Telephony, Design, and HCS Dial Plan Overview

The dial plan model is a key component of VOSS Automate’s architecture and provisioning workflow. This guide describes the relevant architectural elements, the required service configuration, and how the dial plan model may be customized to meet varying infrastructure requirements and customized service types.

VOSS Automate provides automation and standardization to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) and other elements, such as IOS devices, and Cisco Unity Connection (CUC). Additionally, bulk loaders can be used to provision and onboard customers. This routing architecture and the associated element configuration meet VOSS Automate’s configurable dial plan model.

Note

The dial plan model may be referred to as either HCS Dial Plan Model, HCS Dial Plan, Dial Plan Model, or Dial Plan.

HCS dial plan tools are provided only in the VOSS Automate Provider deployment.

The dial plan model intends to create a pre-integrated baseline configuration of CUCM applications, which can then be integrated into the platform and the service provider infrastructure with minimal effort.

The dial plan model configures both end-customer equipment, such as CUCM or on-premise routers, as well as the interaction with aggregation layers, using systems like Cisco Session Management Edition, or Session Border Controller (SBC).

Note

While standard configurations are provided, service providers must customize parts of the dial plan model for a particular environment.

For end-customers, the dial plan model supports many corporate dialing schemes, and includes a standardized model for handling intra-site, inter-site, and PSTN calls, typically using a site + extension methodology. Additionally, it covers advanced routing requirements of elements such as central versus local breakout for PSTN calls, and handles different numbering requirements across multiple countries.

VOSS Automate’s dial plan model provides a definition of standard telephony services that abstract CUCM configurations into simpler choices that correspond to the feature plans that service providers want to offer. For example, the partitions, calling search spaces (CSS), and translation patterns are predefined based on a choice of simple outbound, inbound, call forwarding, and time of day settings. These settings are exposed as service types in VOSS Automate, and are combined into feature packages and templates that define user or lines telephony services.