent back to the T1 and the T1 not understanding it. T1’s view ringing as an “Alerting” message as defined in RFC 4497 Interworking between the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and QSIG and based on the RFC a SIP 180 should be sent as a QSIG Alerting message to support ring back:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4497#section-8.3.4

8.3.4. Receipt of QSIG ALERTING Message

The gateway SHALL map a QSIG ALERTING message to a SIP 180 (Ringing) response to the INVITE request. If the SIP INVITE request contained either a Require header or a Supported header with option tag 100rel, the gateway SHALL include in the SIP 180 response a Require header with option tag 100rel.

Resolution:

The resolution to this is to implement a “Message Translation” table and add the following rule:

This is basically stating that when a SIP 180 is received to send out a corresponding QSIG Alerting message.

Just creating this table does not address the problem. Once the table has been created you need to assign it to the Call Routing Table

Once we completed this ring back worked as it should. This seems to be related to the unique setup of the Comcast SIP trunk being terminated to the Adtran then converted to T1 back to the Sonus. If this was common we would see this a lot more in typicall configurations since it is very common to have a T1 terminate to a UX.

San Francisco Lync User Group – Thursday November 13th, 2014 #Lync #LyncUG

The San Francisco Lync User Group will be having our next meeting Thursday November 13th, 2014 from 3:00PM-6:00PM. This meeting will include two sessions, the first session will cover Lync SDN & Wi-Fi.  The second session will dive into Office 365 Lync Online

Location Details:
835 Market Street
Suite 700
Golden Gate North Room
San Francisco, CA 94103

There is a parking garage right behind Market Street on 5th and Mission.  BART station at Powell street and is a 2 minute walk to the Microsoft offices.

Please register on our webpage at http://www.LyncUG.com

Lync Server 2013 August 2014 Cumulative Update Released

Microsoft has released a new Cumulative Update for Lync Server 2013. Below is a consolidated list of the fixes that are included.

Download link here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36820&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all

List of fixes included:

Update for Standard or Enterprise Edition server (Front End Servers and Edge Servers):

2976568(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2976568/ ) Address book delta files are not generated in a Lync Server 2013 Enterprise Edition environment

2967626(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967626/ ) Error “creating procedure RtcResetAbAttributes” when you run “Install-CsDatabase” for rtcab database in Lync Server 2013

2967629(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967629/ ) Significant bandwidth usage increase by SIP traffic in a Lync Server 2013 environment

2967630(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967630/ ) Callee receives a missed call notification after answering a call on an IP telephone in a Lync Server 2013 environment

2979931(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2979931/ ) Error “I can’t find the meeting with that number” when PSTN user dials in to conference in Lync Server 2013 environment

 

Update for Web Components server

2978444(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2978444/ ) Update for Lync Server 2013 to disable Lync Web App users’ ability to upload and show PPT in online meetings

2976906(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2976906/ ) Incorrect time zone is displayed when you create a meeting by using Web Scheduler in a Lync Server 2013 environment

2967623(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967623/ ) Error “This content cannot be displayed” or blank webpage when you click a dial-in URL in a Lync Server 2013 environment

2967624(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967624/ ) HD video stutters in a Lync Server 2013 based video conference in Lync 2013

2967628(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967628/ ) Telephone numbers are missing in a contact card in a Lync Server 2013-based Lync mobile client

 

Update for Core Components

2967621(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967621/ ) Error 404 when Lync phones sign in to Lync Server 2013 front-end servers during SBS failure recovery

2967631(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2967631/ ) Error “”DistributionGroupAddress” and “AgentsByUri” must be set.” when you migrate the RG service to Lync Server 2013

 

Update for Administrative Tools

2983199(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2983199/ ) “Limited functionality is available due to outage” in Lync client when Lync Server 2013 replication queue is full

 

Update for Web Conferencing server

No Specific fixes listed

 

Update for Windows Fabric

2983199(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2983199/ ) “Limited functionality is available due to outage” in Lync client when Lync Server 2013 replication queue is full

#Lync 2013 marks gateway as down – when it is not???

I was recently working on an issue where Lync was marking a single gateway of 3 in a voice policy route as down. This customer is using 3 gateways and outbound calls are using all 3 together via round-robin routing. The only item that was unique about this particular gateway was that there is a FXS paging trunk connected to it. Our support team restarted the mediation service and saw all the necessary event log entries indicating that the gateway was back online only to see it be marked as unreachable after a period of time. The issue was escalated to me since I did the original implementation and suggested that we try testing a few things:

Issue

• Make a call to the paging trunk, while there is a call established make another call.
  • This resulted in an event log entry stating that there was a failed attempt on outbound routing.
  • We did this 4 more times (the magic number here is 5 failures)
  • After 4 more failures we saw Lync mark the gateway as unavailable

Cause

• The reason this is a problem is that the gateway was responding to Lync when the FXS port was in use with a 503 Service Unavailable (Remember Good SIP Messages 1xx, 2xx, and 3xx) (bad SIP messages 4xx, 5xx, 6xx) If Lync receives 5 permanent failures Lync will mark the gateway as down. That is OK when there are other gateways that provide the same outbound routing, but now paging will not work. Remember it is connected to the gateway that is marked offline

Resolution

In order to solve this issue I suggested that we utilize the New-CsSipResponseCodeTranslationRule Lync PowerShell command to take a 503 message and translate it to a 483 (Busy Here). By doing this we take a permanent failure like 5xx and translate that to a temporary failure that Lync does not count towards the 5 failures before a gateway is marked down.

Here is the command that was run:

New-CsSipResponseCodeTranslationRule -Identity “PstnGateway:xx-xxx-gateway1.contoso.corp/Rule503_Paging” -ReceivedResponseCode 503 -TranslatedResponseCode 483

After we implemented the command we ran several tests. We had a user connect to paging and then another user call the same trunk over and over. Lync never marked the gateway as down. We validated this by reviewing the Lync logs and seeing that we were in fact getting a 483 message back now.

Hope this helps someone!

San Francisco Lync User Group – Wednesday April 23rd, 2014 #Lync #LyncUG

The San Francisco Lync User Group will be having our next meeting Wednesday April 23rd, 2014 from 3:00PM-6:00PM. This meeting will include two sessions, the first session will cover the Top Ten Takeaways from Lync Conference 2014.  The second session will dive into Advanced Troubleshooting Tools for Lync.

Location Details:
835 Market Street
Suite 700
Golden Gate North Room
San Francisco, CA 94103

There is a parking garage right behind Market Street on 5th and Mission.  BART station at Powell street and is a 2 minute walk to the Microsoft offices.

Please register on our webpage at http://www.LyncUG.com

San Francisco #Lync User Group January 23rd, 2014 3PM-6PM #UCOMS

*Win a trip to Lync Conference!

About Us

The San Francisco UC Users Group is targeted at IT Pros and Developers interested in Microsoft Unified Communications. Our goal is to provide the San Francisco area with valuable information as it relates to Microsoft Unified Communications. Our meetings will include both technical and business information relating to Lync Server, Exchange Unified Messaging and other components of the Microsoft UC product suite.

Please register on our webpage at

http://www.LyncUG.com

Meeting Details

January 23rd 2014 3PM-6PM Pacific

The San Francisco UC Users Group will be conducting their next meeting Thursday January 23rd, 2014. This meeting will include two sessions, the first – a session covering the ins and outs of Centralized Logging in Lync 2013. The second session will take a dive into Lync Room Systems presented by Smart Technologies.

Industry Experts will be on site to deliver these presentations and help answer any questions related to Lync Server.

Food, beverages and additional door prizes courtesy of the Lync Users Group

*Lync Conference trip entry requires attending an in person event on or prior to January 31st, 2014 and completing a survey. Drawing will be conducted February 1st, 2014 and winner will be contacted immediately. Lync user’s group volunteers, sponsors, employees of sponsors and their immediate families are not eligible to win.

Location Details:
835 Market Street
Suite 700
Golden Gate North Room
San Francisco, CA 94103