The Cisco Prime® Collaboration Assurance (PCA) Version 10.x course teaches you how to effectively use Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance and Cisco® 1040 Sensors to manage Cisco Unified Communications. The focus of this course is to provide knowledge about and practice with Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance functions, such as viewing unified communications devices, connectivity, alerts, and events, running diagnostic tests, and monitoring applications, devices, and the service quality of active call streams and completed calls. Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance provides contextual diagnostic tools to facilitate error isolation and troubleshooting. It also provides alerts and reports on service quality by monitoring active call streams and completed calls. Labs are available to reinforce what is discussed in the lecture.

Upon completing this course, the learner will be able to meet these overall objectives:

• Describe what is meant by the term unified communications
• Discuss the network management needs and challenges of unified communications
• Describe the Cisco products for managing the Cisco Unified Communications systems
• Describe the various service quality metrics and terminology for unified communications
• Use Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance effectively to:
• Monitor, diagnose, and troubleshoot Cisco Unified Communications deployments
• View IP phones, devices, and logical and physical connectivity
• View alerts and events on the managed devices and run diagnostic procedures
• View service quality alerts and run diagnostic procedures
• Run diagnostic tests and reports on applications, network devices, and phones
• Automatically notify personnel of alerts and events
• Evaluate deployments and service provisioning with batch testing
• Use Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance effectively to:
• Manage and configure Cisco 1040 Sensors
• Collect and analyze voice quality measurements through a combination of Cisco Call Detail Records (CDRs), voice transmission quality metrics from Cisco IP phones, 1040 Sensors, and Network Analysis Module Software version 4.0 and above
• Alert network support personnel to poor service quality conditions

Course Outline

• Introduction
• Lesson 1: What Is Unified Communications?
• Lesson 2: Managing Unified Communications
• Lesson 3: Cisco Prime Collaboration Overview
• Assuring Serviceability with Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance
• Lesson 1: Getting Started
• Lesson 2: Device Management
• Lesson 3: Monitoring the Cisco Unified Communications Network
• Lesson 4: Fault Management
• Lesson 5: Diagnostic Tests
• Lesson 6: Reports
• Lesson 7: Notification of Faults and Events
• Lesson 8: Fine-Tuning of Polling and Threshold Settings
• Assuring Call Quality with Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance
• Lesson 1: Overview
• Lesson 2: Getting Started
• Lesson 3: Reports

Lab Outline

• Lab 1: Getting Started
• Lab 2a: Preparing Assurance for Initial Use
• Lab 2b: User-Defined Device Groups
• Lab 3: Monitoring the Cisco Unified Communications Network
• Lab 4: Fault Management
• Lab 5: Diagnostic Tests
• Lab 6: Reports
• Lab 7: Notification Services
• Lab 8: Custom Polling and Threshold Settings
• Lab 9: Managing Call Quality

This course is for Cisco Unified Communications administrators who will be monitoring Cisco Unified Communications infrastructure devices using Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance. System administrators who manage Cisco Prime Collaboration Assurance servers and prepare network devices for network management services should also take the class. The following are the primary audiences for this course:

• Cisco Unified Communications administrators
• Network administrators
• Cisco Prime Collaboration system administrators
• Cisco Unified Communications system integrators, professional services, and consultants

The following are the prerequisites for this course:

• Understanding of network management concepts (Simple Network Management Protocol [SNMP], MIBs, and so on)
• Internet web browser usability knowledge
• TCP/IP networking
• Basic Cisco router and switch configuration, including Cisco Switched Port Analyzer (SPAN) ports and IP service-level agreements(SLAs)
• Basic understanding of Cisco Unified Communications architecture
• Basic Cisco Unified Communications Manager administration