What is new in 3.0 for administrators

This is an overview of new features and changes that are relevant for administrators.

No support for older Meeting Server versions

Due to the many changes between version 2.9 and version 3.0, Meeting Management 3.0 only supports Meeting Server 3.0.

You can upgrade Meeting Management while some of the connected Meeting Servers are still running version 2.8 or 2.9, but all Meeting Servers must be upgraded to version 3.0 to be fully supported.

See who is presenting in a meeting

In previous releases, you would need to look at the call statistics for individual participants to know if someone is presenting. In this release, there will be an indicator next to the presenter's name in the participant list.

See instructions in See who is speaking or presenting.

Use Meeting Management only for licensing and provisioning

In previous versions, you could only use Meeting Management with Meeting Server clusters that have maximum 10,000 meetings per week and no tenants.

In this version you can choose to use Meeting Management only for licensing and provisioning for individual clusters. This can be useful if you want to free up CDR capacity for other tools, if a clusters has tenants, or if a cluster hosts high volumes of meetings.

See instructions in Disable meeting management.

Change between licensing modes

Change between three licensing modes:

  • Traditional licensing

    In this mode, Meeting Management gets its information about available licenses from license files that are installed on your Call Bridges.

    Note: This option is only available if at least one license file is installed on one of the connected Call Bridges.

  • Smart Licensing

    In this mode, Meeting Management gets its information about available licenses from the Cisco Smart Software Manager.

  • No licensing

    In this mode, Meeting Management does not manage licensing. If you have a resilient deployment, use one instance of Meeting Management for licensing and choose No licensing mode for the other instance.

In the user interface, the Settings page, Smart Software Licensing tab has been changed to the Licensing tab which lets you choose licensing mode and edit most Smart Licensing settings.

See instructions in Licensing.

Licensing enforcement

In previous releases, Meeting Management reported license status for connected Meeting Server clusters. In this release, Meeting Management not only lets you know if you are out of compliance, but it also manages enforcement, and it is mandatory with Meeting Server 3.0 or later.

All Meeting Server clusters running 3.0 or later must be connected to Meeting Management for licensing. Meeting Management monitors the license status based on usage data from the connected Call Bridges and license information that is retrieved either from the license files installed on the Call Bridges or from the Cisco Smart Software Manager. As long as the usage is in compliance, Meeting Management allows the connected clusters to keep working.

To allow for connection issues, Meeting Management sets an expiry date to the Meeting Servers which will be renewed continuously as long as Meeting Management is connected, and the usage is within the limits defined by the licenses.

See more information in License status and enforcement or in the Cisco Meeting Server 3.0 Release notes.

CAUTION: When you upgrade to 3.0, your Meeting Server will be at the highest enforcement level until it has been connected to an instance of Meeting Management that has licensing enabled. Note that on upgrade to 3.0, you must update or confirm license settings in Meeting Management to enable licensing. See Notes on upgrading to 3.0

Updated license status levels and enforcement warnings

We have updated the license status levels so they correspond to how license status is defined for different license types in 3.0.

We have added:

  • Warnings of upcoming or active enforcement

    When a feature is out of compliance, you will also see a warnings about enforcement on the Licenses page.

  • License status levels for customization

    Unlike other license types, you do not purchase a number of customization licenses. Customization is either licensed, or it is not licensed.

See more information in License status and enforcement.

Start a trial

In previous versions, Meeting Management had limited trial functionality. In this version you can start a 90 day trial from the Licenses page, whether you are using Smart Licensing or traditional licensing.

See information in Licenses and License status and enforcement.

Changes to Smart Licensing

Changes that are specific to Smart Licensing are:

  • Smart Licensing has been aligned with traditional licensing so usage for the last 90 days is taken into account when Meeting Management defines the license status. The status levels are now the same as for traditional licensing, but they are always for all clusters rather than per cluster. However, you can see usage data for individual clusters in the 90 day report that you can download.
  • You no longer need to have activation keys installed on the connected Call Bridges. Instead, Meeting Management reports the number of Call Bridges without a traditional license key to the Cisco Smart Software Manager. They appear as a license type called Active Call Bridge Node in your . These licenses are free, and you will automatically be given the number of licenses you need.
  • Meeting Management verifies allocated licenses with the Cisco Smart Software Manager. In previous releases, you could enter the number of available licenses to see utilization on a graph. In this release, it is mandatory to enter the license information as Meeting Management verifies it with the Cisco Smart Software Manager and uses the information to calculate your license status.
  • The license for customizing video layouts has now been added to Smart Licensing, seen as the customization license on the Meeting Management Licenses page.
  • The Settings page, Smart Software Licensing tab is now the Licensing tab, where you can choose licensing mode. Smart Licensing settings will be visible when you have chosen Smart Licensing mode. The options of enabling or disabling and deregistering Smart Licensing have been removed, as Meeting Management automatically deregisters from the Cisco Smart Software Manager when you change licensing mode to traditional licensing or no licensing.
  • We have removed the Summary and Events tab from the Licenses page. The events and acknowledge functionality has been removed, and the license summary table has been replaced by an individual box for each feature. We have added warnings that are displayed when you have not entered the license information, or when the Cisco Smart Software Manager rejected the information.

See information in Licensing, Licenses, and License status and enforcement.

Changes to traditional licensing

Changes that are specific to traditional licensing include:

  • All license types can now be monitored using Meeting Management. This includes the new customization license that lets you create customize video layouts.
  • Meeting Management is checking the license files of all Call Bridges instead of just one. This means that the upgraded version may show a different number of available licenses than you would have seen in the previous version. Also, the whole cluster will be at the highest enforcement level if any Call Bridge has no activation key (callBridge or callBridgeNoEncryption). We strongly recommend that you make sure that the correct license files are installed on all your Call Bridges.

  • The Settings page, Smart Software Licensing tab is now the Licensing tab, where you can choose licensing mode.

  • We have made the Licenses page simpler by removing the Summary and Events tabs. The events and acknowledge functionality has been removed, and the licenses summary table has been replaced by an individual box for each feature. The page still shows license information per cluster.

See information in Licensing, Licenses , and License status and enforcement.

PMP Plus license usage is measured by the number of assigned users

In previous releases, PMP Plus license usage has been measured by the number of active meetings using a PMP Plus license. In this release, a license that has been assigned to a user counts as one license in use, whether or not that user is in any active meetings.

For each meeting, the rules for how licenses are assigned are the same as for previous releases. See the rules in the "How Cisco Multiparty licenses are assigned" section of the Meeting Server deployment guides.

Notes on upgrading to 3.0

When you upgrade to 3.0, your Meeting Servers will be at the highest license enforcement level until licensing has been enabled correctly on Meeting Management.

We recommend that you proceed in the following order:

  1. Upgrade Meeting Management.
  2. Ask your Meeting Server administrator to upgrade your Meeting Servers.
  3. Enable licensing.

How to enable licensing

If your deployment is using traditional licensing, and you want to start using Smart Licensing instead:

  1. Create a and define a that you want to use for Meeting Management.

  2. Migrate your licenses to Smart Licensing, using the migration feature in the Cisco Smart Software Manager.

    Note: During Trial, please ask your Trial representative to help you set up a that you can use for test purposes.

  3. Enable Smart Licensing on one instance of Meeting Management and register it to the Cisco Smart Software Manager as described in the User Guide for Administrators.
  4. In the Cisco Smart Software Manager, check how many licenses you have in your .

  5. In Meeting Management, go to the Licenses page.

  6. Enter the number of licenses that have been allocated to your .

    Note: In this release, Meeting Management verifies the number of allocated licenses with the Cisco Smart Software Manager, so even if you have previously entered the numbers, you must enter them again for Smart Licensing to be properly enabled.

  7. If you have a resilient deployment, disable licensing for the other instance of Meeting Management.

If your deployment is using Smart Licensing, and you want to continue using Smart Licensing:

  1. In Meeting Management, go to the Settings page, Licensing tab and choose Smart Licensing.
  2. In the Cisco Smart Software Manager, check how many licenses you have in your .
  3. In Meeting Management, go to the Licenses page.

  4. Enter the number of licenses that have been allocated to your .

    Note: In this release, Meeting Management verifies the number of allocated licenses with the Cisco Smart Software Manager, so even if you have previously entered the numbers, you must enter them again for Smart Licensing to be properly enabled.

If your deployment is using traditional licensing, and you want to continue using traditional licensing:

  1. Ask your Cisco Meeting Serveradministrator to check that the correct license files are installed on all Call Bridges.

    CAUTION: If any of the Call Bridges has no activation key (called callBridge or callBridgeNoEncryption in the API), then the whole cluster will be at highest enforcement level.

  2. In one instance of Meeting Management, go to the Settings page, Licensing tab and choose Traditional licensing.

  3. If you have a resilient deployment, choose No licensing on the other instance of Meeting Management.

Changes to requirements

Due to many changes between versions 2.9 and 3.0, Meeting Management 3.0 is only supported with Meeting Server 3.0 or later.

We have updated the VM requirements to include support for ESXi 7.0. We have removed mention of X3 servers as they are not supported with Meeting Server 3.0. Also, we have added a note to say that a small deployment is sufficient for all deployment sizes if the meeting management functionality is disabled.

For all requirements and prerequisites for Meeting Management 3.0, see Before you start.