At one of my clients, a range of recording phones have a service state of unknown. Also when we try to single step the phones, we get an error in the dmcc logs saying a seventh party can't be added. I don't know if that is related to the unknown service state. I am working with the client to figure out why we have so many observers but even if that is fixed, can i still single step with a phone in an unknown service state? Normally i see "in service" as the service state.

Communication Manager has a limit of 6 parties in a call. you can not have a seventh, regardless of how you try to add the party (SSC, manually, bridging, service observing, etc). I believe multiple registrations overcomes that limit because the extra party isnt treated as a party in the call, but rather just something also getting (something close to) the RTP stream CM is transmitting to the endpoint involved in the MR, but am not positive about that without researching it.

It would be odd to have a lot of calls with 6 parties in them.

What type of stations are in the 'unknown' state? Are they SIP? I don't know of a reason that Communication Manager wouldn't know the actual service state. I presume you are talking about what you see when you do a 'status station XXX' SAT command. The service state of an extension is not related to the number of parties in a call at that station/extension.

When you say recording phones, are you talking about the recorder's station extension (the thing you are trying to SSC into a call), or the extension of the party being recorded (the extension a human is using)?

John, when i say recording phone, I am talke about the thing i am trying to SSC into a call. Also the way i got the service states was not through the CM query, I used my dmcc application to get a snapshot of the phone.

'snapshot' being a 'snapshot device' API query?

if the latter, since to get the information there needs to be a query sent from AES to CM and information returned, I would assume that some elements of the query were unsuccessful, and the data was not populated. I would use CM's SAT to check the 'status station' form or unregister the device from the application and re-register it.

Could your recording devices have been configured as SIP stations?

Martin, I will inquire.

There was a config setting issue. Client didn't tell us what it was but it has been fixed. For anyone inquiring, "service state unknown" has no effect on being able to successfully single step a phone

thanks for the followup letting us know it is closed out.