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Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)

Overview

What is Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)?

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call…

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Popular Features

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  • Audio conferencing (39)
    8.8
    88%
  • User templates (38)
    8.2
    82%
  • Directory of employee names (38)
    8.1
    81%
  • Answering rules (41)
    7.8
    78%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)?

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Broadvoice?

Broadvoice is a provider of hosted voice, UCaaS, CCaaS, and CX solutions for small and mid-market enterprises and BPOs. Broadvoice solutions offer enterprise-class features to simplify communications and streamline operations.

What is NetFortris?

NetFortris provides business phone systems using Polycom and Yealink IP phones. They offer three subscription-based pricing plans, all including unlimited VoIP and desktop phone options. Advanced plans include other features such as video collaboration, softphone, and on-demand recording.

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Features

Cloud PBX

A cloud PBX system is based on cloud computing technology where data is stored and transferred over the intenet without any need for on-site PBX equipment

7.5
Avg 8.2

Call Management

Customized phone system settings

7.4
Avg 8.4

VoIP system collaboration

Team collaboration via cloud phone system

7.8
Avg 8.3

Mobile apps

Apps are compatible with mobile devices.

8.8
Avg 8.3
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Product Details

What is Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager)?

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.

Unified communications
Call Manager can consolidate communications infrastructures and enable individual users and teams to communicate within its interface. The solution features IP telephony, video, unified messaging, instant messaging, and networking. It also has various features to support mobile and remote workers.

Integrations
Cisco Unified (CM) supports industry communications standards, a range of gateways, and an ecosystem of third-party integrations and solutions plus partners.

Security
Cisco Unified (CM) supports the industry authentication, encryption, and communication protocols. It complies with industry certifications, and secures data and communications for customers in financial services, manufacturing, retail, and governments internationally.


Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Integrations

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Competitors

Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Call Manager is a unified call control center from Cisco that supports enterprise collaboration functions across the spectrum of IP telephony, video & web conferencing, and messaging. Features include call forwarding, call back, call transfer, ad hoc conferencing, and call park.

RingEX are common alternatives for Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager).

Reviewers rate Hosted PBX highest, with a score of 9.9.

The most common users of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(170)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-44 of 44)
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June 12, 2019

Efficiency Achieved

Claudia Kallesen (Ramirez) | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize CUCM across all of our corporate contact centers, it allows us to centrally manage our end-points and helps us take care of the MACD support for thousands of users with just one small telecom team.
  • Simplified on-boarding
  • Allows us to handle a large population of remote agents
  • Provides us with High Availability/ Failover capabilities
  • Constant need to refresh end-points
  • No granular restriction to self service portal
  • New security only available in newer versions
Our specific instance is one where we have several corporate contact centers that have been unified utilizing CM. It has been very beneficial due to simplifying support due to standardization, centralized provisioning, and speeds turnaround time for ticket work.
June 06, 2019

A great system

Stephanie Chapman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used to solve the problem of seeing if a customer was hung up on, if our reps are taking calls and how many calls they have taken. It is used by our whole organization but mostly by our tech department. We use it also to see how many calls were taken in a day, week or month.
  • It shows the calls that come in.
  • How long a call lasted.
  • It also shows how many calls a rep took that day.
  • I would like it to show the individual when I select their name.
It is very suited for our company for everything we need it for. The most specific scenario is being able to see if a specific number has called into our office and who they spoke to if they did. It's helpful because we can determine if someone is doing their job.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Call Manager) is the firm's on-premise phone switch. We use it in all our offices in several states tied back to our production data center. We also use the voicemail, presence and Jabber features integrated with the product. All firm phone calls, voice conferencing and internal texting are made via this product.
  • Cisco Unified Communications Manager is extremely reliable as a phone switch should be. We have never experienced downtime attributable to it.
  • The Cisco platform is easy for users to learn and utilize.
  • Integration with voicemail and directory services are well done and easy to use.
  • Integration with Jabber text services and presence are handy time savers and conveniences.
  • It can be tricky to implement emergency services through the product (think 911 calls).
  • Would like to see additional enhanced conference calling capabilities to potentially replace paid services.
  • Phone sets can be expensive when purchased in small quantities.
  • More soft buttons for additional saved phone numbers would be handy.
This platform is highly recommended for any middle to large size enterprise that needs a comprehensive on-premise phone switch that is stable, highly reliable and offers the features that most heavy voice callers demand. It can handle thousands of phones spread over a large number of physical locations, is easy to configure and manage and provides methods for reporting call information. The user interface is intuitive and requires little training and the phones themselves are attractive elements of a working office.
Renier Geldenhuys | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We chose, designed and deployed a Cicso UCM based solution, globally, to provide us our collaboration backbone and make staying in touch real-time real. Spanning 4 continents and multiple timezones can sometimes make conferencing tricky, but with Webex and Cisco MRA this is easily overcome and allows us to stay in touch no matter where we are.
  • Versatile
  • Easy setup and configuration of new and existing phones
  • Easily expandable
  • Expanding hardware is expensive.
  • Adding licenses is very confusing because of the license tier system they have in place.
Automatic call distribution within UCM could do with a tweak to allow for more visibility of real-time call flows.
Shawn Dietrich | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Call Manager to provide our enterprise with voice connectivity. It allows us to centrally administer over 180 offices and close 500 remote workers.
  • Call Manager has easily scaled with our growing business.
  • Ease of deployment to end users.
  • Ease of management for phone and it’s firmware.
  • The GUI interface could certainly use a refresh. It’s been a few years since there update.
  • Integrate management of other UC solutions (i.e. Unity, Emergency Responder)
Well suited for any enterprise that is looking to centralize disparate voice systems and are looking for a gig level of control from end to end.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I'm using the Call Manager as central call control solution for our global voice and video endpoints including our Jabber clients. It's the central call control solution for all locations worldwide and helps us to provide a harmonized IT workplace for all users. Besides the standardization of the workplace, it helps to improve service processes through centralized management of the solution.
  • Large ecosystem to integrate additional solutions like for DECT or emergency services. If it's not included as a basic feature, there is a large possibility that a Cisco solution partner has a fitting solution.
  • High flexibility
  • Long support times
  • Updates take too long and too many steps
  • Administrative possibilities, many features of video endpoints cannot be configured via Call Manager
  • Licensing - it's too complex because of the many different models
Enterprises with many locations searching for a centralized on-premises solution which are interested in standardization and central management. I would recommend it less for small business with one location because of the complexity to implement and the resource requirements. For smaller solutions other products would fit better.
For video only solutions maybe an expressway as call control would be sufficient and Call Manager too oversized.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization is using CUCM primarily for PBX functionality but also incorporating the end user management for Cisco Jabber and some auto attendant functionality in conjunction with UCCX. We are late in the process of transitioning from Avaya to Cisco and a separate contact center platform. We are adopting CUCM throughout our entire organization, even working to replace remote key systems with the primary goal of having centralized support, less reliance on expensive small vendors and having a homogenized environment, simplifying support.
  • The web GUI for management may feel a bit clunky at first for being a modern application, but the navigation features (back, dependency views) quickly differentiate it from other environments.
  • Good API documentation on DEVNET and a fairly strong supporting community.
  • It plays fairly well in its own ecosystem (UCCX, IM and Presence, Unity) so the breadth of the ecosystem makes for a lot of functionality being available to you with adjuncts.
  • The AXL API for Call Manager feels particularly dated. The fact that it hasn't been deprecated for a more modern REST/JSON supporting API is a little lackluster.
  • CUCM's solution to elements missing API coverage is to open SQL queries via the API. This seems lazy of them rather than just increasing API coverage.
  • I know I'm hammering on the API's here, but the disparity between all of their applications' API seems like a terrible design decision. AXL is very different from Unity which is very different from Finesse. This creates a barrier to learning the ecosystem that just doesn't feel necessary.
  • The dial plan feels dated, clunky and almost indecipherable compared to some more streamlined applications.
CUCM is a solid enterprise PBX that does what it sets out to do very well. If you are a large enterprise or a collection of entities looking for a central and consistent deployment, it is hard to argue against CUCM. If you are a small entity setting up office phones, the cost could be an obvious barrier to entry, especially with smaller companies offering services that don't require physical phones or have an onsite data center presence.

That said, if you are in that situation it is worth looking at Cisco's broadsoft solution, as it is aimed at smaller and less complex customers.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) Call Manager is used to manage all our phone numbers throughout our organization. Additionally, it is used to route a portion of fax numbers to our eFax server (StoneFax) as well as a recent implementation of Informacast which is used as our PA system at our school sites. It routes all our calls, digital and analog throughout our whole school district.
  • Ease of reporting. Able to obtain bulk reporting on current extensions assigned by location, which is very helpful to us as we have 21 different school sites. It makes it easier to manage when we are working on particular projects.
  • Extension Mobility is a very awesome feature of CUCM that allows users to login to any phone on our network with their own extension. This has served particularly well with our school counselors that roam to different school sites. It's easier for them to provide staff and parents one phone number to contact them at, as opposed to several numbers from all the sites they visit.
  • Cisco Meet Me is another awesome addition within the CUCM that allows for conference calling within our own phone system. No need to purchase a 3rd party phone conferencing when it can be implemented within your own infrastructure. It is extremely easy to configure and has been very beneficial for the executive staff in our district.
  • CUCM can improve by actually showing the administrator which DID numbers are available for use. We have a large block of DID numbers provided by AT&T, but when configuring them on the phone system we have no idea which ones are actually available for use. The worst thing is, if it's not configured on call manager BUT it is being used as a voicemail line on Cisco unity, I have no idea until I cross check the number on the Unity Server. It's really cumbersome having to go back and forth between unity and CUCM to ensure I'm actually configuring an available phone number.
  • Improvement with CUCM and Unity configuration. Having to configure phone numbers and voicemails on two separate systems wastes a lot of time. And there have been times where a phone number had been configured, but we forgot to attach the voicemail inbox to it, leaving the user without voicemails. I hope this can be improved in the future. I'm not against having two separate systems, but I wish there was a better way to integrate the two especially when it comes to voicemail management.
  • Improve on the User Interface. If you have no familiarity with CUCM, it is extremely hard to navigate and find the settings that you need. Unfortunately I did not receive much training, but the system wasn't that intuitive to be able to navigate easily. I had to youtube and google many things in order to make sense of the layout. Additionally, the Cisco user guides are extremely hard to follow as well.
CUCM is very well suited for several types of other tools (Example: eFax and Informacast). We were able to use our existing system to upgrade our PA system and implement a "panic button" alert across our districts to notify front office staff of an issue occurring in a classroom. It's very useful to be able to have one system in place that can be configured to route faxes and handle our PA system as well.

CUCM isn't appropriate for smaller organizations, in my opinion. It's a really robust system and if it is needed for a small amount of call routing, I think it would be too much work to establish servers and switches for CUCM in a small organization.
October 25, 2018

Cisco Call Manager

Michael Dallio | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Call Manager as our main VOIP system across our whole organization. We have a fault tolerant phone system that is more stable and versatile than previous system.
  • Versatile
  • Easy setup and configuration of new and existing phones
  • Easily expandable
  • Updates for new phones are not easy to implement.
  • Expanding hardware is expensive.
  • Adding licenses is very confusing because of the license tier system they have in place.
If you are looking to switch to VOIP this is a very stable solution. I also like the fact that the servers are virtualized.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Communications Manager is a very complex and full featured telephony Enterprise solution. My company uses this product to deploy IP phones and analog telephony products to multiple sites across the state. CUCM is very stable and handles our 20k+ phone deployment very well. I would recommend some basic training before deploying or administrating this solution. It can be quite difficult to spin up for the new user. We use Communications Manager with Unity Connection and Contact Center Express for a complete voice solution.
  • Flexible configurations
  • Accepts 3rd party SIP devices
  • Great support from Cisco
  • Cost
  • Difficult setup without training
  • Administration slows down with concurrent users in database (10+)
I recommend this to companies that want an IP phone solution across multiple sites. Great for managing a mixed environment of desk phones, softphones and analog connections.
July 11, 2018

Cisco UCM

John Van Lieshout | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco UCM is our main phone system, we have integration with AD and have just started using/testing Jabber with mobile phones for our IT department. It has been working great allowing me to answer my desk phone from anywhere. Management of users is simple and efficient.
  • Easy of use
  • Robust
  • More features than you could ask for
  • Cost
  • Tech support can be a bear
  • Initial setup can be difficult
It can support tons of devices used in multiple different environments.
Andrew Murphy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco Unified Communications Manager for our Phone system. We have an on-premise phone system. We have 2 nodes. A Pub and a Sub so if a link goes out our off-site Sub takes over and our phone system still works. We also use Cisco Unity for our voice mail.
  • Cisco Jabber is a great application that can be used with the Cisco phone system. You can do audio or audio and video. It also allows for chat.
  • Hunt groups. You can have multiple people in the same group to ring multiple phones at once.
  • Using Cisco Unity with Call Manager you can create Auto Attendants and call menus.
  • Coming in brand new to using Call Manager it takes a bit to get to know it. Definitely get with someone who has experience and can learn how to manage it. I started 1.5 years ago with Call Manager and I'm decent now but I still have access to a tech for the complicated stuff. Document how to do everything and it will be easy to repeat!
  • It's very easy to make a mistake in setting up an extension.
  • It's hard to think of another Con. The biggest thing is learning how to do it. You don't need a certification to learn but it is best to learn from someone who has the knowledge and document as you go. The best way is to have them walk you through all the fixes and you learn as you fix things.
Call Manager is a great use when you have multiple sites. Also when you have a small IT department. It is very robust and once programmed correctly it pretty much operates well on its own without having to be touched. It's a great "set it and forget it" solution. Definitely pay to have someone help install and train!
Shawn Umansky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use CUCM to manage our Cisco phone environment of roughly 1200 phones. This includes roughly 100 emergency phones of various types. We integrate directly with Exchange 2016 for Unified Communication, which allows voicemail to go directly to the user's inbox. (We do not use Unity.) We have around half dozen IP phone models (7941/42, 6921, etc.).
  • It is good at allowing for specific phone configurations. If you want to get granular, this is the tool for you.
  • The single number reach feature works well, allowing simultaneous ringing to outside devices, such as a mobile phone or home phone.
  • The Cisco IP Communicator application is great. I use it every day to emulate my physical phone from my laptop. I have used it extensively when working from home or at our co-location where cell service is not available. I just connect to the company VPN, launch the application, and use the phone just like it was on my desk. It even looks the same.
  • The user interface is not intuitive; if you don't know what you are doing, a single, small change can become a major problem.
  • Provisioning a single device requires lots of clicks and manual input of data; easy to misspell something by accident.
  • I find the provisioning process to be rather time consuming, but that may be because unified communications is not my primary role.
  • CUCM is not particularly friendly to non-Cisco hardware; you can configure other makes (we use Polycom for conference phones), but the configuration process is pretty involved, and requires time and experience.
I think it is probably a great fit for organizations that have both a Cisco based infrastructure, as well as a full time telecommunications person to manage it.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco Unified Call Manager across the system to manage our VOIP phones. This system is great because it is a fairly simple tool to use in regards to managing phones. It also is able to allow troubleshooting from any location with little to no interaction needed in person at the device.
  • Remote Troubleshooting
  • Remote support of devices
  • Organization of the company's phone lines and devices
  • Ability to copy existing profiles from other phones for fast deployment
  • Certificate Deployment
  • The web interface is a little dated and sometimes confusing
  • Changes sometimes have to be saved two times which is repetitive
  • Some of the descriptors in the drop downs are not clear
  • Sometimes interface can be slow
Call Manager is great if you are going to deploy Cisco phones at small, medium, or large companies where you will need to be able to manage phones as the staff and company size changes. This is also great when you don't have a dedicated IT staff member on site when the changes are to be made. The changes made are also close to immediate after being saved in the system.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've worked very closely with Cisco Unified Communications Manager thanks to a number of our clients. They use it for everything from something as basic to a phone call, to video conferences, and even down to basic instant messaging inside the corporation. From a management perspective, it's intuitive to administer, easy to get set up, and very robust for my client's communication needs. Overall I consider this a great product.
  • From an administration perspective the product is incredibly intuitive, and a joy to manage.
  • Training a new user on the software, and hardware takes no time at all and Cisco provides a lot of detailed information to pass along to the end users.
  • The ability to have everything practically seamless makes this a wonderful solution. From basic telephony, video conferencing, to instant messaging either in the office, or on the road, having unified presence and voice/video capabilities has been a huge selling point for our customers.
  • When I first started using the product the learning curve was a little steep, but overall once you take the time to learn the Call Manager it's incredibly intuitive. I don't know that there's much I think could need improvement.
  • I've had end users complain about having too many options at first, but once they start using more of then this complaint usually disappears. I'm not sure this is something that really needs improvement, but I list this for lack of other ideas for improvement.
  • Compared to other systems I think Cisco hit the mark on this one, and I don't have many areas that I would consider improving upon.
For a medium-sized business or larger I think this is a great solution. It covers pretty much all the needs you would want, basic telephony, video conferencing, instant messaging, and presence. Like anything else you get what you pay for if you have the budget for a Cisco product, I definitely recommend this. For the smaller business that doesn't need all the features or a business that doesn't have the appropriate budget to warrant a product like Call Manager, this may not be the best fit.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Call Manager is used for our organization and for telecommunication services for all our offices globally. It provides us with seamless voice and video communication and reduces cost incurred with Telco as we route all calls within the organization internally across our WAN,
  • Call Manager provides no-cost communication between all our offices globally.
  • Call Manager administration is easier than traditional TDM and or other VoIP systems
  • We used to be a full Cisco shop with Cisco routers and switches. However, we've changed our infrastructure to use Brocade and it works well with other systems.
  • It would be nice if Cisco-provided better management tools. We used to use Prime Collaboration but moved over to Riverbed UCExpert
  • Our offices can sometimes fall victim to robocalls so it would be nice if Call Manager had an easy way to reject these calls instead of doing it on the cube router or provider side.
  • I've been using Call Manager for a while now and I find that with each subsequent upgrade that it gets better and better. Maintenance upgrades can sometimes be difficult and I'm not sure how to address it but I've been using a new tool called Prime Collaboration Deployment that's helped. I think in general CUCM is a great product.
I used to do Avaya TDM and Avaya VoIP but that's been over 10 years ago. Honestly, I don't think there's a product that competes with Call Manager on the Enterprise level. I believe it's come a long way. We use Cisco 8800 / 9900 devices as well as Jabber and MRA to connect our remote users. We also leverage other products such as voice messaging with Unity Connections. I've also used other products such as Contact Center Express.
March 14, 2017

Managing Call Manager

Ryan Thompson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Clearpoint uses Call Manager to connect remote and internal phones across a nation-wide organization.
  • Day-to-day administration is relatively easy
  • Phones are user-friendly
  • Able to administer a nation-wide system from one location
  • Initial deployment can be difficult
  • Expensive
Great for use for most organizations. The main negative is the cost, which can be burdensome.
Rui Ferraz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We are currently reselling CUCM solutions for our enterprise customers, focusing these kind of solution for clients that have an installed base of Cisco Solutions.
Cisco solutions work with great productivity when focusing when delivering Cisco's ecosystem. The quality of its telephones and solutions is currently a great driver to sell Cisco over other kind of manufacturers.
When talking about Cisco, you get the possibility to increase your collaborators productivity, offering some other modules, like for example:
Jabber
Unity
Mediasense
etc...
  • Can be deployed using a centralized and virtualized approach or using a server (For example BE6K)
  • Quality of its phones and equipments
  • Evolution of its solutions and roadmap
  • Ease to reach information and its capability to create documentation to help the partners
  • Desktop Sharing
  • Federations with other IM&P solutions
  • Integration with Lync
  • Video solution, without the need to use VCS
Well suited for:
  • Clients with a very high need to scale and with a lot of sites.
  • Solutions that need a collaborative solution that focuses on the functionalities rather than the price.
  • Clients that need a evolving solution and have their own technical support.
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco Unified Communications Manager was used by one remote manufacturing plant. Other sites used a company standard system that was decided upon and implemented after the Cisco system was already in place. The Cisco Communications Manager was used to administrate the Cisco phone system that we had in place and could be used to assign extensions, hunt groups and other phone features.
  • The system is powerful and can handle a huge number of phones.
  • The GUI is powerful.
  • It is easier to set up advanced functions than with some competing products.
  • To get the most out of the system you need to use the command line, which is very complicated.
  • The system is much more expensive than competing systems.
It is an expensive, powerful enterprise system and thus is not appropriate for a small business of less than 50 people.
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