A Day in the Life as a UC Engineer
In this article, I'm going to discuss what my day looks like in my current role as a UC Engineer.
My current organization is in the continuing care/retirement community space. We manage about 20 communities throughout the United States. My team of 3 (including me) is responsible for managing the Unified Communication (UC) Infrastructure for over 7,000 residents and 15,000 employees. My primary focus is on managing ouR telepresence environment and completing moves, adds and changes for our residents. I also work with our network team occasionally to bridge the gap between our two groups.
My day begins with checking the ticket queues. For our residents, I work to complete the request for new services and any residential moves that may be required. Occasionally I work with our local telecom provider to complete port request for residents who want to bring their number over from their previous carrier. I spend my days in Cisco's Unified Communication Manager (CUCM) or Call manager as it's commonly called and Cisco Unity. For our employees, requests range from basic moves adds and changes, to more complex requests related to call handlers, call recording and configurations in Cisco UCCX.
Once operational tasks are taken care of, I move on to projects related work and reading up on UC technologies to strengthen my skills. As I mentioned in my previous article, the day-to-day changes based on the business needs. My current project focus is the deployment of our Telepresence solutions. I'm currently working to increase user adoption of our video units and platforms like Cisco WebEx, Jabber and very soon Cisco Spark.
Here are some skills you'll need to be a success in the UC space:
Good Understanding of Networking and How networks work - You don't have to be a full network engineer, but you'll need to know the basics. As I like to say, a voice packet is just a packet. Having a solid understanding of networking will come in handy as you troubleshoot problems. You'll want to understand fundamentals related to switches, routers, WAN technologies, Quality of Service (QoS) and VLANs.
Good Understanding understanding of analog telephony - This includes codecs, telephony wiring (i.e., ground & loop start), Caller ID functionality and Faxing to name a few.
Understand Voice and Video Protocols - SIP, MGCP, SCCP (to name a few.)
Knowledge of Laws - More specifically E-911 laws which varies based on the state. It's also good to consider factors such as phone availability in a power outage.
Ability to work well under pressure - I use to think it was a fire when the network was down but that doesn't compare to a phone system being down.
Let me know your thoughts and questions below in the comments!
