Cisco UC provisioning can be complex and time-consuming, especially when done manually. This overview explains the ins and outs of UC provisioning. If your organization spends countless hours manually provisioning users in your Cisco UC environment, this guide is for you.

Enterprise-scale unified communications (UC) environments typically found in global organizations featuring Cisco UC are challenging to provision in. With thousands of users and devices spread across the globe, and a less-than-sufficient tool in Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) to manage it all, Cisco UC provisioning can take up unnecessary time and resources.

In this guide, we will give you the key to improving your Cisco provisioning tasks by covering topics including:

  • Cisco UC Provisioning Explained
  • Why UC Provisioning Matters
  • Who is Responsible for Cisco UC Provisioning
  • An Overview of the Manual Provisioning Process
  • Automated Cisco UC Provisioning
  • The Benefits of Automated Cisco UC Provisioning

What is UC Provisioning? Cisco UC Provisioning Explained

Despite the proliferation of cloud UC platforms like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, Cisco Unified Communications remains a powerful on-prem UC environment for connecting employees, customers, suppliers and partners.

While cloud platforms are typically leaner and more cost-effective to manage, many enterprises are still finding the need for their on-prem Cisco environment, leading them to create hybrid UC platforms. Mediums and devices used in these environments include voice, video and messaging, which create a richer collaboration experience and ultimately boost connectivity and productivity when implemented well.

While the benefits of UC for the enterprise are typically felt throughout an organization—from IT to customer service to human resources—one aspect that is often less visible is the day-to-day management of user provisioning.

Especially in hybrid UC environments, it’s important that UC provisioning is done right. Otherwise, your enterprise operations will suffer. Here’s why.

Why Unified Communications Provisioning Matters

User provisioning matters because it ensures employees have the appropriate access to the applications and resources they need within your Unified Communications environment to stay productive. This allows them to stay connected with the rest of your organization.

A consistent provisioning process also helps enforce security policies and compliance regulations, mitigating risks associated with unauthorized access and data breaches. Additionally, efficient user provisioning streamlines administrative tasks, reduces errors, and enhances the overall experience for your employees.

While it’s true UC provisioning is a critical UC management process, it’s also filled with manual, error-prone steps that can impact your enterprise’s UC. It’s worth gaining a full understanding of exactly how UC provisioning is done in your environment because optimizing the process can:

  1. Save the valuable time of skilled IT staff
  2. Streamline the onboarding of new employees to collaboration systems
  3. Reduce the amount of errors made when entering or changing user settings in the system
  4. Enhance the end-user experience with the organization’s communication tools

With that in mind, let’s discuss who is involved with UC provisioning. Then, we’ll cover how an automated provisioning tool can help improve the process.

Who is Responsible for UC Provisioning?

While UC provisioning may seem like a small slice of the total UC management pie, many teams are still involved in strategy and execution. The division of the responsibilities of UC provisioning will depend on your enterprise’s needs and the teams you have available.

Cisco UC provisioning is typically a responsibility within an enterprise IT department. Within that department, there may be dedicated teams devoted to UC administration and management. Here’s a general breakdown of team responsibilities. These teams may change depending on the structure and size of your organization.

  • UC administrators are responsible for the day-to-day management of the Cisco UC environment. They handle tasks such as user provisioning, configuration of UC features and services, troubleshooting, and ensuring system security and compliance.
  • Network administrators are responsible for the overall management and maintenance of the organization’s network infrastructure, including the network components that support Cisco UC solutions. They play a key role in provisioning network resources and ensuring connectivity and performance for UC services.
  • System administrators are responsible for managing the servers and IT infrastructure that support Cisco UC deployments. They handle server provisioning, software installation and updates, system health, and ensuring UC services are available and reliable.
  • IT security specialists are responsible for implementing security controls, enforcing policies, conducting risk assessments, and responding to security incidents to protect the UC environment from threats.
  • End-user support teams provide support and assistance to end-users who use Cisco UC services. They help users with tasks such as account setup, configuration, troubleshooting, and training on how to use UC tools effectively.
  • UC engineers who are involved in designing and planning Cisco UC deployments. They work closely with stakeholders to understand business requirements, define technical specifications, and develop implementation strategies for provisioning UC solutions.

With so many teams and stakeholders involved, UC user provisioning can be very error-prone and inconsistent, especially when done manually. Here’s how.

An Overview of the UC Provisioning Process

Cisco UC provisioning is the process of entering and configuring the settings for users of phone systems, instant messaging, telepresence and other collaboration channels used in the environment.

While these moves, adds, changes and deletes (MACD) may sound like routine tasks, there is actually a bewildering amount of attributes to configure for each user. Adding to this complexity is the fact that the out-of-the-box method for performing these MAC-Ds is through the complex interface of the Unified Communications servers. Because of this, the provisioning process is usually intricate and technical enough to require the attention of a higher-skilled member of the IT team—often a network engineer or other mid- to senior-level resource.

It’s not unusual for this manual process to take 20-30 minutes per user while still prone to configuration errors.

How Automation Simplifies Cisco UC Provisioning: 3 Main Benefits

It’s clear that Cisco UC user provisioning processes need an automated solution. As UC environments become even more complex and users in organizations spread out over the globe, wasting time and resources on a manual provisioning process is no longer an option.

That’s where an automated UC provisioning software solution can help unlock three key benefits for your organization.

Benefit #1: Simplification & Consistency

Automated UC provisioning simplifies provisioning, making set-up and execution consistent for many provisioning tasks.

Automating user provisioning tasks like onboarding, offboarding, and bulk moves ensures they are done consistently. Pre-defined jobs and templates remove manual intervention in UC account provisioning jobs and eliminate variability in how different people configure accounts.

The right automated provisioning solution can even provision beyond your UC applications by integrating with other corporate systems in your tech stack. These can include:

  • Active Directory (Microsoft AD)
  • IT Service Management (ITSM)
  • Identity and Access Management (IAM solution)
  • Human Resources (HR Systems)

Once connected, an automated UC provisioning solution can act as a hub connecting user information across much of your corporate tech stack. That means information can flow without manual work from your IT team or a service desk.

Benefit #2: Risk Mitigation

Automated UC user provisioning software minimizes the security risks of granting access and deleting users in UC systems and applications. A key reason for this is roles-based access, which gives admins the ability to limit the access users have to your automated provisioning software through role designations.

These designations define who can access what jobs, templates, devices and settings. With this level of flexibility, your enterprise can customize what it feels its teams and users should get based on its internal best practices. These groups provide a common class of users with permissions and access to items within a provisioning automation solution, all to enable more effective and secure UC management.

Benefit #3: ROI in both Time and Resources

Automating provisioning and UC provisioning leads to dramatic time and cost savings, which combine to create measurable ROI for your organization.

With an automated provisioning platform, UC provisioning workflows that used to take hours or days will now take minutes to complete. Additionally, an automated provisioning platform with proper roles-based access allows you to pass provisioning tasks to a HelpDesk securely. This saves even more time for your internal teams.

All these factors can lead to game-changing ROI with minimal effort to implement.

Conclusion: Automated UC Provisioning Makes Cisco Management Easier

Simplifying your UC user provisioning process can be critical to improving your overall Cisco UC environment. While it can be an easy process to overlook, investing in an automated tool like Akkadian Provisioning Manager can be a great source of ROI for your organization.

Check out the Akkadian Provisioning Manager page to learn more about how we can help improve your UC provisioning process.