Quium Collaboration Utilities

The Quium Collaboration Utilities Base Appliance is loaded as a virtual application in your existing VMware ESXi environment.

Conferencing on a system is often inadequate or beyond most customers’ budgets. The Cisco built-in conferencing function consumes limited server or expensive router DSP resources. Live monitoring and   management   of    the    conference is also not available.  A   popular   option   is   to   use a hosted conferencing system. These services are mostly pay-per-minute and per-caller, which can be costly. Subscription-based conferencing services also generally require long-term contracts which can lock your company into a conferencing tool that you do not control and cannot customize to your business requirements. You could spend a large sum on a web and audio on premise system and pay for features you may never need. QCU provides an easy to use, high-quality, on premise conference bridge that can be customized with personalized recordings to provide a professional appearance without incurring per-minute costs. The QCU Conference Bridge provides a feature-rich audio conference environment where users can create new conference rooms, monitor participants on the bridge, record the conference (requires license), mute and unmute participants, remove participants from the conference, and lock the conference to prevent accidental intrusion – all via a simple and intuitive web interface. The ability to host multiple conference bridges with different IDs allows users to maintain individual conference rooms for different customers or employees, allowing greater flexibility to the bridge owner.  Conference histories are archived and visible to bridge owners for review of conference attendees. The QCU conference bridge supports up to 300 simultaneous callers in any combination of conference sizes.

Easy to use, manageable and lowers conference call costs by bringing calls on premise

The built-in Call Detail Record (CDR) search functionality in CUCM is cumbersome, allowing for only phone number searches without any other parameters. This leads to exporting in a CSV format and using a spreadsheet to sort and search the data to find the desired information. Additionally, since the records are logged with a human- unfriendly  time  stamp,  it  requires  translation  into   local time using a formula  which  is  prone  to  human  error.  Quium CDR Search provides a near-instant ability to look up a call’s details and save or print them on the fly – boosting telephony staff productivity! Automatic conversion from Epoch time to the local time zone allows for simple interpretation of the presented data.

The Search Utility greatly increases productivity by allowing an administrator to find and export call records without required  additional  manual  manipulation.  Searches can be executed quickly by utilizing one to ten different search criteria in a given date and time range. Dates and times are automatically displayed in readable formats, making identification of specific calls a quick and intuitive process. Search results can be exported in CSV format or individual records which can be printed for later use.  The  CDR  Search  Utility  also  extends  the storage   of CDRs out to 366  days,  allowing  for  greater  visibility  into past call history when necessary.

Without investing in an expensive billing application, administrative options for reporting on-call details are limited. Another challenge of Cisco’s CUCM reports is the time-consuming nature of exporting and manually generating reports.  The scheduling feature of the reporting tool allows administrators to focus on other tasks instead of manually generating metrics from raw data. Conference reporting provides visibility into meeting attendance and its associated cost savings. All of these reports can be scheduled so administrators do not need to manually generate them. The Reporting Tool extends the functionality of the conferencing history and CDR search. More advanced reports  and  scheduled  recurring  reports  can be set up to automate the gathering of data from conference bridge usage, or  call  detail  records  from  CUCM. Reports are  created  in  Adobe  PDF  format  and  can be downloaded  or  emailed,  depending  on  whether  they are generated manually or scheduled.

It is a challenge to find a simple, yet powerful call recording system not over-designed for interoperability with call center applications when your organization is looking for a basic CUCM “bolt on” solution. These expensive systems complicate the recording process and often require additional hardware and services in order to integrate them into your CUCM system, increasing your IT staff’s workload.

Quium provides a simple independent recording system. Simple and intuitive to use, and easy to administer, it delivers an off-the-shelf solution to address the complexities of call recording.  The Quium Call Recording module can be added to the base appliance for any situations where phone calls need to be recorded without the cost and complexity of other call recording solutions.

A Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) server is required for all Cisco UC deployments. This SFTP server is used to make backups of the Cisco UC configuration data, and is also used to download and store CUCM and other Collaboration application’s patches. Cisco only supports a handful of   server types, therefore the setup of approved servers, application and patch management can be extremely time consuming.

The Quium SFTP Server provides a robust and feature-   rich platform to store and manage UC backups and patches. Through patch management and the automatic calculation of MD5 hashes, patches can be validated, activated, deactivated, or deleted as required, providing a single pane of glass view of your Cisco UC patches.

The SFTP Server provides two valuable services to your CUCM system:

• Quium SFTP Server acts as a backup repository for all

Cisco UC products, and any other applications that use SFTP for remote file transfer

• It stores and catalogs the backups, allowing them to be downloaded via the QCU for long-term or off-site archiving
• Archived backups can be used in the unlikely event of system failure to restore a functional system, minimizing downtime and associated loss of productivity

• QCU also acts as a patch repository, storing necessary patches and providing validation of files against Cisco Connection Online (CCO) hashes
  • Clear and concise icons provide an instant visual identification of patch verification status
  • Unneeded or inactive patches can be viewed, deleted or disabled to prevent the incorrect application of a patch file

Non-Windows® clients like iOS® and Android® do not work with either the Enhanced or Basic Directory Services. The same is true of any clients connecting through Expressway C&E pairs. This necessitates using User Data Services (UDS) to maintain a consistent user experience. UDS has one major limitation, however: it has no image services. One solution is to build a standalone web server with images for each of your users. However, maintaining this server can be time consuming and error-prone.  UDS Image Server (UIS) is an efficient solution to leverage your existing Active Directory (AD) thumbnail images to provide visual enhancement to your Jabber environment.

UDS Image Server acts as a proxy  to  your  existing  AD  images, so there is no need to create and manage a separate web server with images for Jabber. This eliminates administrative overhead, as well as the security risks of maintaining another network server. A custom “silhouette” can be uploaded in case a user does not have an image in AD, providing an opportunity for corporate branding. Low maintenance and simple integration make this tool a desirable addition to any Jabber deployment

Jabber without UDS Image Server

Jabber with UDS Image Server