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CCIE Collaboration study materials
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CCIE Collaboration: Collaboration Automation and Assurance

CCIE Collaboration · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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Collaboration Automation and Assurance

Domain 5: Collaboration Automation and Assurance

This domain tests programmatic provisioning, bulk administration, monitoring, call detail records, and voice-quality analysis. It expects you to choose the right API or tool and to interpret the data it returns.

Core rules

  • AXL is the SOAP/XML provisioning API for CUCM; it is versioned, throttled, and used for users, devices, lines, and route data. Match the AXL schema version to the CUCM release.
  • UDS is a REST API used by Jabber for contact search and user data; it is not a replacement for AXL provisioning.
  • BAT provides bulk CSV import/export for phones, users, and lines; it is appropriate for large one-time changes, not continuous integration.
  • Assurance tools include RTMT for real-time counters, alert logs, and perfmon data; SNMP for polling and traps; syslog for event correlation; and CDR/CMR for call records.
  • CDR/CMR provide jitter, latency, packet loss, and call detail; CAR produces reports from CDR data. CMR must be enabled separately on CUCM.
  • Voice-quality analysis correlates QoS markings, network statistics, and call records; Prime Collaboration Assurance can aggregate and alert on these metrics.

Worked example

Users report poor voice quality between two sites. Use RTMT to check registration and call activity, pull CDR/CMR records for jitter and packet loss, verify QoS markings at the trust boundary, and poll WAN interface statistics by SNMP. If CMR shows loss only on one codec path, check region and location design and the transcoder path. Reasoning: RTMT shows current state, CDR/CMR shows per-call evidence, SNMP shows the transport, and design data explains why the codec path was chosen.

Traps

  • Using UDS for provisioning when AXL is required.
  • Mismatching AXL schema and CUCM version, causing SOAP faults.
  • Assuming CDR is enabled by default or that CAR provides real-time data.
  • Ignoring time-zone settings when correlating CDR timestamps.
  • Polling SNMP without the correct MIB or community, or forgetting CMR enablement.