Cisco recently announced that it would stop supporting the built-in free Attendant Console as of Cisco Unified Communications Manager 7.0. Its replacement is Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console which is an OEM from Arc Solutions. For those of you that are not familiar with Attendant Console, it is the software that the front desk receptionist uses to answer and route calls. I have worked with Attendant Console since it was called Web Attendant and it had its short coming, but overall the product worked well for the small and medium-sized business market. That is why I as a little surprised that Cisco decided to remove it from Unified Communications Manager.
If you do a fresh installation of 7.0 you will notice that all the configuration options are still available for Attendant Console, but you will not find the AC installation file under Plug-ins. You can still download it from Cisco.com. If you upgrade to 7.0 from a previous version you will not have an issue.
Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console is supported on the Unified Communications Manager versions 4.3, 5.1, 6.X and 7.0. There is a client and server component to the solution. Server hardware requirements of the Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console are as follow:
• Pentium IV 1 GHz or better
• 1-GB RAM
• 80-GB hard disk drive
• 100/1000 network card
• SVGA (1024 x 768) display card with correct drivers
• Sound card
• Windows 2000 or 2003 Server plus SP2 running Windows English Regional settings
You can install the server software for the Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console to a dedicated hardware server or load it on a desktop PC. For mission-critical installations, a dedicated hardware server is recommended because shutting off the PC server will cause the Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console to lose Cisco Unified Communications Manager connectivity.
Client hardware requirements of the Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console follow:
• Pentium II or III 700 MHz
• 512-MB RAM
• 3-GB available hard disk drive
• 100 network card
• SVGA (1024 x 768) display card with correct drivers
• Sound card
• Windows 2000 Professional or Vista plus SP2 or Windows XP with SP2
The Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console offers a rich set of features, including a call queuing engine, busy status, and directory search capabilities, which are integrated into the Cisco Unified Communications Manager directory and support for Cisco Unified Presence Server. The Cisco Unified Business Attendant Console is available for supporting up to six operator clients per Cisco Unified Communications Manager cluster.