Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8: Expert Administration Cookbook

This book is a great resource for the voice engineer that doesn't spend a great deal of time configuring ancillary features of Unified Communications Manager, such as cross-cluster extension mobility or international E.164 dialing. Easy-to-follow recipes with step-by-step instructions make it much faster to configure the features you need without resorting to spelunking through documentation for hours hunting for a missing command. Just like any good cookbook, you'll find yourself relying on the contents many times to make sure everything comes out just right.

Does not explain the concepts very well. This is a good resource if you want to be guided but not understand the overall architecture. I purchased it in the Kindle edition and wanted something that would not only show me, but explain the concepts and an overview. It lacked explanation.

A great book. Several of my co-workers borrow this this.

love it

For the network system administrator, Cisco has extensively built out its CUCM 8. Ezell offers a quickie guide suitable for someone already familiar with the basics of version 8. The book builds upon your acquaintance with E.164 for call routing. You see canonical steps applied by the software that use transformation patterns to normalise phone numbers, especially when the long distance area code and country code are used.CUCM also is used to pass numbers through gateways or trunks, where access codes like 9 or 91 are prepended. We see that Cisco has come out with a concise notation for defining a partition and to specify the prefix digits. While this might initially seem a little obscure, repeated use should make you appreciate the brevity of the syntax.The book covers much else. For example, Chapter 2 delves into how you can control the maximum number of calls between 2 locations. The aim is to not overload the WAN links that travel over the Internet, for that would degrade the quality of most of the calls.CUCM 8 also permits the configuring of transcoders and conference bridges. The business rationale for the latter is simply to minimise the cost of long distance meetings. For this, the text uses G.711 and G.722, but does not explain these. Another reminder that the book is an advanced text.Chapter 8 describes how Cisco has been actively building out phone calls over the Internet to have some nice features unknown in traditional pre-Internet phone systems. One is Extension Mobility. This lets a user move between landline IP phones, where the user can take her phone number and any associated device settings (the text cites the examples of speed dials and services) across these phones. Granted, some readers who might be likely to just use their cellphones could wonder what's the big deal. But the market reality is that in a corporate environment, this partial mimicking by a collective set of landline phones can be quite useful.

Outside of the certification realm there are not a lot of books out there about CallManager version 8, and even fewer that do what the author was able to do with this. In true cookbook fashion, clear instructions are presented for what is in some cases a very complicated topic. Not everything in VoIP is complicated, but for all topics the author provides a section about "how it works". This is an area where the author does a particularly good job above and beyond what is expected in a cookbook in which he breaks down the topic to the reader can do more than just click the box the book told them to. Another portion of the book that I found particularly helpful was the "warnings" and the "tips and tricks". These are basically the gotchas that give us all headaches. I felt empowered by being presented the landmines ahead of time so I could steer clear of the problems the author described. Excellent book and excellent resource that I would recommend to any CUCM VoIP engineer.

Having tons of course materials there was no unique and single source which can be used on daily basis as a reference for Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Filling exactly that gap the book is a very useful tool to configure and manage CUCM step by step. Not only that, in a very short time it became an important reference guide next to our terminal allowing searching and researching much easier and faster as before. Working on Cisco Unified Communications Manager, this book is the must have and I definately recommend it to everybody who is still relying on the tons of different materials arround.

Perfect reference to help fill in the blanks and get the point across with some of the more advanced concepts in Communications Manager.I recently used it on a cutover where I simply didn't have the time to read 100+ pages in various documents, I just needed the cold hard facts in a concise format and this book delivered. A must read for anyone deploying Cisco Voice projects. Can't wait for the UCCX book.