Chesapeake NetCraftsmen

In the recent past I was helping one of our customers with some special SRST configuration requirements.  The customer had several key DIDs that were associated to a site that were not assigned to IP Phones on the site.  For example, a hunt pilot that would ring a group of operator lines or a UCCX trigger, or an automated attendant.  When a site transitioned to SRST mode, calls to these special services would have no place to go and callers would get a fast busy.  The customer wanted some solutions that could be applied to redirect calls to ephone extensions as well as hairpin calls to the PSTN.  I wanted to capture some of the ideas and features I reviewed and tested in the lab.  Just in case someone else finds themselves in a similar situation.

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As a departure away from my standard "how to" blog style, I wanted to touch on a topic that I think many of IT professionals take for granted.  I am talking about the need for operational discipline, particularly in large enterprises where being unprepared could impact a large amount of folks who are unwitting victims.  I also want to discuss a concept NetCraftsmen calls "lower environment validation".  By "lower environment", I don't mean a "test lab".  I am talking about an environment that hosts production users running the latest and greatest technology before you roll it out to the whole organization.

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This is one of those blogs where I am wondering if I should open this can of worms.  Despite my reservations I am going to post it anyway.  I see a lot of folks in various forums asking the question:  "How can I push a background image to a Cisco IP phone without selecting it from the phone itself?"  I even had a few customers ask about the same topic.  Basically, the problem is that admins want to control what is pushed out to a phone display. More often then not this desire is realized after phones are already deployed which means that admins need a tool that they can use to push images out to production IP phones.  This capability isn't built into the CUCM but there are options for those who wish to pursue this.  I stumbled across one option that may be used to solve this problem. It is just a concept, but I have tested it out successfully.  Curious?

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Around a week ago I posted a blog about setting up 3rd Party SIP phones in Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CallManager).  I received a comment about whether it was possible to use X-Lite with the UC-520.  Well, I haven't used the UC-520 myself but I believe it is basically Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express (CUCME).  I happen to have one of those hanging out in my lab so I figured it would be interesting to test X-Lite on CUCME.

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So, this blog started with me looking for something to break up the heavy design documentation I have been doing for what seems like forever.  Like all tangents I undertake I find that I want to touch every button and turn every dial.  Some would say I am a glutton for punishment.  Of course they are right -- I mean here I am at 3am writing this blog.  But enough of that, let's talk about how to add CounterPath's X-Lite SIP softphone to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM).

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Starting in October I began writing a series of articles about the AXL SQL Toolkit that Cisco provides with the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM).  I started the series because a friend of mine wanted to know more about how to get more granular "views" on the CUCM database.  In the first article, we discussed the table structure, tables, and relationships (well, some examples at least).  In the second article we discuss the AXL SQL Toolkit itself.  Now, I wanted to round out the series with a real world example of using the toolkit.  Let's stat with a question: Have you ever wanted to change the LDAP filter used by CUCM DirSync?

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Every once in a while I get asked if there is a better way to distribute firmware to phones across the WAN. The obvious driver is the general performance (or lack thereof) for the standard TFTP approach when handling a large number of requests. This is one of those questions that usually comes up the day before a mass firmware upgrade and then goes to the back burner, only to come up again during the next upgrade cycle. Nonetheless it is an important consideration and, fortunately, there are several options available to us.

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In October I started a series on the AXL SOAP toolkit and database in Cisco Unified Communication Manager (CUCM).  You can check out part 1 here.  Continuing the discussion, we will go into how to obtain and use the actual tool kit that Cisco provides.

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In September I discussed a feature called "Call Forward Unregistered" or CFUR.  The point of this feature is to allow administrators to specify special call handling rules when an SRST enabled device was unregistered.  I wanted to use CFUR as an example to illustrate how Local Route Groups and other CUCM7x dial plan features can be leveraged to simply admin tasks and improve an overall dial plan architecture.

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A colleague of mine asked if I would do a blog on using the AXL/SOAP interface to execute custom queries for administrative purposes.  I thought that this would be an interesting topic to cover.  Though, it isn't something that can be fully addressed in one blog.  So, I think this will need to be a series of blogs/articles.  For Part 1 I think we will discuss the basic table structures and some key tables that are commonly queried by admins.

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