Configuring Call Authorizations

  • Article

Configuring call authorization consists of defining phone usage records and Voice policies.

  • Phone usage records are named classes of calls that specify which call routes a user is authorized to use, facilitating enforcement of both dialing authorization and route utilization. Phone usage records are similar to what in traditional telephony is known as "class of service," but phone usage records offer greater flexibility because they are applied to both users and routes, making it possible to formulate very precise phone authorizations for both individuals and groups. You specify a phone usage record as an arbitrary label that enables you to identify a category of call destinations. You can name phone usage records whatever you like, but the names should be easily recognizable. For example, typical phone usage records might include "Local," "Area Code," "State," "Province," "USA," "Singapore," and "International." After creating phone usage records, you then assign them to both policies and routes. Planning phone usage records consists primarily of listing all the current call permissions for your organization, and then determining the permissions for which to create phone usage records. Phone usage records are assigned to both routes and users for the purposes of specifying call authorization. A single user can have multiple phone usage records. Phone usage records provide a quick, simple way to assign call permissions to users as well as facilitate route prioritization and selection. By assigning phone usage records to both user policies and outbound call routes, you indicate which users are allowed to make calls that utilize particular routes.
  • Policies are named sets of phone usage records. Policies are used to assign call privileges to users. They also specify whether endpoint devices are enabled for simultaneous ringing. When you deployed Enterprise Voice, you specified at least one Voice policy. You can change the global policy used for the forest by selecting a specific policy to be used as the global policy or specifying that the policy is to be specified on a per-user basis. If you chose to apply policies on a per-user basis, you can create multiple policies and assign each, as appropriate, to specific individuals or groups of users. If you specify a global policy that applies to all users, not a per-user policy, you cannot assign additional policies on a per-user basis.

If a policy associated with a user account contains one or more phone usage records that match a phone usage record that is associated with a specific route, then the user is authorized to initiate calls that use that route.

The order in which you create phone usage records does not matter, but the order in which you assign them to Voice policies is significant because the server traverses the phone usage records in the Voice policies from top to bottom. For best performance, the phone usage records in each policy should be ordered top to bottom from most to least widely preferred. For example: RedmondLocal, RedmondLongDist, RedmondInternational, RedmondBackup.

Note

The recommended way of creating a Voice policy is to create the appropriate phone usage records first, and then create the policy and add the appropriate phone usage records.
As an alternative, you can create one or more policies and add the phone usage records later. However, should you forget to add the phone usage records and then apply the policy to one or more users, the policy will have no effect whatsoever.

Before you configure call authorizations for your organization, it is recommended that you read the information about phone usage records, policies, and planning call authorizations in Planning for Voice.

Use the information and procedures in this section to do the following:

  • Create a phone usage record
  • Create a Voice policy
  • Specify a global Voice policy

For information about configuring routing for Enterprise Voice, see Configuring Outbound Call Routing for Enterprise Voice.

To create a phone usage record

  1. On a Front End Server that has the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 administrative tools installed, open Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

  2. In the console tree, right-click the Forest node, point to Properties, and then click Voice Properties.

  3. Click the Phone Usages tab.

  4. On the Phone Usages tab, click Add to create a new phone usage record.

  5. In the Add Phone Usage Record dialog box, do the following:

    • In Name, type a clear, descriptive, unique name for the phone usage record, for example, Local Long-Distance Stockholm, Internal Only, International. You can use any name you like up to 256 Unicode characters. The name can contain spaces.
    • In Description, optionally, describe the phone usage record in more detail.

  6. Repeat the two previous steps to create as many phone usage records as you require.

To create a Voice policy

  1. On a Front End Server that has the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 administrative tools installed, open Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

  2. In the console tree, right-click the Forest node, point to Properties, and then click Voice Properties.

  3. Click the Policy tab.

  4. On the Policy tab, click Add.

  5. In the Add Policy dialog box, in Policy name, type a name.

  6. To enable simultaneous ringing of phones for this policy, select the Allow simultaneous ringing of phones check box. This enables each user to configure Communicator such that incoming calls, in addition to ringing the user's registered endpoints, also ring an additional non-registered endpoint, such as a personal mobile phone. To disable simultaneous ringing, clear the check box. Normally, simultaneous ringing should be enabled, but in the event of excessive congestion, you can disable this feature

  7. To add a phone usage record to the policy, click Configure.

  8. In the Configure Phone Usage Records dialog box, do the following:

    • To add a phone usage record to the Configured list, click the phone usage record in the Available list, and then click the right arrow. Continue adding phone usage records, if appropriate.
    • To remove a phone usage record from the Configured list, click it, and then click the left arrow.
    • To move a phone usage record up or down in the Configured list, click it, and then click Up and Down.

  9. When finished, click OK. The phone usages you added now appear in the list of Phone usage records in the Add Policy or Edit Policy dialog boxes.

To specify a global Voice policy

  1. On a Front End Server that has the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 administrative tools installed, open Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

  2. In the console tree, right-click the Forest node, point to Properties, and then click Voice Properties.

  3. On the Policy tab, in the Global policy drop-down list, do one of the following:

    • To use a single policy for all users, click the name of the policy.
    • To apply policies individual for specific users, select Use per user policy.