- Introduction
- Q:Why can't I use updated phone feature to change settings field?
- Q:Is it possible to unsubscribe services on the phones using bulk?
- Q:I need to add the phone mac under the controlled devices. Can you talk about it?
- Q:Do you know if there is something new for this new version 12.5 compared with the old versions of the UCM?
- Q:Does the phone reset when using bulk import?
- Q:If the Job scheduler shows some failures in the results log. Does the whole job gets reverted, or do the successful ones still get processed?
- Q:For a long log, do the import/export files stay on the system? Or should I delete them also to keep save that space?
- Q:When importing the file to CUCM, is it best to use a text file? I see you converted it back to text from csv.
- Q:If you hit the stop process button, will the users/phones that were already processed, return to how they were before?
- Q:If you use the BAT tool for a mass update, can it slow or freeze the CUCM server to the point calls are effected?
- Q:If you do not hit the "run immediately" button, when will the job process?
- Q:Will the BAT work with non-Cisco phones?
- Q:Do you know if there is something new for this new version 12.5 compared with the old versions of the UCM?
- Q:Can you also delete the extra columns that are not needed in the phone.csv files?
- Q:She didn't mention how to disable the phone setting she told earlier?Can you talk about it?
- Q:Is there any way to speed up BAT processing?
- Q:Can you mention something about the product-specific configuration layout?
- Q:How do I open a backup file using 7zip? I get an error, "Cannot open file".
- Q:Are importing or exporting data memory intensive?
- Q:In one of the last scenarios Maren presented, what will happen to the delated phone? Would the phone profile will be completely removed, or would it be still available when you search it in the DN or MAC address?
- Q:When editing, Maren used the csv to make edits but changed it back to text to upload. Is this a standard to upload the text file or leave it as a csv?
- Q:What would be the steps/process if we would like to unsubscribe VisualVoiceMail?
- Q:Can we run a search to find out External Phone Mask on all the lines and devices?
- Q:Both, the reports Maren downloaded and the files she uploaded. Do they stay in the hard drive forever? Thinking about large deployments, you probably don't want 10+ 50mb files taking space for no reason, right? Could you please provide some comment...
- Related Information
This event had place on Tuesday 14th, January 2020 at 10hrs PDT
Introduction
This event provides a practical overview of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM) Bulk Administration Tool (BAT) and the best practices to solve its common issues. In this session, Cisco Designated VIP Maren share and demonstrate the best practices to solve day-to-day BAT administrative tasks.
This session helps CUCM administrators with using BAT to solve day-to-day administrative tasks. If you've ever thought "I wish I could…” bulk edit the description field for all of your phones; find a way to make the Home Cluster checkbox consistent in multiple clusters; migrate a single phone to a new model; modify the Voice Mail Profile field on lines in bulk; deploy Access Lists for Single Number Reach users in bulk; deploy a set of Abbreviated Dials across multiple phones, or work with CSV and TAR files for editing the database.
Maren Mahoney has been in the information system industry for more than 25 years with roles in employee development, technical support and helpdesk administration, network administration, management and engineering, and networking courseware development and instruction. She is a Senior Technical Instructor at Sunset Learning Institute and teaches a range of technologies but specializes in Unified Communications. Before she joined Sunset Learning Institute (SLI), Maren worked for Cisco Systems as a Network Consulting Engineer. She also worked for several Cisco Reseller Partners in engineering and technical instructor roles. Maren is an official Cisco Certified Systems Instructor (CCSI). She holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Russian studies and plans one day to gain a master’s degree in Mathematics. Maren holds different certifications in Routing, Switching, and Data Center and a CCIE in Collaboration (#50569). Maren is also a US Army veteran.You can download the slides of the presentation in PDF format here.
Q:Why can't I use updated phone feature to change settings field?
A:I think you're talking about access to the Settings button on the phone. So, what he's talking about is that when you walk up to a phone and press the Settings button. There is a lot of information in there. So again, think about lobby phones in the Settings button I can see things like the G my DHCP server, which is probably a Windows Server and my default gateway, which is probably a router. We don't want hackers or bad guys to be able to see that information. So, how can I go about restricting those settings now in a lobby phone, I would probably turn that setting button, off altogether. In, maybe for my regular users where I don't want them poking around, I consider it to restricted, which means that you hit the Settings button. You can change the background and the ring tones, but you can't get access to that network information and the default setting, of course, and leaving it wide open. You can see a demo in minute 28'.
Q:Is it possible to unsubscribe services on the phones using bulk?
A: Yes, you have to export phones and export users ID.
Q:I need to add the phone mac under the controlled devices. Can you talk about it?
A: You talking about associating the reports you downloading a file she's uploaded they're sharing the hardware. Mostly these text files are 10s or dozens of bytes or just a few kilobytes I mean just as raw text files are not that big a deal. Even with 10,000 users, maybe we're talking about a meg, but it's very easy to go in and delete jobs and delete files in particular, especially if you do a lot of batch jobs to delete that files. You go into upload download files here. You just check the boxes for the ones you want to get rid of and remove, and they've gone on. I would encourage you to download things before you delete them, but there you go. I'm not sure about the add the phone Mac under control devices. Is it possible to associate control devices with user accounts in the bulk administration tool? Yes, that's actually how I ended up doing it. That takes a little more work you would have to export phones, so you have MAC addresses, and also export the owners you know which user ID is going with which phones, and then you manipulate that data a little bit and then you can do an import using bulk administration tools for users.
Q:Do you know if there is something new for this new version 12.5 compared with the old versions of the UCM?
A:I have not seen any new updates in 12.5 for the bulk administration field.
Q:Does the phone reset when using bulk import?
A: You can use the Bulk administration tool to reset the phones, but it will not for changes unless you explicitly tell it to.
Q:If the Job scheduler shows some failures in the results log. Does the whole job gets reverted, or do the successful ones still get processed?
A: It depends on what kind of change you're making. Generally speaking, if it says that, some records failed and some records exceeded the records that succeeded did get changed and the records that failed did not. There are a few exceptions, I've run into over the years I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but I've run into a couple of examples where if any part of the job bombs the whole thing falls. Generally, though, as you assumed, you know, it either fails or succeeds and it does complete for that particular object. You can find more information in minute 37'15¨.
Q:For a long log, do the import/export files stay on the system? Or should I delete them also to keep save that space?
A: They will remain on the system. If you perform this same operation often, by all means, keep the files, they are not generally large enough to be problematic.
Q:When importing the file to CUCM, is it best to use a text file? I see you converted it back to text from csv.
A: It is required. Maren used the .csv format to make it easier to edit quickly using excel..
Q:If you hit the stop process button, will the users/phones that were already processed, return to how they were before?
A: No. They are done. Any changes you made are made.
Q:If you use the BAT tool for a mass update, can it slow or freeze the CUCM server to the point calls are effected?
A: Yes depending on the size of the job and the server configuration BAT can impact server performance - a best practice is to do BAT updates during scheduled maintenance periods.
Q:If you do not hit the "run immediately" button, when will the job process?
A: You will have to schedule the job using the BAT job scheduler.
Q:Will the BAT work with non-Cisco phones?
A: Yes, if the phone exists in the call-manager database. It depends on the kind of thing you're trying to change. Obviously, a, you know, I don't know if third party sip softphone, as an example, doesn't have an extension mobility checkbox. If you're doing a query, and you have a set of devices that don't support a particular field like the extensibility checkbox is a good example, like if I did a query and it included third party sip softphones. The bulk administration tool will work for any field is editable for third party phones, yes.
Q:Do you know if there is something new for this new version 12.5 compared with the old versions of the UCM?
A: Looks like EM MAX LOGIN TIME field is added in the BAT Spreadsheet in 12.5 as the only change I see so far.
Q:Can you also delete the extra columns that are not needed in the phone.csv files?
A: You can modify the CSV file, but there will be more work needed.
Q:She didn't mention how to disable the phone setting she told earlier?Can you talk about it?
A: Review the demo on 1h25¨. Settings access> Enterprise phone configuration. This allows you to make a global setting for any of those hardware checkboxes that are down at the bottom of a phone, and the one that the app or the person with the question was asking about specifically was these settings. Let me find it here. Where settings access, and it is enabled by default. On a cluster-wide basis, I can make it disabled or restricted. Now you may be thinking to yourself what enabled for a certain group of phones, is there a way I can do this on a group basis. Absolutely. Remember that when you're applying settings and call manager enterprise-wide defaults first group setting. Second individual objects. Third, so for group steps purposes so I have everybody you know is enabled, but I want to disable it on a certain set of phones. I can go to Device device settings and things coming Device Configuration I got these two mixed up.
Q:Is there any way to speed up BAT processing?
A: This is difficult to address based on many conditions, but here is some info that may be helpful: m/bat/9_0_1/CUCM_BK_C22BD805_00_cucm-bulk-administration-guide-90/CUCM_BK_C22BD805_00_cucm-bulk-administration-guide_chapter_01001101.html#CUCM_TK_TB5E6DC3_00
Q:Can you mention something about the product-specific configuration layout?
A: Importing and exporting data may or may not be system-resource-intensive, depending on the number of records you are working with. If you are importing, let's say, 20 phones, or if you are running a report against 100 directory numbers, or exporting 500 user accounts, the impact on the system will not be enough to notice. However, if you are importing 2000 phones, you will notice. So, it depends. Also, if you are in a relatively large environment, your Publisher will not be doing call-processing so any impact would only be on those services being provided by the Publisher (other than the fact that it's the Publisher).
Q:How do I open a backup file using 7zip? I get an error, "Cannot open file".
A: When the system does a backup, it creates a randomly-generated password for the backup file itself, and then it encrypts that password with the system's Security password and includes the now-encrypted password in the backup file itself. So you can't open it with 7-Zip or WinRAR. However, there are decrypters out on the Internet that can extract the information providing you have the Security password. I have used tools from here: https://www.adhdtech.com/uctools.html with a lot of success. But they are not my tools so I make no promise or warranty about them.
Q:Are importing or exporting data memory intensive?
A: As for the "Product Specific Configuration Layout", I'm not sure exactly what you are asking about. I *think* you are asking if those fields are BAT-able. They are, using Export/Import only. Most other BAT tools, while phone model specific, don't include those fields.
Q:In one of the last scenarios Maren presented, what will happen to the delated phone? Would the phone profile will be completely removed, or would it be still available when you search it in the DN or MAC address?
A:I think you are referring to the "Migrating a Single Phone to a New Phone Model".
Q:When editing, Maren used the csv to make edits but changed it back to text to upload. Is this a standard to upload the text file or leave it as a csv?
A: If you are working with the Export/Import feature, you will want to leave files in CSV format. For other BAT tools (like Insert Phones or Update Users) CUCM is expecting a TXT file (UTF-8 format, if that ever comes up), which contains commas as field separators.
Q:What would be the steps/process if we would like to unsubscribe VisualVoiceMail?
A: That's a darn good question! It is possible to subscribe to services via BAT, but I have not found a way to unsubscribe services.
Q:Can we run a search to find out External Phone Mask on all the lines and devices?
A: Yes! Run a "Generate Phone Reports" and include the EPNM field in the Line Fields. (Or run a "Generate Device Profile Reports" if you need to look at extension-mobility associated DNs.) There are two caveats to this method: A query/custom file used to list the devices against which this report is run is limited to 1000. So if you want to do this on a large scale, you'd need to run the report a bunch of times with a different query list. If you have DNs that are not associated with a Device or Device Profile, this method will fail. The other method would be to use Export/Import and export three things: Phones, Device Profiles, and Directory Numbers. Then use the resulting CSV files to extract the EPNM column along with any other fields (like Description) you want to use to look at the data. There may be a way to extract this data via a SQL command on the CLI, but I'm not an expert in this area.
Q:Both, the reports Maren downloaded and the files she uploaded. Do they stay in the hard drive forever? Thinking about large deployments, you probably don't want 10+ 50mb files taking space for no reason, right? Could you please provide some comments?
A: Yes, everything will stay in the CUCM file system forever by default. However, you can delete uploaded files, downloaded files, and any reports via Bulk Administration > Upload/Download Files. Everything is listed there. Select the items to remove and delete them.