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Webex Calling Hybrid
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Feedback?Integrate Webex Calling Customer Assist call center capabilities into Unified Communications Manager through a hybrid model with seamless call routing and collaboration.
Overview
Webex Calling Hybrid integrates cloud-powered Webex Calling capabilities with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified Communications Manager). Organizations can maintain the stability and reliability of their existing infrastructure while gradually adopting cloud features and AI-driven innovations at their own pace.
Webex Calling now supports hybrid deployment models for AI features, which seamlessly combines the advantages of cloud innovation with the trusted on-premises infrastructure.
The following diagram illustrates the high-level architecture of Webex Calling Hybrid:
Benefits of hybrid architecture integration
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Cloud-powered features for Unified Communications Manager: Brings the advanced capabilities of Webex Calling directly to your existing Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) deployment. You can leverage cloud-powered features without disrupting your current environment.
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Preserve stability and reliability: Maintains the proven stability and reliability of Unified CM that your organization depends on. Continue operating with confidence while extending your communications capabilities.
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Adopt innovation at your own pace: Transitions to cloud features and AI-powered innovations on a timeline that works for your business. Move forward with flexibility—no forced migrations, no unnecessary disruptions.
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Advanced call center features: Provides intelligent, priority-based, and skill-based routing alongside agent management and AI-driven capabilities, such as automated call summaries.
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Unified experience: Maintains directory and presence synchronization through Cloud-Connected UC (CCUC) to ensure a cohesive experience across the organization.
You can invest in a long-term communications platform that meets today’s reliability and business requirements while providing the flexibility to adapt to your future needs. A key feature of this hybrid architecture is Customer Assist.
Customer Assist
Webex Calling now supports hybrid deployment models for Customer Assist, enabling organizations to leverage cloud-based agent capabilities while maintaining their existing on-premises infrastructure. This model supports a phased adoption of advanced customer experience features without requiring a complete telephony infrastructure overhaul. This "partitioned" approach allows businesses to migrate Agents and Supervisors to Webex Calling to utilize advanced Customer Assist features, while the rest of the workforce remains on Unified CM or Dedicated Instance (DI).
Customer Assist is best suited for customers who require basic, professional contact center capabilities and do not need the advanced features of a comprehensive contact center solution.
The solution ensures seamless interaction across platforms and provides the following capabilities:
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Seamless Unified CM Integration and Interoperability: Ensures high-quality call routing and communication between Webex Calling agents and on-premises Unified CM employees through Local Gateway (LGW).
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Webex Calling for Customer Assist agents and supervisors: Users who need advanced contact center functionalities are provisioned on the Webex Calling platform. They use Webex App to access the Customer Assist features and calling capabilities.
Currently, only Webex App users are eligible to serve as agents or supervisors for Customer Assist.
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Enhanced collaboration: Enables hybrid communication between Customer Assist agents (on Webex Calling) and other employees (on Unified CM).
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Integrated Agent and Supervisor Workspace: Agents and supervisors can access an integrated environment within Webex App for calls, messaging, and meetings.
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Flexible PSTN options: Supports Cloud Connected PSTN (CCPP) and premise-based PSTN across both cloud and on-premises platforms.
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Unified CM Directory Synchronization: Automatically synchronizes Unified CM users and entities (with phone numbers or extensions) to Cisco Common Identity. Enable Customer Assist agents on Webex Calling to easily search for and call colleagues on Unified CM. This allows administrators to migrate users by location and assign them as agents within the cloud environment.
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Unified CM with other employees: Other employees within the organization remain provisioned on their existing Unified CM platform.
Key features of Webex Calling Customer Assist
Webex Calling Customer Assist provides the following capabilities:
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Advanced call queues: Supports intelligent routing, queue management, and customizable call flows.
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Agent management: Provides tools for agents to manage their availability, handle calls, and access customer context.
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Supervisor features: Includes real-time monitoring, reporting, and coaching capabilities.
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Analytics and reports: Monitors your environment effectively by using analytics and reports to track live queue status, evaluate agent performance, and access inbound call statistics.
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AI integration roadmap: AI features in Webex App, offering capabilities like caller intent, suggested responses, call summaries, sentiment analysis, and AI assistants.
For more information, see Webex Calling Customer Assist.
Customer onboarding and provisioning
Onboarding prerequisites
You can onboard users in one of the following ways:
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Create a new user—If you want to add new users to your organization and assign licenses to them, see Add users manually in Control Hub and Manage multiple users in Control Hub with the CSV template.
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Migrate existing on-premises users—To use Webex Calling Customer Assist features, on-premises users must transition to a Multi-Tenant environment to join agent queues. For more information on the different migration methods, see Migration tools.
Each agent and supervisor in a hybrid deployment requires a Webex Calling Customer Assist license, which includes a Webex Calling Professional license. For more information, see Purchase license.
Synchronize and migrate users for Customer Assist roles
In Control Hub, administrators can assign Agent or Supervisor roles to specific users based on available license entitlements.
Before you begin
Configure the dial-plan as per your location and region.
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After your partner registers you, sign in to Control Hub. Then, review your organization settings. Ensure that you configure and validate the following:
For users migrating from Unified CM to Webex Calling using the migration tool, only Calling Professional or CX Essentials licenses can be assigned during migration. See Migrate Unified CM data to Webex Calling. |
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To enable Single Sign-On (SSO) on Unified CM-Webex App for basic authentication, see Set up and test Single-Sign-On (SSO). |
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You can set up SSO so that users authenticate with your Enterprise Identity Provider using their Enterprise credentials for logging and calling functionalities. If you have enabled SSO for Cisco Directory Connector integration, the
Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime plug-in is installed. |
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Once users are active in the multi-tenant domain, assign them to their respective Agent or Supervisor roles within Customer Assist. Configuring Customer Assist includes all the Webex Calling professional capabilities, Call Queue features, and some additional key features accessible through Webex App for both agents and supervisors. To add an agent or supervisor and assign roles or queues, see Webex Calling Customer Assist.
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To support hybrid connectivity for on-premises users, configure LGW or PSTN breakout. This facilitates bidirectional call routing between on-premises systems and the Webex Customer Assist queue. For more information, see Dial plan and call routing configuration. For details on the LGW configuration, see Configure Local Gateway on Cisco IOS XE for Webex Calling.
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To improve user, administration, and migration capabilities, Webex Cloud-Connected UC enhances on-premises deployments for Cisco Hybrid Calling. We recommend that you enable the following services on Webex Cloud-Connected UC to gather information about your on-premises deployment and view analytics data:
See Set up Webex Cloud-Connected UC for on-premises devices. |
Dial plan and call routing configuration
This section details the necessary configuration across Webex Calling, the Partner Hosted Gateway (Session Border Controller), and Unified CM to enable seamless call routing and dial plan integration. These steps are important for facilitating calls between the Unified CM environment and Webex Calling, allowing Customer Assist to function as an overlay service.
Dial plan
A dial plan enables you to define a validation criteria for the Dial Number (DN) that an agent uses to sign in to the Agent Desktop, and for the DN that an agent uses for outdialing. You can choose your continent and country to find your outbound and emergency dial plans.
The outbound calling regulates the behavior for calls made to diverse types of destinations.
In Control Hub, confirm that the users have synchronized correctly. Assign the required Webex Calling licenses and configure the appropriate dial plans for each user.
During the transition to allow for coexistence of devices registered on Unified CM and on Webex Calling, the enterprise dial plan on Unified CM needs to be changed so that at least the following requirements can be met:
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The dial plan is primarily based on the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). For Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS) configurations, support for multiple countries is available. This enables flexible dial plan options to meet enterprise requirements. Both Directory Number dialing and Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) dialing are supported.
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The dial plan can be configured to support the following capabilities:
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Standard NANP dialing: Supports 10-digit dialing, 9+1+10-digit dialing, and +1+10-digit dialing (E.164 format) for intra-site, inter-site, and PSTN calls.
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Multi-Country support: Dial plan can be customized to accommodate country-specific dialing requirements within the global enterprise portfolio.
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Custom dialing habits: Additional dialing patterns and habits can be supported based on specific customer requirements and deployment scenarios.
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For more information, see Dial plans by country.
Calling routing
A high-level configuration of the call routing flow required across Webex Calling, Local Gateway, and Unified CM is shown in the following image:
Create a SIP Trunk in Webex Calling
CCPP as a PSTN option is supported for both agents and supervisors on Webex Calling, as well as for users on Unified CM.
This section focuses on the routing infrastructure for the overlay service. You can create a trunk and route group to and from Webex Calling to the Local Gateway. Use this as the standard local gateway configuration for on-premises deployments.
Before you begin
You must onboard customers as Webex Calling Customers and create an initial location.
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To configure a SIP Trunk to a Local Gateway for each customer, sign in to Control Hub, then go to Services > PSTN & Routing > Gateway configurations > Trunk.
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To configure a Route Group and add each trunk to the Route Group, sign in to Control Hub, then go to Services > PSTN & Routing> Gateway configurations > Route Group.
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To configure Local Gateway as the selected PSTN Connection, sign in to Control Hub, then go to Management > Locations > selected a location > PSTN.
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To add the required E.164 numbers to the customer's locations for assignment to Customer Assist Queues or users, sign in to Control Hub, then go to Services > PSTN & Routing > Numbers. |
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To configure dial plans as appropriate for each customer for internal call routing between Webex Calling and Unified CM, sign in to Control Hub, then go to Services > PSTN & Routing > Gateway Configurations > Dial Plans.
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To configure Internal Dialing settings for each customer as appropriate, sign in to Control Hub, then go to Services > Calling > Settings > Service > Internal Dialing or go to Management > Locations > selected a location > Calling > Dialing > Internal dialing.
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Configuring a SIP Trunk in Unified Communications Manager
This section focuses on the routing infrastructure for Unified CM. You can create a trunk and route group to and from Unified CM to the Local Gateway. Use this as the standard Unified CM configuration for Webex Calling.
Before you begin
Unified CM clusters must be version 14 and SUs or version 15 and SUs or later.
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In the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration user interface, choose System > Security > SIP Trunk Security Profile on the publisher node. |
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Create the SIP Trunk Security Profile with the following settings:
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Navigate to Device > Device Settings > SIP Profile, and search and choose the Standard SIP Profile setting.
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Go to Device > Trunk > Add New to configure a logical route to a gatekeeper with the following settings:
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Go to Call Routing > Route/Hunt > Route Pattern to configure route patterns with the following settings:
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Click Save, then click OK. For more information, see Configure Unified CM for Webex Calling.
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