VOSS Automate Documentation

Latest Release: VOSS Automate 21.4-PB5

Welcome to VOSS Automate 21.4 Patch Bundle 5! This release delivers a number of exciting enhancements, including extended support for Microsoft Exchange integration, additional filtering, sync, and overbuild options for Microsoft, new layout options for Cisco subscribers, Webex improvements, and much more. See the Release Notes for details.

Highlights in Automate 21.4-PB5

Microsoft Exchange Integration for User Onboarding and Offboarding

This release delivers enhanced Microsoft Exchange user mailbox integration to expand the scope of user mailbox settings that can be managed as part of subscriber MACDs (move, add, change, delete), allowing admins to manage a range of additional mailbox settings. VOSS Automate supports the provisioning of user mailbox settings as part of onboarding and offboarding using Quick Subscriber and Quick Offboard Subscriber. Support for Exchange has been streamlined to include automation that addresses high-volume use cases, saving time and effort for previously unsupported scenarios.

Exchange settings can now be seamlessly configured during user setup, and are automatically adjusted when a user is offboarded. When onboarding, Automate Quick Add Subscriber seamlessly stamps mailboxes with templated settings to update Exchange. When offboarding, Exchange settings are automatically adjusted. For example, an offboarded user's mailbox can now be automatically converted to a shared mailbox, allowing admins continued access to that mailbox even if the user's license is no longer available and their mailbox is purged. Retention policies, email forwarding settings, automatic replies, mailbox archiving, and custom attributes can now be included in the automated integration templates and workflows, and can be managed in Automate. Custom attributes can also be used for filtering in a sync. Automate also ships with example templates that can be used with Exchange mailboxes for onboarding or offboarding.

This integration complements Automate's support for other Microsoft services to provide admins with a cohesive experience.

Enhanced Microsoft Entra Sync Controls and Settings

This feature delivers more granularity and control for providers and enterprises around key use cases, enabling further automation benefits in a Microsoft environment:

• Partitioning of the tenant data in the system - easier to separate pools of users out of the overall tenant into different hierarchies in Automate for administration domains, such as divisions or agencies.
• Providing additional mechanisms to identify a subset of users to sync into the system, for example, when a provider is only managing part of the Tenant, or in an Enterprise when an IT Team only has responsibility for some agencies or divisions within the organization.
• Additional user data, which can be used for driving Auto Move and Flow through Provisioning logic. For example, to identify a site to move the user to, or a profile to apply during automated onboarding.

We've extended support on the Microsoft user record to include the extended attributes, and include support for custom attributes. This provides a wide range of extra settings to use across syncs, moves, and flow through. You can apply model instance filters on these fields to filter your syncs so that only users matching the criteria you define - for example, users with extendedattribute5 value of "VOSS Managed". Additionally, you can use the fields in your model filter criteria for moving users and for initiating onboarding through flow through provisioning. For instance, you could have a custom attribute containing the user type/profile to the user for onboarding to match the appropriate services for automated onboarding. Find out more around the setup and suggested use cases for this feature in the Best Practices Guide.

Simplified License Audit Reporting

Automate 21.4-PB5 improves the VOSS Automate license audit process so that it's easier to understand and provides greater visibility of license consumption from within the Admin Portal. You'll be able to see two views of the license information - an overall license count by hierarchy (same as the file), and you can see which users in the system are consuming a license. The license count and user consumption is updated daily so that you have regular access to this information, instead of just once a month. Automate's user management view also makes it easier to see all of a user's related services, providing clarity around why a user is or is not consuming a license. Additionally, the format of the generated monthly audit file is far simpler, and uses the already calculated values visible via the GUI. This means that the file is simply a reporting mechanism to VOSS rather than a primary means of viewing your license consumption (as was previously the case). You can find out more about this feature in the Licensing and Subscriber Data Export Guide

Optional Decoupling from Cisco HCM-F

This release allows you to decouple Automate from Cisco HCM-F. By installing an optional patch after completing the upgrade to 21.4-PB5, you can remove all HCM-F data Automate. Once installed, any further provisioning from Automate - for example, of entities such as Customers, Sites, and CUCM/CUCxn clusters - will no longer provision the data to or from Cisco HCM-F.

Existing data on the Cisco HCM-F as well as license integration with the UC Apps won't be affected. For installation details, refer to the guide, MOP-VOSS-1094-21.4-PB5_patch.pdf, available in the Download directory for the patch.

Enhanced Layouts for Cisco Subscriber Management

We've improved the user experience for Cisco-only Subscriber Management to enable the user of the specific list view as well as the custom subscriber details layout. If you're only using Cisco UC, this means you now have the option for a customized, Cisco-specific list view combined with the card-based service layout when choosing a user to view their details. This provides the best overall user experience and is the recommended path for Cisco-only customers who aren’t leveraging the Multi Vendor Subscriber feature.

By default, as part of the upgrade, if you're using "relation/Subscriber" in your current menu setup (for the custom list view), then when selecting a user you'll see the card-based service layout instead of the classic detailed view. If you wish to retain the classic detailed subscriber view, you can change your menus and landing pages to access the "Cisco Advanced Subscriber" view. For more details on the setup, see the Automate documentation.

Streamlined Overbuild

This release provides additional options for overbuild of Microsoft environments to ensure the process minimizes the time and effort to realize the benefits of automation. In many cases it's known where numbers belong in the hierarchy due to geographical or emergency purposes, so we’ve added the ability to move users to a site based on their assigned number. In this case, it will use the hierarchy of the number in the inventory to determine where the user assigned that number should be moved. This provides another mechanism to determine the move logic where traditional location data in Microsoft Entra ID is typically not accurate or useful - for example, "City".

Improved Webex Management

• New summary attributes have been added for updating device/spark/User in a number of Webex models, including device/spark/Location, device/spark/WorkspaceLocation, and device/spark/HuntGroupupdate. As a result, you'll have more information for the user in Automate than in Webex Control Hub, for example, you'll be able to see which Webex users have associated work numbers. We can now also add in a user's address and region details, and their first and last name.
• The Number Inventory Audit workflows now support Webex App Calling to ensure these numbers have their correct status set in in Automate.

Small Enhancements and Bug Fixes

In addition to the new features and enhancements in this release, we've added several small enhancements, included a number of bug fixes, and implemented a number of usability improvements to the Admin Portal. You can find further details, including links to the relevant topics, at What’s New by Feature.