Micollab Setup and Maintenance

[BobbyMitel]

Hi All -

We have Micollab for our company, about 60 licenses.  The end goal is for executive management to make and receive calls on their desk/cell phone from anywhere at anytime.  I wasn't involved in the initial setup a few years ago but I always thought it was too much work.  From our support, that's just how Mitel is but I wanted to post to see if there are any easier/better ways.  We are required to link the Micollab soft phone/conferencing to our AD for authentication.  The old setup was... User is in the PBX, add external hot desk and soft phone with their prime ext already there.  Jump over to the Teleworker server and setup SIP for the soft phone.  Jump over to the MiCollab server and DELETE the user from users.  Find the user in bulk provisioning and set everything back up again.  Send out the deployment email, done.  It can't all just be done in one place??

Anyways...Flow Through Provisioning has been setup and nothing works like before.  Once you get to the Micollab server and delete the user, it semi deletes it from the PBX and leaves the extension "In Use"... The user never shows in bulk provisioning.  A complete resync was needed and my support setup templates for each situation.  Here are a few situations.  1.  New user to company  2.  New user to company with a hot desk  3.  Existing user with hot desk...  Etc etc.  Mass amounts of extra steps and we eventually were able to setup a Micollab user.  The support is telling us to avoid the soft phone as its not reliable and to only use External Hot Desking.  Is that accurate?  Is this hurting us in anyway?  Staff will still have the App on the phone and will be able to use the menu buttons and call exts... Just wondering.

What is the best way to set this up?  I was told that on the initial setup... AD would be configured in a different way that would make everything easier BUT it would cause issues when the person was deprovisioned out of AD.  They thought that it would delete the phone along with voicemails, etc. For liability and compliance, we need to retain voicemails for a certain period before they are deleted.  I have thought of ways to have this setup and still retain voicemails but wanted to make sure there is another way for AD to work.

Any help would be great.  I've never understood the amount of work it takes with Mitel to get simple, everyday tasks done.  If two staff members started that would need Micollab... Between removing, adding, setting up the phone with the deployment email and QR code... We are looking at 60-90 minutes for two people?  Just doesn't seem right. 

Thanks!

[VinceWhirlwind]

I agree with your general observation - when I first was confronted with provisioning users on Mitel I thought I was having a very bad dream. And if you think that's bad, you should try provisioning users as ACD agents with MiCollab and Ignite accounts - now *that* is insane...
 
Having said that, you shouldn't be doing anything on the controller. Things are in fact better than they seem.

1. New user gets added to AD
2. MiCollab sync with AD
3. Provision user from IDS in MiCollab using the correct template
--> the template should include 3 phones:
 - main extn 1234,
 - "mobile" 1*1234 setup as a external hot desk
 - "softphone" 12*34 setup as a UC endpoint
(the user needs a multi-device licence so that these get created in an MDUG numbered 1234 on the controller)
The user should have UC assigned on the User tab as well as the MiCollab Client tab, and in the MiCollab Client server the account should have the softphone feature enabled.

[BobbyMitel]

Thanks, Vince.  I see some conflicts.  Our support setup templates based on their setup, user is new but has a hot desk, etc.  While you are saying there should be templates (3 only) for prime ext., hot desk ext and soft phone.  As for not touching the controller, my support said I have to go in there to setup the Multi Device User groups page correctly. 

With what you described, Micollab syncs with the PBX and has no ties to AD....so we were told to delete from Micollab and add through bulk provisioning which is tied to AD.  Are you saying that we should do all work from Micollab and never from the PBX?  Would this solve all the sync and AD issues?

Greatly appreciate your help.

Thanks
Bobby

[VinceWhirlwind]

One MiCollab template, with 3 phones in it.
Having the correct UCC profile on the template creates the MDUG groups automatically.
Yes, it's the MiCollab that needs to be synced with the AD, not the controller.
Creating a user with a UCC template will add them to the controller and use up a multi-device user licence.
 
If you still have users/devices that aren't going to have UC nor MDUG groups then you create a template for them on the MiCollab server, with no UCC in the profile, and just the 1 phone. When you create these, they will use an IP user licence, if available.
Provision everything on the MiCollab except for analog extensions.

[eugenej]

Think they've come a long way in the provisioning department. My response here probably does not add a whole lot to resolving your problem but I'm hope at the very least allay some of your fears around managing the system.

As stated not everything is great, especially ACD users.

With Flow through provisioning, getting users configured with all the relevant services is pretty slick in my opinion. room for improvement as is always the case.
The notion around 60-90 minutes to setup two users due to the inherent cumbersome process involved is not accurate at all. The issue is probably more around experience and exposure. My guess is you likely wouldn't feel this way if all the pieces are aligned, properly.

Vince has highlighted the process. notwithstanding that there is some background things that need to be configured first (alignment of the pieces as stated earlier) but this is typically a tech or engineer's competence so they should have done this already.

Things do get more tricky in a Multi MiCollab setup and multicluster setup but I don't think this is your issue. Certificate, firewall and inherent network architecture challenges also add to this but it's par for course.
Think they can definitely improve the way MiCollab does the delete feature especially in a scenario like yours where the user was still logged in. that does cause a lot of headaches. To avoid this, make sure the user is logged out first

I can say with relative certainty that user provisioning is a focus area in the dev cycles for the portfolio.

All the best

[VinceWhirlwind]

Removing a user should be done by disabling their account in AD. Next time you sync the MiCollab with AD, a "D" record will appear for that user.
Always assume the user is logged in.
On the controller, "BUSY RESET nnnn" their extension to log them out.
Then in MiCollab IDS, tick the user's "D" record and click "save". This removes them.
 
I think my main gripe with user provisioning right now is that I can't (or haven't figured out how to) create a Key template on the controller that I can then link to a specific "phone" in a MiCollab template. If I add keys to the "default" key template, user provisioning fails because it tries to apply the default key template to all phones, including EHDU and softphones.
I haven't investigated this exhaustively on v8 yet.
 
This is where Mitel could step in and provide a "cookbook" for all these really obvious requirements that everybody is going to have. I've spoken to customers who think the product is way more limited than it is because their Mitel techs are having to figure this stuff out on the fly and they don't always succeed.

[Tech Electronics]

VinceWhirlwind,

I don't know about previous versions, but in 8.0 SP1 you can create a key template for each phone within a Role Template. I just got done doing this in my first installation and the issue I had was that you need to make sure that the Role Template always takes the updates/changes from the MiCollab if you create them there. I found out too late in the process that sometimes the templates are not updated properly and when phones are created you get a lot of garbage because of it.

Thanks,

TE

[VinceWhirlwind]

OK, I had one play with v8 and it didn't work. Will have another go this afternoon.

[Tech Electronics]

VinceWhirlwind,

Here is a picture of how I see each phone within a template on 8.0 SP1. If I click on any of the three phone I can assign a different key template to them.

Thanks,

TE