Music on Hold

Capabilities

Hold and Resume

Agents use Hold to suspend a call temporarily. If Music on Hold resources are available, the caller hears music while on hold. Otherwise, the caller hears a tone.

Multicast Music-on-Hold

As an alternative to the unicast Music-on-Hold (MOH), you can multicast MOH with supplementary services on Unified CM. You have these options when deploying MOH with this feature:

  • With Unified CM multicasting the packets on the local LAN

  • With the branch gateway multicasting on their local LAN

Use branch gateway multicasting when you have configured survivable remote site telephony (SRST) on the gateway. This method enables the deployment to use MOH locally and avoid MOH streaming over the WAN link.


Note

For information about configuring MOH on the Call Manager Enterprise (CME), see https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucme/admin/configuration/manual/cmeadm/cmemoh.html#wpmkr1022205.

Music on Hold with Mobile Agent

You can use Music on Hold (MoH) for mobile agents just as you do for traditional agents. To let callers hear music, assign MoH resources to the Ingress Voice Gateway. Specify the user or network audio source on the local CTI port configuration. To let the agent hear music when on hold, assign MoH resources to the Egress Voice Gateway. Specify the user or network audio source on the remote CTI port configuration.


Note

Always assign the MoH resources to the gateways. Do not assign MoH resources to local and remote CTI ports. It is unnecessary and can have a performance impact on the system.

A Mobile Agent remote call over a nailed connection is put on hold when there is no active call to the agent. In general, enable MoH to the mobile agent phone for nailed connection calls. If MoH resources are an issue, consider multicast MoH services.

For a nailed connection, disabling MoH for the remote phone might lead to the hold tone playing instead. This depends on the call processing agent that controls the remote phone. For Unified CM, the hold tone is enabled by default and is similar to the Mobile Agent connect tone. With the Unified CM hold tone enabled, it is difficult for the agent to identify if a call has arrived by listening for the Mobile Agent connect tone. Therefore, disable the hold tone for Unified CM by changing the setting of the Tone on Hold Timer service parameter on Unified CM.

For additional information about MoH design, see the Cisco Collaboration System Solution Reference Network Designs.

Configure Music on Hold

Configure Unified Communication Manager

A Unified Communications Manager Music On Hold (MoH) server can generate MoH stream from an audio file or a fixed source. Either of this can be transmitted as unicast or multicast.

MoH server can be deployed in two modes.

  1. Along with Unified CM on the same server for HCS for CC deployments with less than 1250 users in a CM Cluster.

  2. As standalone node (TFTP/MoH Server) for HCS for CC deployments with more than 1250 users in a CM Cluster

Configure Music On Hold Server Audio Source

Procedure
Step 1

Login to Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration page.

Step 2

Select Media Resources > Music On Hold Audio Source.

Step 3

Retain the default sample audio source.

Step 4

Select Initial Announcement from drop down list (optional).

Step 5

Click Save.

Step 6

Perform the following steps to create new Audio Source.

  1. Click Add New.

  2. Select MOH audio stream number from the drop down list.

  3. Select MOH audio source file from the drop down list.

  4. Enter the MOH source name .

  5. Choose Initial Announcement from the drop-down list.

  6. Click Save.

Set up Service Parameters for Music on Hold

Procedure
Step 1

Login to Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration page.

Step 2

Select System > Service Parameters.

Step 3

Select the MoH server from the drop-down list .

Step 4

Select the app service from Cisco IP Voice Media Streaming App Service drop-down list.

Step 5

Select the required codec in the Supported MOH Codecs field and click Ok.

Step 6

Click Save.

Set up Phone Configuration for Music on Hold

Procedure
Step 1

Login to Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration page.

Step 2

Select Device > Phone.

Step 3

Select the phone to configure MOH.

Step 4

Select a audio source from User Hold MOH Audio Source drop-down list.

Step 5

Select a audio source from Network Hold MOH Audio Source drop-down list.

Step 6

Click Save and click Apply and reset the phone.