Step by Step Lync 2010 Enterprise Voice with Cisco Call Manager Express (or UC500) Part 1

May 14, 2011

This article will shows how to integrate Lync 2010 and the Cisco Call Manager Express to offer Enterprise Voice capabilities to your Lync installation.

Lab Configuration
The installation has a 4 digit dial plan, all of our Cisco phones are in the 3… range and our Lync users are in the 5… range.

We currently run a UC560 running CME 8.1 so have no access to E.164 support although 8.5 will have support and is coming to the UC500 soon. This document will allow the configuration without using this support so will probably be updated once I can play with 8.5’s E.164 support.

Lync Configuration

Topology Updates
From topology builder we are going to create a new PSTN gateway, to do this expand your site Media Servers and then select your mediation server and select properties to open the following window.

Select the option “New” to create a PSTN gateway, type in the FQDN if you have an A record setup for your phone system OR type the IP address in. Override the port from the default port to 5060 which is the standard port for SIP and CME’s default configuration, finally ensure TCP is set (TLS is out of scope of this document).

Click OK and ensure you publish your topology to your environment.

Trunk Configuration

Now its time to create your PSTN routing

Create the first of our 2 rules, this rule will remove the +44 (UK dialling prefix, replace with your own if outside of the UK) from the beginning of the number dialled from Lync and replace it with a 0 so that the CME can understand the number we are trying to dial.

Our final translation rules is designed to remove the + sign from the from our extensions as they are being dialled, again this is so that the CME can understand what we are sending it.

Normalisation Rules

Normalisation rules are used to try and form an E.164 number from the digits dialled by an end user, for example if you were to dial 01234 567890 from your Lync client the normalisation rule will turn this in to an E.164 of +441234567890 .

Again we are going to create 2 normalisation rules, to create the first select “New” under the “Associated Normalization Rules”.

This rule is going to allow us to dial a PSTN call through the CME device, we are looking for any number that starts with a 0 and is at least 2 characters long, once we have this we are going to remove the 0 and add +44 to form a valid E.164 number.

Rule number 2 allows us to dial an extension on the CME, this rule finds and number beginning with 3 and is 4 digits long and appends + to it.

Now that your configuration is complete ensure that you select Commit All to upload your dial plans back in to Lync.

Route Configuration

The final piece of configuration on Lync is to create a route from Lync to the CME, below is a working configuration that allows all numbers starting +44 and +3 to be sent to the CME. Ensure that you select the previously configured PSTN gateway as well as a PSTN policy.

Now that the Lync configuration is completed, ensure you go to each section and ensure everything is committed. Once you have committed all of the changes leave your Lync installation, get a cup of coffee and let Lync simmer for around 10 minutes to ensure that everything has replicated around.

In Part 2 we will configure Cisco Call Manager Express to work with the above configuration. Click here to go to part 2

Written by James Botham Posted in Lync 2010