To give you better understanding of our skills we prepared for you a list of recent projects that Gaman Ltd. fulfilled for their customers. Top of the list contains only big projects but we are also capable to deliver small solutions. If you have similar project feel free to contact us at info@gaman-gt.com.
Ongoing maintenance for 2 Cisco UC systems and Network. Technology used: Cisco Call Manager BE 6000(including I&P nodes), Cisco Unity Connection, Cisco Expressway, Cisco ISR 4321, Cisco ISR 4431, Cisco C881, Cisco 2960, Cisco ASA 5512X, Cisco Meraki MR42.
Ongoing translation project that includes translations of application and web page content.
2019-04-25: The project was put on hold on the customer side.
2019-04-15: Gaman team together with Cisco TAC resolved the issue with PAK license assignment. Although one case was resolved, support contracts are still a big mess that needs a cleanup. We are hardly working with Cisco and suppliers to provide order here.
2019-04-02: Customer accepted all agreements. This allowed Gaman team to bind the traditional license (PAK’s) with Smart Account. Unfortunately, we encountered a problem with license assignment. Our team worked with Cisco TAC to find root cause of the problem, which at the end was identified. At this moment Gaman team needs to reach out to Customer’s license distributor/reseller to resolve the license problem.
2019-03-20: Gaman team created a Smart Account for customer. Before next steps can be taken, customer needs to accept all the agreements send by Cisco.
2019-02-21: Project kickoff. Gaman team performs background tasks: upgrade planning, software download, license migration.
Deliver a hybrid video conferencing system build on top of Cisco Webex Cloud – including AD and Calendar integration (hosted on Microsoft Exchange), and on top of existing on-prem infrastructure (old video terminals connected to the Expressway pair (C+E) working in B2B mode).
2019-01-17: Work on the project continues. Webex AD Connector, Hybrid Calendar Connector have been configured and were enabled for production. Everything works as expected, users are syncing and the scheduled meetings (@webex , @meet) are working. At this moment Gamna team is working to merge Webex Meeting and Webex Teams portal (Control Hub). This causes some technical problems to the initial integration set before the project between portals – at this moment the users are managed at Meetings portal but finally the process must be moved to Control Hub. Meantime some small progress has been made on the on-prem side (Expressway C and E cluster) – system is almost prepared for device registration.
2019-01-10: Webex Teams Hybrid Calendar Service (on-prem Microsoft Exchange integration) has been configured and enabled. The test user is syncing as expected and feature is ready to be assigned to users. The configuration of the AD Connector has been prepared and applied. The Dry Run confirmed that it is valid. At this point of time it is not enabled yet as combined teams Customer and Gaman need to resolve some small issues (mostly related to the HR stuff). Once they are resolved the sync will be enabled. Next task – register Webex Teams devices.
2019-12-07: After a long holiday season, the work has gained some speed (customer returned from holidays). Based on the requirement Gaman reviewed the deployment plan and set priorities. At this point of time Gaman team needs to focus on on-prem services that will communicate with the cloud.
2019-12-20: The installation work has started. At this point the network and the required infrastructure (VM’s) have been prepared based on the requirements gathered in the technical documentation. Because customer puts security as a top-most requirement, Gaman team discussed the requirements and needs that are necessary to connect this hybrid environment to Active Directory and Exchange server. Gaman team also asked for the business needs that customer has for the video terminals ex: account names, mailboxes for the video terminals. Due to holiday season, some of the tasks have been postponed till the beginning of the new year.
2019-12-09: Official start of project. Gaman Team prepared a high-level plan with big milestones that presented the deployment plan. Everything was presented to customer.
2019-11-25: The basic task has been identified this the work on the technical project has started. First versions of the document will gather infrastructure and network requirements.
2019-11-15: Project kickoff. Gaman team.
The scope of the project is to deliver ClickToCall functionality for Case Management Application based on the integration with Cisco Call Manager product. Provided solution must restrict current user dialing
rights – users will only be allowed to make external calls using ClickToCall feature (no external dialing should be available for handsets, Jabber’s).
Project consist of two big tasks:
2019-11-28: Project compleated
2019-11-28: Customer confirmed that all features and documentation have been delivered as described in the SOW document. Gaman Team received a green light to close first phase of the project. In future customer wants to extend delivered features but the software infrastructure needs to upgraded.
2019-11-15: System is in production. Based on the user feedback some adjustments had to be made on the CUCM – mostly related to the insufficient dialing rights. Gaman Team add routing patterns for specific ranges to cover the gaps. The performance of the server is very good the system load doesn’t exceed 5%. Gaman Team will be monitoring the server during next week.
2019-11-13: Click to Call server is in production. 75% (600 out of 800) of users in organization are moved to the new solution. Till now no major issues have been identified. Performance of the virtual machine that hosts C2C server is lower than expected so it gives opportunities to add new features to solution (Phase 2 of the project). As for know all requirements (described in a SOW file) are delivered, but customer is in need to make conference calls (not covered by Web Dialer API). Gaman Team is preparing some training videos for end users to cover this gap.
2019-11-07: During a weekly test some minor errors/bugs have been identified and immediately resolved by Gaman Team (problems with missing Routing Patterns on CUCM, problems with internal calling, undeleted processed CDR files). Those bugs don’t stop the test process and customer decided to extend user group up to 130 users. If everything goes well, next week all users will be moved to the solution. At this moment the call attempt volume visible on server is around 300 calls/requests. Customer is working with users to adopt the new technology.
2019-11-01: First 25 users were moved to production. First tests showed that users experienced some problems with dialing. 2 problems were identified:
2019-10-28: Customer decided to put the solution to production although the time problem on the subscriber servers has not been resolved (Cisco TAC is still working on the case). At the first stage 25 users will be moved to the C2C solution to test the performance. If all goes well, next groups will be added to increase the load on the server.
2019-10-18: New problem has been identified on the customers Call Manager – invalid time published by server in CDR files. Deep dive to the problem showed the two call processing subscribers that the customer has, have problems with time synchronization with the publisher node. Together with customer Gaman Team tried to resolve the problem (restarting servers, deploying time sync configuration to vCenter) but, none of the ideas resolved the issue. In Gaman Team opinion, customer has hit CSCux50133 bug. The support case with Cisco TAC has been opened.
2019-10-05: CMS application development has been completed by Customer Dev team. This pushed the project to the next stage – end to end tests. Gaman Team awaits for the list of bugs found by customer.
2019-09-27: Gaman Team finished first set of internal tests. The results showed that test devices controlled by Click to Call server are working as expected.
2019-09-26: Gaman Team prepared a dll library that will be used to implement Click to Call features in the Case Management System (client side). To create this library Gaman Team used the Swagger tools – Swagger Codegen which requires a json file in swagger 2.0 specification. The file describes all server-side API’s. The library was delivered to customer’s development team.
2019-09-24: The issue has been resolved. The tests can begin.
2019-09-18: The test version of the service has been installed on configured on the provided VM. This opened opportunity to begin initial tests on customer infrastructure. Before they could start, Gaman Team prepared a test Cisco Call Manager configuration which was deployed on customer system during Webex session. Deployment test showed that there are small issues that block the customer side testing. We are hardly working to resolve them to move forward.
2019-09-11: Virtual machine has been prepared by customer. Gaman Team was given access credentials for this machine and started instalation of the C2C service. Meatime a Webex session took place where combined teams Gaman and Customer Support team added configuration objects to CUCM - test objects.
2019-09-09: First version of the Click To Call server has been prepared by Gaman Development Team. Prepared version contains a set of basci set features. Gaman team asked customer to prepare a virtual machine to host this service.
2019-08-23: Gaman Team prepared a document that describes changes that are needed in CUCM configuration. The document was send to customer.
2019-08-20: Gaman Team prepared a document that describes the WebService API for the C2C server. Document was sent to customer development team so the Customer Service Application can be modified and prepared for the C2C functionality.
2019-08-12: Test development environment has been created by Gaman Team on AWS resources. This test dev will allow customer to test and implement set of APIs’ that will be build into Case Management application.
2019-08-09: Gaman Team gathered requirements from customer and based on them, prepared a Scope of Work (SOW) document that describes the designed solution. The document was accepted by customer. Development task have been started.
2019-08-05: Gaman Team together with customer has reviewed the current configuration of the Cisco Call Manager. This session delivered new input for the project scope - delivered solution needs to support Extension Mobility which is a common feature used in customer organization.
2019-07-11: Project kickoff.
2019-08-18: Project compleated
2019-09-06: Old virtiual machine (hosted on Joyent) that provided Campaign Manager (CM) service was shutdown and deleted. Migration process has finished.
2019-08-22: AWS machine has become a production system. The services on the old machine (hosted on Joyent) were shut down. Finesse gadgets were switched to the new server.
2019-08-15: Campaign Manager (CM) was migrated to new AWS machine same as custom gadgets. Solutions is ready for tests. Customer was asked to schedule a date for migration.
2019-07-30: Customer asked for support to move Campaign Manager (CM) server from the current provider to the AWS infrastructure. Gaman Team helped with this task. All the applications used by CM were moved to the new server, including databases. Unfortunately, the server had no network connectivity with the internal infrastructure, so Gaman Team was not able to perform post deployment test. Next test and bug-fix session is planned once the customer resolves network issues.
2019-07-14: Customer requested to do some discovery and see if the Call Progress Analysis (CPA) parameters for UCCX outbound dialer can be improved. Gaman engineers recorded some samples (infrastructure is connected to Twilio Elastic SIP Trunking feature) that were analyzed. Based on the gathered information the CPA recognition parameters were trimmed. Customer committed to test this new setup ASAP.
2019-06-10: Gaman Team was asked to check configuration of the standard, out-of-the-box Callback feature (based on the Place Call building block) for inbound calls (implemented
based on the Cisco documentation, Link).
This analysis was done because customer complained that Callback efficiency doesn’t match staffing parameters (callback hit rate is very poor). Customer also stated that is unable to monitor the callback process
- doesn’t know the total number of callbacks, successful callbacks, failed callbacks.
Having that in mind, Gaman Team has prepared report, that not only describes the current implementation of the feature, but also contains with recommendations how to improve feature.
2019-04-15: Customer asked for a feature that would allow to download current content of the custom Do Not Call list (entire content is displayed on custom DNC gadget). Gaman team proposed 4 solutions. Customer selected one of the (one was put on hold as an addon) that has been prepared and uploaded to the test environment. At this moment we are waiting for approval to move this feature to production.
2019-04-04: Gaman team prepared and showed customer two Finesse gadgets that were requested:
2019-03-01: Project kickoff. Waiting for a list of features that needs to be added to the UCCX Dialer and Campaign Manager.
Prepare dedicated custom Finesse gadget that provides basic knowledge base features. Communication between gadget and the knowledge base is made by dedicated API. Gadget needs to support following features:
2019-08-18: Project compleated
2019-08-18: Customer reviewed provided Gadget code and documentation without any objections.
2019-08-01: Solution was presented and accepted by customer. Gaman Team prepared a deploy package that contains gadget code, documentation and video materials.
2019-07-30: SSO API has been delivered by customer. Gaman Team has prepared gadget changes based on the requirements. Internal tests were successful, so Gaman Team and Customer set a meeting to performed End to End tests.
2019-07-10: Finally, Customer development team prepared and implemented CORS support for ajax API calls. This allowed to perform End to End tests. During test combined Customer and Gaman teams confirmed that KB server works with Cisco SSO (build on Cisco IdS server), gadget can send API calls to retrieve KB data. Testers also discovered one error that is blocker to finish the problem. To resolve it, Gaman temp proposed possible solutions that were discussed with customer. We agreed that customer team will prepare additional API (SSO login API) used to exchange SSO token value.
2019-06-04: Customer has implemented SSO support – server side. Unfortunately, first set of tests showed that the SSO redirect link has invalid construction. Gaman team prepared a detailed analysis and send it back to customer. At this moment, Gaman Team awaits for second set of tests.
2019-05-24: The solution was approved by customer. Deploy packages and documentation were delivered. Gaman Team still aviates for guidelines from customer about SSO (how he would like to implement this feature based on the design proposed by Gaman Team).
2019-05-17: Phase 1 – deliver gadget functionality – of the project is almost completed. Gaman team waits for the final acceptance of the provided deploy packages and documentation. When confirmed, phase 1 will be fully completed and development process of SSO feature can begin.
2019-05-13: Final version of the gadget is ready and is waiting for a presentation to customer (planned for 2019-05-14). Basic set of features described in SSO has been extended.
Initially (described in SOW) gadget had to serve "FAQ answer" type content (answer contains only text answer for provided question) provided by knowledge base. As per customer request
Gaman Team added support for "Scenario answer" type - Knowledge base for initial question returns multiple choice answers that can be followed by additional questions that may be asked
by agent during conversation with customer to provide best possible answer.
Gaman Team still waits for the SSO design review.
2019-04-29: SSO design has been send to the customer for a review.
2019-04-25: Gadget is almost ready (without SSO support as we are still working on a design). Before it will be presented to customer Gaman team will have internal check meeting to verify all functionalities. We plan to present to customer final solution at the beginning of next week.
2019-04-20: Customer requested to add SSO login functionality to the developed gadget. Based on this request Gaman team started to prepare a general design based on the Cisco documentation and documentation provided by customer.
2019-04-14: As per agreement with customer Gaman team has prepared first version of the solution. It contains all UI (layout without graphics) of the gadget functionality. All
functions are implemented based on the requirements document. Base on the feedback Gaman team will correct and adjust the UI to customer requirements.
During implementation process Gaman team encountered a problem. The lab environment provided by customer doesn’t natively support CORS requests. To overcome the issue additional browser
extensions were used (Firefox – CORS Everywhere, Chrome - Allow-Control-Allow-Origin: *). We are hardly forking with customer to enable CORS support so the final gadget will not require
installation of additional 3rd party tools (browser add-ons, extensions).
2019-04-08: Project kickoff.
WebEx Desk Booking bot will basically allow a WebEx Teams user to view available desks on a floor and book a desk for a specific time. The bot can perform the above functions by calling a REST API that will be delivered by booking system. Project is split into phases.
2019-06-14: Project accepted by customer.
2019-06-08: Gaman Team based on the customer request has upgraded the Bot and integrated it with real booking API (build by customer resources in Microsoft Azure Cloud). Now Bot is responsible for the content recognition (basic NLP) and based on the recognized information, responsible for booking API calls.
2019-05-27: Customer confirmed and accepted the Bot. PoC phase of the project has been completed.
2019-05-24: PoC bot has been completed and send to customer for verification. Gaman Team used Botkit framework as a bot core/engine. Because Botkit only allows to build Keyword Recognition-Based Chatbots, Gaman Team made some modifications, so the Bot can react on some phrases which recall natural language (solution is something between Keyword Recognition-Based and Contextual Chatbots). To make it available to customer, the Bot infrastructure was built in the AWS cloud. .
2019-05-19: Gaman Team prepared bot design and set delivery date of Phase 1 to 2019-05-31.
2019-05-15: Phase 1 - PoC - requirements have been created. At the end of PoC Gaman team will deliver WebEx Teams bot that accepts commands and parameters passed to bot during simple conversation. Whenever interaction is requested, bot will call functions on a dummy booking REST API (API will be created during next phase). At this page we focus on predefined commands - no NLP mechanisms will be implemented.
2019-04-23: Project kickoff.
Build a UCCE lab infrastructure, provide basic configuration to run CVP "Hello World" application on Cisco Virtualized Voice Browser. Lab platform includes the following components:
2019-04-10: Project compleated.
2019-04-09: All tasks assigned to Gaman team were fulfilled.
2019-04-01: Communication with primary/publisher site has been build by new Data Center provider (network, Vlans, MPLS links). Gaman team will start to bring to life VM’s and all the migrated hardware equipment. As identified, some of the VM’s (Expressway’s), ASA will require reconfiguration due to change of the public IP address.
2019-03-29: Migration day – Gaman team followed the migration plan prepared earlier.
As expected, the migration was not smooth, and we encountered some small issues that required changes in the Cisco CUBE configuration. We also expected a delay with number porting (old
SIP supplier didn’t release numbers), but this was the problem of the new SIP provider (Gaman team helped to identify issues analyzing the SIP logs).
At the end all features that were listed by customer as mandatory were up and running.
2019-03-27: Migration day has ben rescheduled to 2019-03-29 to reduce the potential impact to customer. Gaman team will use this additional day to double check the migration plan.
2019-03-25: One of the ASA was removed from the cluster and moved to new DC site. After installation new configuration was applied as the public IP has changed. ASA is prepared for the VPN phones migration.
2019-03-20: Gaman team prepared the migration plan for the DC movement. Here are priority points of the plan identified during discovery process:
2019-03-05: Customer with new ISP provided performed a test network swap. During those test Gaman team tried to identify configuration errors on the UC system. Test showed that before DC migration some additional configuration tasks are needed to fill the gap on CUCM. Based on the gathered information Gaman team will prepare a list of things to check and modify on UC systems.
2019-03-04: PSTN SIP Trunking configuration completed. Documentation provided by PSTN SIP provider was not clear and didn't point what is needed to enable SIP Trunking. Gaman team performed troubleshooting and based on the logs pointed out configuration errors on the vendor site. Once the changes were implemented - trunks started to work.
2019-02-18: Project kickoff.
Help to develop a Finesse Gadget which will send statistical information to external application via JSON Api.
2019-04-01: Project compleated.
2019-04-01: Sollution was finally accepted. All features have been confirmed and delivered. Other modifications/change requests will be done made as a separate project’s (depends of the change scale).
2019-02-13: Trial period has ended successfully. Next stage - perform large scale test that will confirm solution scalability. Large scale test should start shortly.
2018-12-24: Customer did a final test and started a trial period in the production environment. All small issues were resolved before trial period (small problems related to bandwidth and latency in the network).
2018-12-14: Tests are almost finished. Solution provided by Gaman met all requirements, no bugs reported to provided solution. The tests were spread very long timeframe
because not only gadget and connector service was tested (entire solution relays on additional 3rd party software which receives updates from provided gadget).
On of the things discovered during the tests was behavior of the Finesse platform when the agent state is auto changed to Wrap-Up once far-end disconnects the call. If the network
is almost at the edge of the required Round Trip Time (RTT) below 400ms then there can be delay between counter visible on UI and the events that are coming to Finesse Client.
Based on those observations Gaman team prepared a workaround that will be tested by customer.
2018-10-30: Phase 2 of the project has finished. Gaman team build reporting server which connects to UCCE/PCCE environment and a gadget that connects to reporting server via Web Server Sockets (WSS). Code was send to client who will perform internal tests of the solution.
2018-10-08: PoC was presented to client who accepted the solution. Gaman team is waiting for additional requirements for the final product.
2018-09-27: Development of PoC reaches final phase – testing. Before solution will be showed to customer software needs to be tested in lab environment – Cisco cloud.
2018-09-05: Gaman team prepared a solution design (not only gadget but also a server) that will be responsible for gathering data for all agents, queues and teams. This solution is based on the SQL queries developed by Gaman team. At this moment we are on a PoC phase of the project.
Project is split into 2 phases:
All features requested by customer were delivered. At the end Gaman team prepared and configured 7 IVR outbound campaigns and delivered a dedicated software that can
be treated as a Campaign Manager. Basic software features are:
Project timelogs:
2019-02-28: Project compleated
2019-02-20: UCCX Dialer is finally in production. Before Go-Live Gaman Team prepared custom CUIC reports that show detailed information about contacts and agents
that provided treatment to customers. Prepared reports also display information about wrap-up codes set by agents.
Gaman Team waits for confirmation that the Phase1 of the project is completed.
2019-02-07: Final UAT tests (Phase 1) showed that solution is ready for the Go-Live which is planned for the next week.
2019-01-25: UAT tests showed that there is a big need to have additional functionalities (callback, do not call list, disposition codes transfer to the backend system). Gaman team prepared dedicated Finesse Gadgets and backend solution to cover the gap. The callback feature (that works also for inbound) was prepared based on the concepted presented in this Gaman Article.
2019-01-14: Phase 1 UAT tests have started.
2018-12-18: SIP trunk provider returned to customer and announced that the SIP Trunk doesn’t support Cisco UCCX Dialer. He also didn’t provide any update if diagnosis
made by Gaman team was the root cause of the issue.
Because customer is still interested in Dialer deployment, Gaman team have started to build a solution with AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud and Cisco vRouter (will work in vCube
mode as a termination point to Internet SIP vendor).
2018-12-14: Migration to production SIP trunks is still going on. Although the trunks were provided, they are not working with Dialer (calls made from phones at Customer
site are working).
Based on the logs gathered from Voice Gateway Gaman team discovered that the calls are dropped because Call Progress Analiisys (CPA) module is not getting RTP packets. As a result,
CPA is unable to send SIP UPDATE message back to Dialer which disconnects the call.
Additionally, Gaman team received information that SIP trunk is terminated on SBC device. Gaman team suspects that this SBC uses Media NAT Traversal feature:
“The SBC also supports hosted NAT traversal for media and exhibits similar behavior for sending media as it does for signaling. More specifically, the addresses embedded in
the SDP specification are, in terms of the SIP peer's private addressing, behind the NAPT device; whereas the SBC must actually send the RTP to the NAT'd public address/port.
Since the RTP stream is generally symmetric, the SBC waits for RTP from the peer and then uses the source IP address/port from the received RTP packet as its destination IP address/port
for the return direction.”
Gaman team as vendor if this feature is enabled on the SBC. Till now vendor didn’t respond.
2018-11-28: Demo environment was prepared and showed to customer. At the end, demo environment was prepared with Elastic SIP Trunks (EST) provided by Twilio. During
configuration the following discoveries were made:
Support in development of the predefined package that will allow to monitor UCCE/PCCE environment. Gaman team will be responsible for the knowledge transfer about monitoring options. Gaman team will share a PCCE dCloud environment for the test purposes for the customer.
The package includes components:
Cisco Call Manager is not on the list as customer had already a package for it.
At this moment project is put on hold as the customer is involved other deployment projects.
Project timelogs:
2019-02-25: Project compleated
2018-12-07: Based on the transferred knowledge and lab environment connected to monitoring solution, Customer was able to create a basic UCCE monitoring package. Package was created for SNMP and for Syslog protocols.
2018-10-15: Knowledge transfer continues. Lab environment was made and prepared for customer.
Customer pointed out two important assumptions before we started the project.
After looking at the network and its parameters there was no way to build a single cluster geographically distributed (Publisher one node in Australia, Subscriber node in China). Second thing that needed to be taken for consideration were the local law rules.
Gaman team decided to build separate clusters and use not commonly used features to fulfill the customer requirements.
Before the work could begin, all the bugs seen on the solution (CUCM Publisher + CUC), need to be resolved. Gaman team:
Once the work has been completed, Gaman team started to assign local features to China users like voicemail and extension mobility. We also build Jabber profiles for users (for mobile, Windows and Mac). What was also needed at this time and was delivered, was the IM&P functionality between clusters.
Having this part of the project done, Gaman team focused on providing Extension Mobility Cross Cluster (EMCC) to users. This feature allows users to log their extension mobility profiles on the phones that are not assigned to CUCM location. In simple words – Sydney CUCM users can log their profiles on phones controlled by China CUCM.
Last part of the project was the MRA functionality. This step was divided into 2 milestones:
All the features were delivered as expected. The time frame was so wide because all the changes were made on the production environment and the objective was not to have a break during operation hours.
Replace old legacy voice gateways (VG) 2811 with new 2911 in 5 different Australian locations across country (1 HQ, 4 branch offices). Gaman team supported entire operation
remotely. Physical replacement was performed by on-site engineer. Because Cisco 2811 and 2911 are different devices VG configuration had to be adjusted to new Cisco 2911 devices.
During this phase team also migrated all communication protocols to MGCP (pointed as a standard in organization).
The biggest challenge in this project was to unify VG configuration for all sites. Initial configuration looked like it was made by multiple teams.
Gaman team was responsible for installation of the components on the single site BE6K server. Engineers not only installed components but also applied basic system configuration on the systems so they were able to communicate with each other. Business configuration was a matter of our customer - during that time Gaman team has also provided consultancy service for customer.
Upgrade process took around 20h and went smoothly. During day one no major problems were visible from the end user side.