paging groups

[mrmoneymatters]

Can you have paging in Call Manager? I am looking into implementing the Cisco IPT solution in my company. I need to be able to set up multiple paging groups and then add phones to those groups. For instance: group 1 has phones a, b, c, d. Then when someone needed to page group one it would page those phones. Is that possible, I don't need to know how, just if it can be done?

Thanks,

Network Admin
A+, Network+, MCSA 2000, MCSE 2000

 

[AdmanOK]

Cisco CallManager does not have handset paging functionality built in. There are third party add-ons, but these come at an additional cost.

 

[mrmoneymatters]

you can't do any kind of paging with Call Manager out of the box? That is stupid, how do they get people to actually buy their product?

Network Admin
A+, Network+, MCSA 2000, MCSE 2000

 

[AdmanOK]

It can integrate with an overhead paging system (which is what I personally prefer) through an FXO or FXS port. It just can't do handset paging.

 

[mrmoneymatters]

OK, thanks for clearing that up for me.

Network Admin
A+, Network+, MCSA 2000, MCSE 2000

 

[jpm121]

This is a Cisco partner who offers a handset paging solution, pretty much the de facto standard. Probably the only reason Cisco hasn't added it is so they don't tick off Berbee:

http://www.berbee.com/public/berbeesoftware/InformaCast.aspx

It's supposed to be good, don't know about the price.

 

[pndscm]

Cisco owns a large percentage of Berbee right now. They probably don't buy it all because Berbee does lots of cradle to grave integrations and if they bought them, it would upset the other partners. I think it's just a matter of time before they license the in-phone paging functionality and include it. Maybe in CCM 5.0.

 

[AdmanOK]

I believe that I was once told that the reason that Cisco hasn't implimented handset paging on CCM is that they don't want to have to support multicast in a large network / WAN environment. It's not so bad on CME where you're dealing with one subnet, but when you start trying to page across multiple sites using multicast you need to configure multicast routing correctly on your WAN equipment.

 

[pndscm]

Not sure about that given that they use multicasting for MOH already. Maybe they have a different direction for tel-set paging. I don't care about paging as much as incoming CLID on FXO's on MGCP gateways. Give me that and I'd run around and page everybody.