Phone Number Management

[emikelso]

How does everyone manage phone numbers for what is used and available?

Shared excel documents don't work.

Prime doesn't work for this either.

There has to be a tool out there that can take an input (DID range X-Y) then look up in the database for DNs, TP, RP that are used, including wildcards, and be able to produces lists of used and unused numbers. 

I know people have asked for this for years, but I don't know of anything that can do this. Anyone?

Thanks!

[will.alvord]

You could certainly develop something like that fairly easily, but nothing stock. I've seen everything from spreadsheets to creating all of the dn's for your DID range(s), and rather than deleting them when removing a phone, you just disassociate it from the device. Then you'd use route plan report and search for the unassigned dn's in that range to find your open numbers. Seems pretty prone to admin error though if you ask me.

If you don't want to develop something, your best bet is to export the route plan report, add a data filter to the column headers, filter as needed, sort. ...or come up with a spiffy excel macro to do that for you. Doing it manually will literally take you a couple of minutes.

[emikelso]

Both fine answers, but still manual. I know the wildcard problem and also RP and TN aren't in the same table as DN and thus don't show. Appreciate the brain storming, though

Ideally I want a front end tool where a helpdesk person can just select 3 things (alias of user, site, and phone type) and the tool automatically chooses the next phone number from what is available and provisions the phone. 

I know there are tools like Uplinx that can provide the automatic configuration as long as everything is built on the back end, but it still won't allow the automatic provision of a number. It will also see numbers that are DNs not associated to a device as used. 

[will.alvord · Accepted solution]

Count me in. Sounds like a slick tool, and one that I haven't seen for any telephony platform. Ever.

There are template-y options that come stock with communications manager, but none as simple as entering a userid, site (device pool probably), phone type. There are a lot of other factors to consider as well -- although you can get a little cookie cutter.

Going out on a limb to say that these systems (like most) were designed to generically meet the needs of the majority of users. ...but I've never seen any vendor offer that customizable of a front end as stock. Cisco at least makes these systems extendable via published API's, which also feeds Cisco's vendor ecosystem.

If you want something tailored specifically to your needs, the short answer is that you have to develop it. The long answer is what we've been getting at here -- getting as close as possible with the stock options.

hope that helps,

will

[Jaime Valencia]

As Will says, your best option would be the route plan report, however, notices that CUCM has NO IDEA of what DN/pattern you have configured is a DID, or not. So, you cannot possibly expect that to be gathered from any tool, you would need to distinguish DIDs from non DIDs from the output.

Also, anything with wildcards will not be expanded or matched, that, you also need to do manually

If you search for 4431 and have a 443X pattern, the system won't tell you that you would match that for call routing.

[elainegreiner]

check out NumberPro number management 

http://www.unimax.com/

[smace]

Thanks for this. Looking into Unimax now. Looks compelling.