In January 2010, MN.IT SERVICES began using the Cisco TelePresence Management Suite (CTMS) with auto-launch conference capabilities and scheduling. MN.IT SERVICES, or your group's designated scheduler, will assist you to include locations outside your business group, this includes any system than can be reached by IP, ISDN or Switched-56. Note that court owned systems (located in court or hearing rooms) normally dial into a conference manually. Contact the MN.IT Service Management Center if you need to include a court system or are unsure how to schedule them properly (setting them as dial-in) if you have CTMS rights to do so.
TMS uses browser popups for some functions, so you need to turn off your browser.s popup blocker. If you can turn the popup blocker off by IP, allow pop ups from 156.98.1.21.
Contact the MN.IT Service Management Center or open an online service request. You will be asked to choose a password (or MN.IT SERVICES will create one for you). The password needs to have at minimum of 8 characters, contain a mix of upper & lower case letters at least 1 number & 1 non-alphanumeric character.
MN.IT SERVICES offers video training for new CTMS users. Please contact the MN.IT Service Management Center or click on THIS link.
CTMS automatically sends a notification email to each person associated with a particular room system, and to any Jabber users invited. Room systems can have one or more mailbox associations. Be aware that ONLY the conference owner (the person who booked the event or has been designated my as the owner by MN.IT) can monitor said conference with CTMS.
If you are booking non-MNET locations or higher education systems, it is up to the scheduler to obtain the proper permissions and notify the appropriate people. CTMS will accept additional email addresses when scheduling (optional). Include the email addresses of anyone you want notified. Most people would rather get more than one notification than no notification and will let you know if the extras are troublesome. If you know of an MNET system contact that is not getting properly notified (even if that person is you), contact the MN.IT Service Management Center with the following information when you put in the request:
It is always a good idea to add some pretest time into the conference time. For example, if the conference will start at 10:00 and run till 11:00, you should schedule it for 9:30 to 11:00 and put the following in the Notes area:
Conference starts at 10:00, if dialing in please connect at 9:30 to allow time to solve any possible issues.
MN.IT SERVICES recommends you do not use CTMS. buffer time entry at all.
Practically speaking, conferences over 30 locations are not recommended. MN.IT SERVICES has 160 MCU ports available for all MNET video customers. TCMS will track resources and warn you if there are insufficient resources for your conference, in which case you can reschedule, consider multiple sessions, or have some attendees attend by phone. Call the Service Management Center for assistance if necessary. If absolutely necessary, you can build a larger conference by setting the distribution attribute, under Connections Settings, to Best Impression. Unless you have experience doing this, please contact MN.IT Services for guidance.
If your conference will not include content (screen information from a computer, document camera, VCR or DVD ), set Dual Video Stream: to OFF in the MCU Settings Tab when scheduling. This tab will only become visible if you click on either the Connection Settings or Conference Information tab after adding your participants. Leaving Dual Video Stream set to ON reserves an additional video resource on the MCU, decreasing the number of available ports for others.
When adding your sites, the pop-up screen that displays your room choices, displays 10 sites by default. This can be increased by setting a larger number in the Page Size field at the bottom of the Site-Add pop-up screen.
A monitoring function in CTMS is available to valid users. You will only be able to view conferences you've scheduled. This is one of the reasons why a group ID is best for scheduling within agencies.
If the resources are available, the designated master site will see an on-screen prompt to extend the meeting. (Note that only Cisco systems can be designated as the master.) These prompts will continue until your meeting is over, or until there are insufficient resources to allow an extension. If a designated master site is unavailable for your conference, your only option will be to change the end-time (or duration) in the monitoring screens by clicking the Settings button, or calling the MN.IT Services Management Center as soon as you.re aware an extension is needed. Conference Master designations can only go to Cisco branded systems, and the master site has not hung up.
When you request a list of your conferences, you will be presented with a week's worth of conferences. Manually set the start and end dates to find the conference to be edited. You will only see conferences you've scheduled. This is one of the reasons why a group ID is best for scheduling. If you know the conference ID enter that in the search box in the upper right and click on the magnifying glass icon.
Leave it blank. If it persists, put G46PPWVIDTMS001 in the domain field.
Locations scheduled into a conference will receive a notification when scheduled, and if the conference time or duration is changed or the conference is canceled. Notifications will be sent to all persons designated to receive notifications for that system. Consult the CTMS context-sensitive help for detailed descriptions of additional notification types.
At this time the only CDR information is what CTMS makes available. CTMS really only tracks when the room was booked, used or not. MN.IT Services reviewed several systems that generate more accurate records, but none were anywhere close to cost effective. By the end of August 2015, there will be some call records available. They will most likely still be in the trial stages and possibly not .officially. supported by Cisco. Sort of a .use at your own risk feature..
For point-to-point calls: try dialing their IP address, or have them dial yours. If the video is broken or poor, there will be nothing the video support team can do. Reconnecting at a lower bandwidth sometimes helps. Being Internet connections, MN.IT SERVICES will have no control over the delivery of the audio/visual data. Having a great experience with off-net site X in the morning, could be poor to horrid later in the day. Off-net IP calls are always .caller beware.. That being said, the vast majority of these connections are good to excellent. Unfortunately there are too many factors that can adversely impact Internet connected systems to predict connection quality.
Bridged calls to sites that have tested with MN.IT, can be added by clicking on the External tab in the Add Sites dialog box. Keep in mind that IP addresses starting with 10. or 192.168, or 172.16 thru .31, cannot accept incoming calls. Those locations will need to initiate the call.
For conferences hosted on an MN.IT SERVICES video bridge: the ISDN system will need to be certified by MN.IT Services video staff. If we have never connected to that location before, a certification test is required. Always contact the Service Management Center for assistance in scheduling ISDN locations.
Some systems come with a telephone add-in feature. This feature is rare and becoming less common. Assuming your system does not have this capability, Contact the Service Management Center. MN.IT has the ability to add a few voice-only connections to a videoconference. This is the preferred way to connect phone-only participants. The MCU will apply the proper delay to help you avoid talking over each other. Telephone toll and/or usage charges may apply. A speakerphone will do in a pinch but are difficult for the non-local participants to hear. The same goes for the person at the other end of the speakerphone.
CTMS generates tickets for many different reasons. MN.IT SERVICES will act on any and all tickets that are valid and require attention. MN.IT SERVICS video staff keeps tabs on CTMS reported issues, acting on them if necessary. One item of note is the Critical Ticket informing you that you're your system is registered to a gatekeeper different than the one configured. This is not a critical issue. All MN.IT SERVICES gatekeepers have an alternate and systems can switch to the alternate for a variety of reasons. Unless you are unable to call another MNET system by dialing its E.164 identifier, this ticket type can be ignored. Technical issues are handled separately by the Service Management Center.
Listing conferences is done under the booking menu (be sure to set the proper time window) and check the box to the left of the one you want to delete or copy. You can check multiple boxes when deleting. Another way to find a booked conference is to search for it, in which case you do not need to set the date range.
Simply check the recurring box and fill in daily, weekly, monthly or the dates/times as appropriate. Hourly is not available at this time. The recurring box will be visible when you book your conference. There us a semi-circular arrow to the right of a conference in .show conferences. screen to indicate it is a recurring event.
MN.IT Services has resources to encode up to 5 simultaneous live streams or 12 on-demand, depending on expected audience size and streaming bit-rate. Please call Service Management Center to request any streaming. This is a billable, or contracted service. Captioning or signers that may be needed are handled by the host site.
If you have a VCR, DVR or DVD recorder and your system is properly optioned, you can record it yourself. If the previous option is not available, call the Service Management Center and request a recording. MN.IT SERVICES records by using streaming technology for maximum flexibility. Once captured on the PC it can be accessible via URL or burned to DVD, VCD (max 62 minutes) or VHS. This is a fee-based (or contracted) service. Events can be streamed live and archived at the same time. MN.IT Services may be able to include special features, such as password protection, or IP address limitations under certain circumstances. Call the Service Management Center if needed.
You can add a WebEx session to your meeting but you cannot schedule it through CTMS. Because we are a statewide agency/county/courts service provider, we are unable to use the technologies that permit automatic billing. To use WebEx or similar services contact the Service Management Center, for information, instructions and limitations.
Is there any special considerations for naming my conference?
YES. Conference titles should be kept to 40 characters or less and must limit non-alphanumeric characters to (, ), . or _. Use of $, #, %, / or * should never be part of a conference name.
Yes, all three will work. However, while scheduling, TMS will use pop-ups. If your popup blocker is on, turn it off. If you are not sure, watch for messages telling you a pop-up was blocked if CTMS does not respond after a reasonable wait (up to 2 minutes during busy times). You will get a pop-up when you add sites to your conference. If your IT policies prohibit you from allowing pop-ups, contact your IT or computer support staff and ask that you be allowed to get pop-ups from CTMS (IP address 156.98.1.21). Also be aware that CTMS makes use of Java, and some Java versions may cause unexpected results.
These are not used as they tend to cause confusion. If you need pretest time, set your start time to include it.
