The Cisco Unified Communications Sizing Tool is a web-based tool that helps system engineers to size Cisco Unified Communications solutions, including Cisco Unified CCX. The tool can validate various parameters and requirements for a Cisco Unified CCX deployment configuration, such as the number of agents, supervisors, IVR ports, outbound ports, chat sessions, email sessions, and reporting users. However, the tool cannot validate the following options:
The number of silent-monitoring and remote-monitoring sessions. Silent monitoring and remote monitoring are features that allow supervisors to listen to the agent’s calls without being heard by the agent or the caller. The tool does not support sizing for these features,as they depend on the network bandwidth and the codec used for the calls. The tool only provides a formula to estimate the bandwidth requirement for silent monitoring and remote monitoring, based on the number of sessions, the codec, and the packet size. The formula is: Bandwidth (kbps) = Number of sessions x Codec bit rate x (1 + Network overhead). For example, if there are 10 silent-monitoring sessions using G.711 codec with a bit rate of 64 kbps and a network overhead of 20%, the bandwidth requirement is: Bandwidth (kbps) = 10 x 64 x (1 + 0.2) = 768 kbps1.
The number of historical reporting sessions. Historical reporting is a feature that allows users to generate reports on the historical data of the Cisco Unified CCX system, such as agent performance, call statistics, and queue summary. The tool does not support sizing for this feature, as it depends on the number of reporting users, the frequency and complexity of the reports, and the database size. The tool only provides some guidelines and best practices for historical reporting, such as limiting the number of concurrent reporting users to 10, scheduling the reports during off-peak hours, and purging the historical data regularly2.
The number of ASR and TTS ports. ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and TTS (Text-To-Speech) are features that enable voice interaction between the callers and the IVR system, using speech recognition and synthesis technologies. The tool does not support sizing for these features, as they are provided by third-party vendors, such as Nuance or LumenVox. The tool only provides some recommendations and considerations for ASR and TTS integration, such as using MRCPv2 protocol, allocating enough CPU and memory resources, and configuring the network QoS policies3.
References: Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Design Guide, Release 8.0(1), Chapter 3: Unified CCX Architecture and Capacity Planning, Section 3.2.2: Silent Monitoring and Remote Monitoring, Page 321 Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Design Guide, Release 8.0(1), Chapter 3: Unified CCX Architecture and Capacity Planning, Section 3.2.4: Historical Reporting, Page 342 Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Design Guide, Release 8.0(1), Chapter 3: Unified CCX Architecture and Capacity Planning, Section 3.2.5: ASR and TTS Integration, Page 353
