Configure Availability and Instant Messaging

Availability and Instant Messaging Overview

IM and Presence Service allows your users to share their availability status with their contacts.

Point-to-point instant messaging supports real-time conversations between two users at a time. IM and Presence Service exchanges messages directly between users, from the sender to the recipient. Users must be online in their instant message clients to exchange point-to-point instant messages.

Instant messaging capabilities include:

Instant Message Forking

When a user sends an instant message to a contact who is signed into multiple instant message clients, IM and Presence Service delivers the instant message to each client. IM and Presence Service continues to fork instant messages to each client, until the contact replies. Once the contact replies, IM and Presence Service only delivers instant messages to the client on which the contact replied.

Offline Instant Messaging

When a user sends an instant message to a contact who is not signed in (offline), IM and Presence Service stores the instant message and delivers it after the offline contact signs back in to their instant message client.

Broadcast Instant Messaging

Allows a user to send an instant message to multiple contacts at the same time, for example, when a user wants to send a notification to a large group of contacts.

Please note that not all instant message clients support broadcasting.

Maximum Contact List Size

Configure the maximum contact list size for a user; this is the number of contacts the user can add to their contact list. This setting applies to the contact list on Cisco Jabber client applications and on third-party client applications.

Users who reach the maximum number of contacts are unable to add new contacts to their contact list, nor can other users add them as a contact. If a user is close to the maximum contact list size, and the user adds a group of contacts that pushes the contact list over the maximum number, IM and Presence Service does not add the surplus contacts. For example, if the maximum contact list size on IM and Presence Service is 200. A user has 195 contacts and attempts to add 6 new contacts to the list, IM and Presence Service adds five contacts and does not add the sixth contact.


Tip

The System Troubleshooter in Cisco Unified CM IM and Presence Administration indicates if there are users who have reached the contact list limit.

Availability and Instant Messaging Prerequisites

For SIP to SIP instant messaging, the following services must be running on IM and Presence Service:

  • Cisco SIP Proxy

  • Cisco Presence Engine

  • Cisco XCP Router

For SIP to XMPP instant messaging, the following services must be running on IM and Presence Service:

  • Cisco SIP Proxy

  • Cisco Presence Engine

  • Cisco XCP Router

  • Cisco XCP Text Conference Manager

Availability and Instant Messaging Task Flow

Perform the following tasks to configure availability and instant messaging on IM and Presence Service.

Procedure

  Command or Action Purpose

Step 1

Configure Presence Sharing

Use this procedure to configure the cluster-wide setting for Presence and IM availability sharing. Presence sharing allow your users to be able to view each other's IM availability status.

Step 2

Enable Instant Messaging

Configure the system to allow users to exchange instant messages.

Configure Presence Sharing

Use this procedure to configure the cluster-wide setting for Presence and IM availability sharing. Presence sharing allow your users to be able to view each other's IM availability status.


Note

When availability sharing is turned off:

  • Users can view their own availability status in the client application, but the status for other users is greyed out.

  • When users enter a chat room, their availability status displays as Unknown.

Procedure

Step 1

In Cisco Unified CM IM and Presence Administration, choose Presence > Settings > Standard Configuration.

Step 2

To enable cluster-wide Presence sharing, check the Enable availability sharing check box.

Note

 

Individual Cisco Jabber users can enable or disable this setting for their own Jabber client, by reconfiguring the policy settings within their Cisco Jabber client.

Step 3

If you want users to be able to view the Presence of other users without requiring the other user's approval, check the Allow user to view the availability of other users without being prompted for approval check box. Otherwise, all Presence requests must be authorized by the other user.

Note

 

Individual end users can override this setting by reconfiguring the policy settings within their Cisco Jabber client.

Step 4

Configure maximum values for the Maximum Contact List Size and Maximum Watchers (per user) settings. If you don't want to use maximums, check the No Limit check box for each.

Step 5

Optional. If you want Cisco Jabber users to be able to temporarily subscribe the Presence status of other users whom are not on their contact list, check the Enable ad-hoc presence subscriptions check box and configure the additional ad-hoc presence settings.

Step 6

Complete any additional settings in the Presence Settings window. Refer to the online help for help with the fields and their settings.

Step 7

Click Save.

Step 8

Restart the Cisco XCP Router and Cisco Presence Engine services:

  1. Log in to Cisco Unified IM and Presence Serviceability and choose Tools > Control Center - Feature Services

  2. Select the Cisco Presence Engine service and click Restart.

  3. Choose Tools > Control Center - Network Services.

  4. Select the Cisco XCP Router service and click Restart.

Note

 

Depending on which fields you edited, you may not need to restart services. Refer to the online help for information on the fields that you edited.

What to do next

Enable Instant Messaging

Enable Instant Messaging

Configure the system to allow users to exchange instant messages.

Before you begin

Configure Presence Sharing

Procedure

Step 1

In Cisco Unified CM IM and Presence Administration, choose Messaging > Settings.

Step 2

Check the Enable instant messaging check box.

Step 3

Check the check box options that meet your deployment needs. For field descriptions, refer to the online help:

  • Suppress offline instant messaging
  • Allow clients to log instant message history (on supported clients only)
  • Allow cut & paste in instant messages

Step 4

Click Save.

Availability and Instant Messaging Interactions and Restrictions

Feature

Restriction

Availability Sharing

If you turn off this setting, users can view only their own availability status. Availability information is not shared to other users in the cluster. In addition, availability information received from outside the cluster is not shared either.

Instant Messages

If Cisco XCP Router shuts down abruptly or if the user stops/restarts it, the instant messages that were sent at the beginning or during the outage period may not be delivered to the destination user. Warning messages may not be sent to the user who sent the messages.

For more details, the administrator can check for error log lines containing "Dropping packet after jsm db shutdown" at the Cisco XCP Router trace files rtr-jsm-1.