Cisco Jabber Client for Linux

[mike]

Are there any plans to have a Cisco Jabber client on linux?

[PatrickFromBulpros]

Hey guys, 

I don't know if it is still of interest. My company BULPROS (CISCO Partner) has developed such a client (FIMBUR). You can use it on premise or as SaaS. It's already used by RWTH Aachen University. 

You can check it out here: 

https://bulpros.tech/fimbur/

Some features: 

- Web RTC audio and video calls
- Initiating and receiving audio and video calls with Cisco CUCM registered devices
- One-to-One & Group chat

Hope it still helps & best regards

Patrick

[collinks2]

Hello Patrick,
Thanks for this information. Does mean we have webrtc client that can make
video/audio calls from a web browser to cucm registered phone.

[PatrickFromBulpros]

Hey collinks2, 

sorry for my late feedback. I didn't get a notification. Regarding your question: Yes, that's possible. 

You can check it out here: https://bulpros.tech/fimbur/

Best regards

Patrick

[mike]

@Hailey, Thank you for that excellent answer!  Very helpful indeed.

[michaeljt1]

As long as there is no Cisco Jabber client for Linux, is there any currently known solution for making POTS calls through Cisco infrastructure from a Linux system?

[jamesc]

Cisco Jabber runs in WINE on Linux, I've tested it with MRA registration and direct registration against CUCM, audio calling works, so does hunt group login/logout and voicemail however Text chat is broken. WINE's RICHEDIT20 implementation is incomplete, You can receive text messages from other Jabber users but when you type a message it only sends the first letter of what you've typed. If someone wants to patch WINE to fix the text issue it'd be a viable option for use as a Linux client. I already use the UCCX script editor through WINE and RTMT natively on Linux. Both work without issues. Linux is not officially supported by Cisco for UCCX editor or Jabber so don't bother hitting up TAC for support when things go wrong. You could throw money at Codeweavers if you require support for software development/testing. A Linphone Softphone can also register against Cisco Call Manager as a third party SIP device and can make/receive calls. There's a few guides on the net, but basically you create the phone and associate a digest user with it and put the credentials in the end user account which you then put into the Linphone client.

[jamesc]

I've spoken with one of the WINE developers recently and he's implemented some of the RICHEDIT text functions. Jabber text chat now works on Linux via WINE. There's some rendering errors though so the program isn't exactly friendly to use. But MRA mode and text chat do work. The latest wine-devel branch is needed to use Jabber. As more Richedit text functions are added things like copy/paste are going to work. I've also been able to directly connect Pidgin to Cisco Jabber. Unfortunately there is no MRA mode for Pidgin, it'd be good if someone could add this to Pidgin or if Cisco could provide some documentation on how to make an XMPP client compatible with MRA mode. As I understand it, it would be possible to fork Pidgin's XMPP plugin to add support for Softphone/parsing of Jabber's XML config. This would bring Pidgin a lot closer to being a full Jabber Linux client. Unfortunately I don't have the skillset/time to work on a project like that.

[collinks2]

Thanks for the information.With the wine on Linux,can we make phones calls
in jabber? You mentioned chat and MRA mode work.

[jamesc]

Yes, full voice calling functionality is working including in MRA mode. I haven't tested video calls, my webcam seems to be intermittently detected within WINE. The laptop I'm using (RazerBlade Stealth 2016) unfortunately has dodgy USB ports. I've ordered a replacement daughter board for it, and I'll retest once I've repaired it. With a Razer gaming headset I'm able to make/receive calls and both parties can hear each other clearly both over VPN connected Jabber/CUCM Softphone and MRA.