Cisco Unified Communication Manager gives you a set of essential tools that allow you to do most of the things you need to do with your system. However, there are times where these tools may not be the most effective or efficient to provision your CUCM. The following post is the first of a 3 part series that will take you through the steps to get the most from your CUCM using the Cisco AXL API.

This first one is on how to enable Cisco AXL service on your Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) System allowing you to integrate any 3rd party provisioning application such as SMACS.

The second article takes it a step further and shows you how to send your own AXL request to CUCM with the help of postman.

And the third of this series, for those who want to push even further and shows you how to execute SQL queries against CUCM through AXL.

Let’s begin with our first post and first step, as this is required for the following steps. Enabling Cisco’s Administrative XML Web Service (AXL) API to allow for remote provisioning of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM).

Applications that require AXL access to your CUCM will always require three things:

1. Enabling the AXL Web Service on your CUCM.

2. Creating an Application User Account with AXL Access.

3. Performing a Smoke Test

This article demonstrates how a CUCM Administrator can setup and smoke test the above two items.

1. Enabling the AXL Web Service on your CUCM

Follow the below steps to ensure the AXL Web Service in CUCM is enabled.

Step 1.1: Navigate to your CUCM in your web browser and log in to the Cisco Unified Serviceability.

Step 1.2: Go to Tools → Control Center – Feature Services

Step 1.3: Select the CUCM and click go.

Step 1.4: Within the Database and Admin Services section, ensure Cisco AXL Web Service is checked off.

Press Save

2. Creating an Application User Account with AXL Access

Now that the service is up and running follow the below steps to create an Application User with AXL Access.

Step 2.1: Login the Cisco Unified CM Administration page

Step 2.2: Navigate to User Management > Application User

Step 2.3: Click on Add New

Step 2.4: Provide a new user with username/password

Step 2.5: Assign the Standard AXL Access group to the user

Step 2.6: Press Save

3. Performing a Smoke Test

We are finally ready to carry out a quick smoke test to ensure that the AXL Service is up and running and that the Application User with Standard AXL Access is properly setup.

Step 3.1: Logout of the CUCM if you are still logged in.

Step 3.2: Navigate to the web address.

Step 3.3: When prompted by the browser, enter the credentials of your Application User with Axl access.

Step 3.4: Notice a page with the header Cisco CallManager: AXL Web Service. And text: The AXL Web Service is working and accepting requests. Use HTTP POST to send a request.

Congratulations! You have successfully enabled your CUCM AXL service, and smoke tested it using an Application User Account.

If you are interested in learning more about AXL or how we use it here at Stack8 in a variety of our Software Solutions, including SMACS, give us a shout or if you would like to further understand how to use the AXL API, be sure to check out our next blog post on Sending AXL Requests to CUCM with Postman (#2 of 3).