Friday, December 19, 2008

Important Mitel Live Business Gateway 3.1 Patch Release

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Mitel Live Business Gateway 3.1 Patch Release

Summary:

Mitel is pleased to announce the general availability (GA) of a patch release for Mitel Live Business Gateway
release 3.1. This patch release adds a number of important enhancements to Live Business Gateway release 3.1
providing improved integration between Mitel 3300 IP Communications platform (ICP) and Microsoft Office
Communications Server (OCS) 2007. The Live Business Gateway release 3.1 patch release will be generally
available from December 15, 2008. Read this entire article to read  exactly what the new features and benefits are. Special thanks to my buddy John de Breij,

Mitel Benelux & Nordics
e-mail: john_de_breij@mitel.com

Product Overview / Features & Benefits / Description

Live Business Gateway allows the OCS 2007 to communicate with a 3300 ICP and enables a user to place and receive calls from the
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 via a Mitel IP desktop phone. It also provides Communicator 2007 and the Microsoft Office system with the telephony status of enterprise users. The combination of OCS 2007 and Live Business Gateway enhances information worker productivity and greatly improves business process efficiencies by combining a wide range of collaboration tools with Mitel’s trusted IP
telephony solution.

Live Business Gateway release 3.1 provides standards-based (SIP/CSTA) connectivity to Office Communications Server 2007 via a single platform design.

Live Business Gateway release 3.1 provides access to key business resources in the moment they are needed, resulting in faster decision making and issue resolution by integrating the 3300 ICP with OCS 2007 and Communicator 2007.

Please refer to the Live Business Gateway release 3.1 bulletin PB20070153 and the Live Business Gateway product overview and data
sheet available from Mitel OnLine (MOL) for more details.
Live Business Gateway 3.1 Patch Release

The Live Business Gateway 3.1 patch release adds support for a number of important features:

Single Step Transfer
The single step transfer mechanism was changed between LCS 2005 and OCS 2007, as a result Live Business Gateway 3.1 was not
able to able to support single step transfer. This issue has been resolved with the Live Business Gateway 3.1 patch release.
There are now two ways to transfer a call using Live Business Gateway:

Single step transfer (blind transfer)

• During an active call, in the conversation window, click the transfer icon
• Select the transfer option
• Enter a phone number or select the contact to who you want to transfer the call
• Click OK to complete the call transfer

Consultation transfer


• During an active call, start a second call by entering a number or selecting a name from the main Communicator window and
pressing enter. The first call is put on hold,
and a second conversation window opens for the new call
• When the called party answers, transfer the call by clicking the transfer icon and selecting the name and number of the original
caller

Incoming Digit Modification

This is a new feature within Live Business Gateway. This feature has been added to provide improved deployment options within an
OCS 2007 and Microsoft Exchange environment where reverse number lookup can be a problem due to the different number formats used by OCS 2007 and Exchange. While this is not really a Live Business Gateway problem, Live Business Gateway can add value by providing an incoming digit modification feature.
The number format for incoming calls can be modified by Live Business Gateway, this can be used to convert a number into E.164 format or to amend / append digits to an existing E.164 number. A new incoming digit modification (IDM) tab has been added to the Windows® and Mitel Standard Linux (MSL) control panel tablet. Each ICP programmed has its own inbound digit modification list.
A link has been added to the ICP list to manage incoming digit modification.
A new rule has been added to the end of the list.
The administrator has the ability to move the rule up and down.
The new incoming digit modification tab is similar to the ICP tab with the add, remove, modify, move up, and move down buttons.
These buttons are disabled when the service is running.
The new incoming digit modification tab is shown below. The diagram below shows the interface for Windows, a similar tab is available for MSL environments. For full configuration and programming details please see the Live Business Gateway 3.1 Installation &
Maintenance guide available from MOL.

Improvements to the Outgoing Digit Modification Table


The Live Business Gateway 3.1 patch release contains an enhancement to the existing digit modification tab. This is to provide more
flexibility for digit manipulation especially in E.164 or Microsoft Exchange environments, Exchange and OCS 2007 support different
E.164 number formats.
Exchange stores internal numbers as E.164 global numbers.
In order for Live Business Gateway to dial global E164 numbers as internal numbers, a change to the Live Business Gateway digit
modification table has been made.

Example:
Administrator programs the following DigitMod pair:
The leading digits field is 1613592
The replacement digits field is left blank
If the administrator does not want Live Business Gateway to apply ARS digits to the outgoing number that matches the rule, then the "ignore ARS digits" check box is checked.
If there is a request (say, MakeCall) for "tel:+16135925660"
Since the replacement digits is blank, Live Business Gateway will strip "1613592" from the TEL URI ==> "5660" and treat it as an
internal number. ARS will NOT be applied to this number.
The call will be attempted for "5660" without any further modification.
The new improved digit modification tab is displayed below.

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For full configuration and programming details please see the Live Business Gateway 3.1 Installation & Maintenance guide available
from MOL.

Support for Dual Forking with Remote Call Control (RCC)


Dual forking with remote call control (RCC) is targeted at users who want the combination of using their Communicator client with a Mitel desk phone when based in the office or at their home location (using a Mitel Teleworker Solution phone) and using Communicator
as a SIP softphone when travelling or away from their desk phone.
When the user selects “computer mode” for softphone selection, the audio is handled by the computers audio devices (speaker /
headset / microphone). When the user selects “phone mode” for integration with the Mitel desk phone, the audio is handled through the 3300 ICP and the Mitel desk phone.
When a Communicator user is configured for dual forking with RCC, the Communicator user can toggle between their preferred mode of operation depending on their location.
The reference to dual forking is due to the fact that a call presented to a user's desk phone is "forked" using Mitel Unified
Communicator® (UC) Mobile (formerly Mitel Mobile Extension) technology to the user's Communicator softphone, in addition a call presented to a user's Communicator softphone is also "forked" by OCS 2007 so that the call is also presented to the user's Mitel IP phone.
The diagram below shows the connectivity diagram.

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When a call is received, the Communicator softphone and the Mitel desk phone will ring simultaneously. A single incoming call
notification (also known as a "toast") will be presented to the user's personal computer (PC) showing the name and / or telephone number of the caller*. When the user clicks “answer call” , the user’s preferred calling device will answer the call.
Dual forking with RCC is supported using a combination of the 3300 ICP release 8.0 UR3 and above, UC Mobile release 1.6 and
above, Live Business Gateway 3.1 patch release and Direct SIP connectivity between the 3300 ICP and the Microsoft Mediation server.
The Microsoft Mediation server software is provided by Microsoft as part of the OCS 2007 solution.
In order to support dual forking with RCC, the Communicator client has to "merge" the two incoming calls presented from the 3300 ICP.
For the Communicator client to be able to "merge" the two incoming calls, the calling device ID from both the Live Business Gateway and SIP trunk has to be the same. Since the calling device ID must be in E.164 format, Live Business Gateway is now able to modify the incoming digit format so that it is in E.164 format and matches the incoming digit format of the call being presented from the 3300 ICP across the SIP trunk. The "add +" check box within the incoming digit modification table should be checked if dual forking with RCC is required.
* If the incoming call is presented without the calling line identification (CLI), then two incoming call notifications will be presented to the user. To answer the call using the Mitel phone select the incoming call notification that displays “unidentified caller". To answer the call using the Communicator softphone select the incoming call notification that displays “+ xxxxxx”
Full configuration and set up details for implementing dual forking with remote call control will be available in a Knowledge Base article (08-4355-00001) that will be posted to MOL.

Upgrading to Live Business Gateway

Existing Live Business Gateway customers can upgrade to release 3.1.0.13 free of charge. Release 3.1.0.13 is available as a software
download from MOL from December 1, 2008.
Please see the Live Business Gateway release 3.1 Installation & Maintenance guide and MSL Installation and Administration Guide
available from MOL for full upgrade instructions and configuration details.

2 comments:

Armdillo On Fire said...

3.1.0.16 was released some time in the past couple weeks, any information you have on that update would be most appreciated since Mitel hides away it's release notes in restricted areas of it's website not accessible to end-use customers such as myself.

It would also be terrifically useful if someone could assemble configuration examples and hints similar to the ones you have posted for the Windows version of LBG software particular to the Mitel Linux version of the application. They are similar enough that most settings for the Linux version can be inferred from looking at what you have shown us for the Windows version, but also different enough that some of the settings on the Linux product remain beyond easy comprehension (and largely undocumented). The reason this is increasingly important is that many of the major Mitel vendors have choosen to discontinue availability of the Windows version of the product and no longer support it. I believe it is slated to be discontinued by Mitel corporate as well... or at least that is what I am being told by vendors.

Cheers.

Joachim Farla said...

Tenx to John de Breij (Mitel)

The Linux version is identical from a functionality point of view besides the fact the the logging tool delivered with LBG is realtime on the windows version and “historical” on the Linux one. This sometimes makes debugging a little difficult. We normally tend to use the Windows version in most of our (Benelux) installs, either as an application on its own server or virtualized on an existing server. So if there is not a direct need for the linux version, most OCS customers tend to use Windows….., we always advise the windows version.

Discontinuing the LBG for Windows is simply not true, don’t know who told you that but that wouldn’t make any sense