On Premises

Operation Basics - Core

This document describes the basic management of AnywhereNow software.

Basic Troubleshooting

Using AnywhereNow to manage your real time communication and dialogues will boost your productivity and increases your efficiency. Robustly designed for demanding enterprises, the AnywhereNow platform is already deployed in mission critical environments at hundreds of customers across the globe. If you do find unexpected behavior from the AnywhereNow platform, finding the source and identifying the cause is key. Since AnywhereNow is native to Skype for Business, validating that the underlying infrastructure is performing as expected should be the first test. When not using AnywhereNow, is Skype working properly?

  1. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

    Seems like a IT cliché, but in most cases this is the solution. AnywhereNow uses external components like Skype for Business, SharePoint and SQL. These components can in case of a hiccup negatively influence AnywhereNow. While the Core does try to restore its self, the minor possibility exist that the Core can't restore itself. By restarting the Core will turn everything off and make new connections.

  2. Restart the UCC with a clean cache?

    The AnywhereNow Core created a cache during the first startup, this makes sure that feature restarts can be done in seconds. But is some cases the cache is out of date, this can happen if changes were made when the Core was offline or primary config.xml level changes. In this case it is good to perform a restart with a clean cache.

    How to restart with a clean cache:

    1. Stop the "Unified Contact Center" service

    2. Go to the cache directory

      C:\ProgramData\Anywhere365\Core\Service\UnifiedContactCenterService\Cache

    3. Delete the sub folder(s) with the same name as the UCC

    4. Start the "Unified Contact Center" service

  3. What do the logs say?

    The AnywhereNow Core creates a log file in the install location, in here you can find every event that happened in the Core.

    C:\ProgramData\Anywhere365\Core\Service\UnifiedContactCenterService\logs

    How to read the logs:

    1. Make sure that Notepad++ is installed (default notepad can be used, but Notepad++ offers useful features)

      https://notepad-plus-plus.org/

    2. Copy the logs to another location (this way the UCC can keep writing more logs)

    3. Open the logs in Notepad++

    4. Either go to the datetime of the issue or search for "Error" messages.

    5. The logs contains different level of information

      • VERBOSE = Extra information, only necessary for specific troubleshooting. (turned of by default)
      • INFO = Basic information what the Core is doing
      • DEBUG = Extra information on the INFO which shows more technical information
      • WARN = Warns the user that something unexpected had happened, can usually be ignored.
      • ERROR = Notifies the user something went wrong, this included AnywhereNow, Skype for Business, SharePoint and SQL error messages. When this happens check which product it contain the issue and read the description below it. Usually the description explains what the issue is. In most cases the error type can be looked up and solved.
      • FATAL = Fatal indicates that the UCC failed to start. When this happens check the error prior to this event, they usually give a clue why the UCC isn't starting. Most time is either a configuration error or the application endpoint do not exist.
  4. What does the FAQ say?

    On this GoLive website there is a usefully FAQ available. In here we place frequent questions we receive on the support portal and post them with solution.

  5. When all else fail contact support.

    Before contacting support, make sure previous steps are completed

    To get the best support, make sure the ticket contains the following information:

    1. Which version you are using
    2. The logs files
    3. Datetime
    4. Scenario

UCC Cache

Every UCC within the service has its own cache folder. After startup the UCC connects to the SharePoint sites and retrieve all configuration data. The data is stored in a folder per UCC and has the default name of the UCC.

This folder contains all the settings, IVR Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, is a telephone application to take orders via telephone keypad or voice through a computer. By choosing menu options the caller receives information, without the intervention of a human operator, or will be forwarded to the appropriate Agent. audio files and optionally cached recordings or voicemails if they cannot be stored onto their given location (when the connection with SharePoint is broken, the UCC will keep running because of these cached settings. As soon as the connection is back, the UCC will retrieve potentially changed data again and therefore updates the cache automatically.

Location:

C:\ProgramData\Anywhere365\Core\Service\UnifiedContactCenterService\Cache

UCC Logs

Note

Event Viewer only shows UCC Errors displayed in logging.

The UCC Logs are the go to place to find more information.

Location:

C:\ProgramData\Anywhere365\Core\Service\UnifiedContactCenterService\logs

Location, file size ,amount and details (level)

You can change the location, file size, amount and level of detail in the log.xml document in the install directory:

Example: 5 log files of 10 MB

Copy
XML
<file value="logs\ucc_log.txt" />
<appendToFile value="true" />
<rollingStyle value="Size" />
<maxSizeRollBackups value="5" />
<maximumFileSize value="10MB" />
<level value="DEBUG"/>

Example: One file per day

Copy
XML
<file value="logs\" />
<datePattern value="'ucc_'yyyyMMdd'.log'" />
<preserveLogFileNameExtension value="true" />
<appendToFile value="true" />
<rollingStyle value="Date" />
<staticLogFileName value="false" />
<layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
<conversionPattern value="%date{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss,fff} [%thread] %logger %-5level - %message%newline" />
</layout>

Start-up order

When the UCC service starts-up the following event occur in the logs.

Summary

Details

UCC Inbound call

Summary

  • Incoming on endpoint and set customer
  • (optional) Plugin check on number
  • Creating and/or joining new or used conference
  • Customer hears welcome and is set in IVR
  • Customer chooses skill and placed in queue
  • Availability check and agent hunt
  • (optional) ContextChannel
  • CustomerHungUp or AgentHungUp

Details

Presence

Subscription

For each agent the UCC setups a presence subscription, this is used for Presence Based Routing. The subscription needs to be subscribed to know the agent active presence. You can use the OCS Logger or the UCC Logs for more information.

OCS Logger

UCC Logs

Copy
Logs
DEBUG - ucc_name sip:agent01@contoso.com subscriptionChanged: PreviousState = Idle, State = Subscribing, TransitionReason = None
DEBUG - ucc_name sip:agent01@contoso.com subscriptionChanged: PreviousState = Subscribing, State = Subscribed, TransitionReason = None

Presence Change

When the Agent changes presence the UCC needs to be notified, this is done because of the subscription. You can use the OCS Logger or the UCC Logs for more information.

OCS Logger

UCC Logs

Copy
Logs
DEBUG - ucc_name Presence change: sip:agent01@contoso.com : Busy : 6500 : in-a-meeting : Computer : SameEnterprise Formal:False, Active:True. Text Enabled, Audio Enabled, Video Disabled

UserEndpoint

Note

UCC will not REGISTER if Interceptor is configured, we advice to use an additional UCC without Interceptor for this.

Additional to the presence the UCC registered the Agent's UserEndpoint. This is required for:

  • Offline hunting
    • Will only be done when the client forward is known.
  • Remote Presence Updater
    • Can only be done when the UCC is allowed to change the user's presence.
  • Status change via Reason Codes
    • Can only be done when the UCC is allowed to change the user's presence.

UCC Logs

Copy
Logs
DEBUG - r2 UserEndpointHelper:Establish: Creating endpoint for sip:agent01@contoso.com
INFO - ucc_name Added userendpoint to agent: sip:agent01@contoso.com

DNS Troubleshooting

For Skype DNS is important, so this must be configured correctly. UCMA Microsoft Unified Communications Managed API (UCMA) is used primarily to build middle-tier applications that work with the Skype for Business Server. (Skype / Lync Microsoft Lync (formerly Microsoft Office Communicator) is an instant messaging program designed for business use and is the successor of Windows Messenger. In order to use Lync, a Microsoft Lync Server is required. API) will search in the following order:

  1. SRV: _sipinternaltls._tcp.domain.com
  2. SRV: _sip._tls.domain.com
  3. A: sipinternal.domain.com
  4. A: sip.domain.com
  5. A: sipexternal.domain.com

Daily Operations

AnywhereNow software

For active monitoring of AnywhereNow the following tools can be used.

  • AnywhereNow KPI’s (TechnicalMonitoring)
  • Interceptor KPI’s (TechnicalMonitoring)
  • Inflight Wallboard (FunctionalMonitoring)
  • Snapper (FunctionalMonitoring)

AnywhereNow offers KPI’s to support monitoring. Programs that can be used are e.g. PerfMon, Scomm or other monitoring tools.
The basic operations are to check theKPI’s. If a KPI is not within pre-defined boundaries, action need to be taken.

Very important counters

  • Established Endpoints
  • Heartbeat
  • Max Conference Creation Time
  • Max Customer Join Time
  • Not Established Endpoints
  • SharePoint Connected

SharePoint settings

For SharePoint there are no daily routines.

SQL Database

For the SQL database the standard daily database management tasks needs to be in place. It is assumed that the backup routines are set up.

Periodic Operations

This paragraph is describing the operations needed on a frequently base.

AnywhereNow software

Within the AnywhereNow software logging is used. The disk space used by logging is restricted. If the log files need to be saved during a longer period, action needs to be taken to copy and timestamp the log files.

SQL database

As in all database drive software, standard database management tasks needs to be taken care off. This include in some check on indexes, database size etc. There is no deletion of data by the AnywhereNow software.

The amount of data can have impact on database requests (like the check on frequent callers, or reporting), based on corporate standards, the database size can be reduced by deleting or archiving data. The Business Intelligence Reports does not take into account that data is deleted or archived.

Ad-hoc Operations

This paragraph is describing the operations needed on not pre-defined moments.

General

In the case of a disruption within the infrastructure it is possible that the servers are down. The AnywhereNow service can be restarted. The AnywhereNow software can run (with limited functionality) without the SharePoint and SQL environment.

If the SharePoint and SQL environment are available, the full functionality of AnywhereNow will be used again. Restarting the AnywhereNow software without an available SharePoint environment is possible when caching is used.

AnywhereNow software

Whenever updates or new installations will take place it is important to back-up the AnywhereNow software.

SharePoint settings

It is possible for authorized users to change settings within SharePoint. This is not administrators work, but it can happen that mistakes are made. This can be managed by using version management on the SharePointenvironment.

SQL database

The AnywhereNow software doesn’t require special database routines.