Audiocodes Driver

1. AudioCodes SmartWORKS Drivers. Note: Make sure to install latest WinPCap driver (see above), prior to installing SmartWorks driver. Check, if you using a 32 or 64 bit OS, and select correct drivers. How to check: Click the Windows orb (Start) and then right click ‘Computer’ and select ‘Properties’.
2. AudioCodes Global Services provides services and support around the globe with local presence in six continents. Our versatile team of Professional Engineers and Field Application Engineers have a high level of technical expertise, closely backed by hundreds of AudioCodes’ development engineers.
3. AudioCodes’ One Voice for BroadSoft solution is a comprehensive portfolio of hardware and software products that complement BroadSoft's core BroadWorks and BroadCloud solutions. Together, BroadSoft and AudioCodes enable service providers to deliver superior hosted communications services to their business customers.

• Audiocodes Direct Routing Teams
• Audiocodes Driver Free

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This admin guide section provides a detailed guide about how to configure both Imagicle Cross Platform UC Suite and AudioCodes SBC to document all calls passing through the SBC, thanks to Imagicle Call Analytics application.

Requirements

• Both AudioCodes SBC and Imagicle UC Suite must work in the same time zone, synched against same NTP source.
• Imagicle Call Analytics can correctly handle configurations where the SBC is hooked to PSTN gateways or SIP trunks of a single phone district, in a single Nation. If gateways/Trunks are pointing to different nations or phone districts, in different time zones, local and national call destinations might be wrongly associated.
• SBC should be configured with some translation rules to route PSTN DID calls to PBX, using internal numbering plan.
• SBC sends CDRs via SFTP protocol, therefore it is required to install SFTP Server on Imagicle UC Suite. For this purpose, please follow the guide available here.

UC Suite Configuration

If you got an Imagicle UC Suite prior to 2020.Summer.2 release, please download the following AudioCodes driver files, attached as ZIP archive to this KB article:

• Audiocodes Mediant SW sbc.drv
• DriverPro.tll

Then copy above files here: C:Program Files (x86)StonevoiceASAppsBillybluesEngineDriver

Call Analytics Configuration Wizard

1. From Windows Start menu, please launch 'Imagicle Configure Blue’s Enterprise 4'
2. Add a new PBX, by hitting 'New PBX' button

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3. Enter a name identifying AudioCodes SBC, like 'SbcImagicle' and select 'File Acquisition' entry from TCP/IP connection. Hit Next

4. Enter the Windows folder where AudioCodes CDRs are placed, together with a file retention of 7 days. Hit Next

5. Click on 'Finish' to end the configuration.
   

6. Select SBC Pbx just added and hit 'Edit' to continue the configuration. Hit Next a couple of times, until you reach the driver configuration window. Here please select 'Mediant SW SBC' driver from 'AudioCodes' brand.

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7. Hit Next and then click on 'Edit' button.

8. The SBC configuration window appears. Please enter the following data:

• PSTN Voice Gateway IPs or PSTN SIP Trunk IPs: Please add the IP addresses of all gateways or SIP trunks hooked to PSTN. Those addresses are used to identify external calls. Calls reaching any of these gateways/Trunks are considered external inbound; calls routed to any of these gateways/Trunks are considered external outbound; calls including none of these gateways/Trunks are considered internal.
• Remove these prefixes from external numbers on outgoing calls: Please add here any dial-out prefix to be dialed for an outbound external call. This parameter is optional.
• Remove these prefixes from external numbers on incoming calls: Please add here any prefix which might be added by SBC before routing the incoming external call. This parameter is optional.
• Remove these prefixes from extension number: Please add here any prefix which might be added by SBC before routing internal calls across multiple PBXs. This parameter is optional.

9. Hit OK once done, and then hit Next. Please select 'Import internal calls' only if there are multiple PBXs connected to AudioCodes SBC. Otherwise, just import external calls. Hit Next.

10. Select the Country and Local Area of the Site.

NOTE: Imagicle Call Analytics can correctly handle configurations where the SBC is hooked to gateways or SIP trunks of a single phone district, in a single Nation. If gateways/Trunks are pointing to different nations or phone districts, local and national call destinations might be wrongly associated.

Report Field Labels Update

While AudioCodes SBC provides CDR data in a different format than standard Call Accounting drivers, you must change the label names appearing in Call Analytics reports. Please perform the following SQL queries by using HeidiSQL:

UPDATE NomiCampi set sAlias = 'SourceInterfaceId' where sNomeCampo = 'sLinea' and sNomeTabella like '%Chiamate%'

UPDATE NomiCampi set sAlias = 'DestInterfaceId' where sNomeCampo = 'sCampo1' and sNomeTabella like '%Chiamate%'

Execute the following additional queries to verify that label changes have been correctly accomplished:

SELECT * FROM NomiCampi where sNomeCampo = 'sLinea' and sNomeTabella like '%Chiamate%'

SELECT * FROM NomiCampi where sNomeCampo = 'sCampo1' and sNomeTabella like '%Chiamate%'

AudioCodes Mediant SBC Configuration

SBC should be configured to place CDRs into an Imagicle UC Suite Windows folder. SBC generates CDRs in CSV format and they are transferred to Imagicle Suite via SFTP.

Local Storage Configuration

1. SBC should be instructed to forward call accounting-related CDRs only, to avoid the reception of useless data.
2. Please access SBC web portal and navigate to Troubleshoot → Logging → Logging filters and create a new logging filter including the following parameters:

3. Hit APPLY to save configuration
4. Now it is important to define the SBC's Local Storage, used for CDR buffering before sending them to Imagicle UC Suite server. Navigate to Troubleshoot → Call Detail Record → Call Detail Record settings and enter the following parameters:

• Pending CDR files shows current number of CDRs saved in Local Storage.
• File Size dictates the maximum CDR file size. If exceeded, file is closed, sent to Imagicle UC Suite and a new one is created.
• Number Of Files dictates max number of CDR files that are buffered in SBC's Local Storage. Please configure this parameter to grant enough CDRs buffer during UC Suite is not available or not reachable, otherwise older CDRs are deleted and relevant call data is lost.
• Rotation Period dictates the interval to wait before closing a CDR file, sending it to Imagicle UC Suite and create a new one.
• CDR File Name includes the template in use for generating CDR files, which are queued in Local Storage. You can leave the default template or, better, apply a template which allows to alphabetically sort CDR files and get a chronological order.
• Compression Format should be set to None, otherwise CDRs are sent as ZIPPED files.

6. Now please define a CDR Remote Server where SBC is going to send CDRs, saved into Local Storage, to Imagicle UC Suite server via SFTP protocol. Navigate to Troubleshoot → Call Detail Record → SBC CDR Remote Servers and create a new CDR Remote Server pointing to UC Suite's IP on port 22, with same credentials specified during manual SFTP Server installation:

7. Hit APPLY to save configuration
8. Once SBC configuration is accomplished, AudioCodes CDRs are sent to this UC Suite folder:

08 Jan AudioCodes OVOC Device Management

Audiocodes Direct Routing Teams

The latest version of the One Voice Operations Centre includes support for native Microsoft Teams phones. This is good news as to date the management story for Audiocodes phones has been limited to the Microsoft Teams Admin Centre (MTAC) which is mostly just management of the Teams App that runs on the phone hardware with ancillary support for some device related settings. Management is always an important part of the device story so that admins can carry out operational related tasks such as patching, modifying device related settings, as well as allowing for bulk or per device changes. OVOC includes device management within the product and incidentally can also be used to manage SIP, 3PIP (Skype for Business), as well as their new Room Experience (RX) devices and even 3rd party vendors such as Jabra and Polycom.

In this post I’m going to focus on some of the challenges, tools, and requisites for managing AudioCodes Teams devices.

Overall Teams device management is still a fairly nascent area at present, and I’ve experienced past difficulties when using the MTAC to manage AudioCodes devices with devices not showing at all, or showing as offline meaning they could neither be managed or patched from the MTAC. In addition AudioCodes Teams phones don’t include an admin web UI either (Note: The admin web UI is available when in 3PIP mode).

The admin web UI usually allows an administrator to browse to a phones IP address and modify device related settings manually such as specifying the device management server, or network related settings or to update firmware and so on. Unfortunately the only way to manage any native Audiocodes Teams phone settings is from the phone itself, or via Command Line Interface via SSH to the phone. Although inconvenient this is fine for a few devices but certainly wouldn’t work well at scale when dealing with hundreds of devices.

Manual Update – CLI

Manual updates via Command Prompt are very straight forward. In my example i’m using a C450HD but the same command should work on any native Teams phone EG C470HD or C448HD.

Open a command prompt and ensure the update is in the same directory path where the command prompt is running. This command copies the firmware to the phone using the Secure Copy Protocol (SCP)

Once copied to the phone the update can be run with the following command substituting the IP address below for the IP address of your phone of course. The phone should then automatically reboot and the new firmware will be burnt to the flash memory.

See chapter 6 (page 65) Updating Firmware Manually

Manual Update – GUI

If like me you’re not a fan of the command line Audiocodes do have a stand alone GUI tool that can help simplify bulk firmware updates. Its also a great debugging tool and has many more really useful features such as Screen recording, Screen Capture, downloading Call Logs, switching between Teams/Skype modes, Factory Reset, Syslog and more.

Under the hood this tool is still using SSH to connect to the phone. But if the MTAC or OVOC isn’t available and you only have a handful of phones bulk updates can be accomplished easily by updating a text file with your phone IP addresses, browsing to your firmware and then hit submit. All phones in your list will be updated sequentially.

Device Manager

OVOC Version 7.8.2241 is the current and latest version of OVOC required for native Teams support. Device Manager Pro is the specific component within OVOC that’s used for managing phones. Your OVOC instance will need to include enough Endpoint licenses for the devices you intend to manage.

It is possible to load configuration files, firmware , customized configurations on a per phone model, tenant and device and even provide a zero touch configuration so that phones are automatically configured and provisioned as soon as they’re added to the network.

Note: At present the following features are supported on native Teams Phones:

Upgrading OVOC

Upgrading OVOC is quite straight forward. In my case I was running version 7.8.2000 so had to upgrade OVOC first before I could see the new Teams configuration settings.

Firstly ensure you have a working backup before you proceed with an upgrade. I’ve had a few experiences in the past where my OVOC server has been bricked by an update. In my case my OVOC server is running in Azure so I’m using Azure Backup to backup the server on a weekly basis.

Audiocodes Driver Free

You’ll need a copy of the OVOC ISO before you can proceed with the upgrade as this ISO must be copied to your OVOC server and then mounted so the upgrade can start. Note: I’m assuming you have working knowledge of OVOC if you need to complete the steps below!

Once the ISO is copied to the /home/acems directory you can start the upgrade by following the short steps Upgrading the OVOC server using an ISO file on page 139 here.

When the upgrade has finished check that the services on the OVOC server are started.

Configuration

There’s a few ways Audiocodes Native Teams phones can connect to OVOC.

1. Directly over your network (LAN/WAN/MAN)
2. Via a Device Management Agent
3. A new API that allows devices to send keep alive messages to OVOC every minute

1) Direct connectivity is straight forward but assumes layer 3 connectivity is in place between your phones and the OVOC server. This can be over a WAN LAN or even via a VPN.

2) This requires the installation of management agents which essentially proxy requests from your phones to the OVOC server. This option is generally used when your phones are behind a NAT and your phones don’t have direct network connectivity to the OVOC server. Installation of the Device Agent is covered here and I won’t be covering this option in this blog post.

3) This a new option included in the latest OVOC 7.8 release notes (See page 24 Section 4.4) here. This option could prove to be quite useful as if your OVOC server is off-net, EG in a public Cloud like Azure (As is the case with my OVOC server) then this could mean management agents are no longer necessary to deal with NAT. With the move to the cloud many customers will be managing their phones via the Cloud while the phones will be behind NAT routers. Both Yealink and Poly are able to handle this quite easily via YMCS and PDMS respectively so it would be good to see an equivalent solution from Audiocodes that doesn’t require additional components to provide connectivity to OVOC.

I elected to go with the Direct Connectivity option and have a Site to Site VPN configured from my on-premises firewall to Azure. Management Agents typically require a few more configuration steps and I wanted to keep my configuration as simple as possible so VPN it is!

From my C450HD you can see the echo responses below from the OVOCs internal IP address.

The following steps assume you now have an updated, working and licensed OVOC server.

Step 1) Log into Device Manager Pro

From the Dashboard select Device Manager. Unfortunately OVOC doesn’t support SSO and because Device Manager Pro is effectively a bolted on application to OVOC you’ll need to enter your credentials again to login. You can also use the default acladmin account to login here.

Step 2) Setup wizard

The phones need to have DHCP options configured before they can contact OVOC to get their configuration. DHCP is mandatory here as unlike 3PIP phones it isn’t possible to configure the OVOC server IP address manually on a native Teams phone. The OVOC server must be provided via DHCP.

Select the setup wizard.

As there’s no Teams option here select Skype for Business.

I opted to use Zero Touch as this option allows you to be granular with your DHCP options and target a specific tenant within OVOC as OVOC supports multi-tenancy.

On the next page choose your tenant. For the purposes of expediency i left the Tenant Configuration unconfigured. There’s a lot of options that can be configured here. All the supported parameters for native Teams phones can be found here.

Under Choose Template choose the template for your phone. In my case I’m using the C450HD so choose the Audiocodes_C450HD_TEAMS template.

Finally the DHCP Configuration will show you the URL you need to configure in your DHCP for your phones so they can contact OVOC. You’ll need to make note of the URL so it can be pasted into your DHCP server. Note: As mentioned earlier i could see no way to configure a URL directly on my C450HD, so you must use DHCP to push the option 160 to your phone.

Step 3) Configure your DHCP

I configured the following string value below per the output from the OVOC wizard.

Step 4) Check your phone has received option 160

As AudioCodes Teams phones are limited to CLI admin access only you need to SSH into your phone and run the following command param_tool pmp provision which will show the DHCP provisioning URL.

Now go back to the Device Manager Portal (OVOC) and you should see a registered phone!

Conclusion

Its great to see OVOC finally supporting Teams phones but there’s still much work to be done to improve the overall solution. The UI isn’t the most intuitive and there’s a lot of menu options that seem to be a legacy from the original IP Phone Manager product. I also found some of the menu buttons don’t work such as Telnet or Send Message.

Likewise because Audiocodes native Teams phones have no admin web UI the Open Web Admin obviously doesn’t work either. Admin web UI’s are very useful if for whatever reason an administrator needs to manage settings directly on a phone either for troubleshooting or ease of administration. Seems odd this is included in 3PIP mode but has been omitted for Teams mode.

Some of the other features I missed were being able to export diagnostic logs, screen capture, screen recording, exporting the phone config, factory reset, network detection and more. Some of these can be accomplished using the Teams Phone GUI V1.0.10 tool but it would be a great to see these features baked into OVOC.

While its very straight forward to install OVOC into any cloud of your choice it would be good to see a pure SaaS equivalent provided by AudioCodes that can compete with the likes of Yealink YMCS, Poly PDMS-E and LENs or even Crestron XiO who all have their own SaaS/Cloud solutions for device management. SaaS naturally saves the additional overhead of standing up and maintaining infrastructure while providing a faster time to market with a per user per month model that’s usually not as Capex intensive as building your own infra.

Id also like to see some form of API hook to the Microsoft Teams Admin Centre as this would provide one pane of glass for management and would save administrators from having to use OVOC just for device management while still having to rely on Teams Powershell or MTAC for any Teams Phone App related settings. This would help to streamline the admin experience rather than the current bifurcated approach that still requires some settings to managed via Teams and device specific settings to be managed from your phone manager.

Lastly it would be good to see AudioCodes leverage HTTPs for auto provisioning of phones. Not only because its firewall friendly protocol but it also helps simplify the phone management solution topology -by not requiring the use of management agents to handle NAT connectivity- and would also help facilitate Cloud adoption. Phone management is absolutely a service that can and should be delivered from the Public Cloud. Having to deploy VPNs or management agents is an undesirable maintenance and cost overhead and even more so when other phones vendors are able to provision phones to their Cloud using HTTPs already.