VOIP system assessment and inventory

[tturner11]

My IT director has asked me to do an assessment and inventory of our VOIP phone system.  I am a router and switch guy with next to no experience in unified communications so I do not really know where to begin with this task.  This task has been given to me because no one else here is capable of doing it.  The notes given to me include cataloging extensions, voicemail, features, analog devices, and system-wide features.  As I said, I do not know where to begin with this.  What features and system-wide features are we talking about here?  How would I go about tracking down extensions, voicemail, and analog devices without physically walking around the building?  How do you even quantify voicemail?!   I have admin access to the Cisco Unity Connection Administration, Version 9.1.2.10000-10 and Cisco Unified CM Administration, Version: 9.1.2.10000-28.  The purpose of all of this is to plan for future upgrades/system replacement.  Any advice on where to begin, links to helpful info, or explanation of "features" and how to quantify this stuff is greatly appreciated.

Thank you all very much for any help you can provide.  

[Chris Deren]

My recommendation is to hire reputable Cisco partner to perform this for you. My company for example offers 24-40 hour full system health check and provide assessment, gaps, etc. full report including rumination tasks if any. I am sure other partners provide similar engagements, so if you can get the funding this small engagement can go long way.  As you mention it's nearly impossible to perform such assessment if no knowledge of the system architecture, capabilities, etc.

[Commsouth Infocom]

Hi,

You can check for solution such as Inventory, where the application will sync with Cisco Call Manager and provide you with the information such as Phone Models, Serial Number, User of the Phone, MAC and other information and also for Unity as well.

We offer such solutions and if you are interested please contact me at prasana@commsouth.com

Regards,

Prasana Kumar .P

[Chris Deren]

Looking/seeing configuration but not knowing if it's correct or what it is are doing is not an assessment of a system, it's like me reviewing patient's health results does not make me a medical doctor and lets me me develop treatment plan. 

[Rob Huffman · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

I agree with my friend Chris (+5) that this is a very daunting task for someone with limited "voice related" knowledge. The scope of work from the director is so broad that you basically need to start with the inventory part IMO and then go from there I guess. It's most likely that anyone who would ask such a task from their "network" tech probably won't want to spend money on hiring an outside firm to do it properly....just sayin!

Maybe you should start with this method in CUCM to get a breakdown of all the DN's etc.along with descriptions and some other helpful config notes;

From CUCM admin try Call Routing > Route Plan Report and once it loads up look at the top right hand corner of the page for "View in File" this will allow you to save a copy in .csv format.

For the voicemail part you'll want to check out this Tool from the great suite of Unity/Unity Connection Tools. You can extract all sorts of good info from the reports available related to users/features & functions.

Connection User Data Dump (CUDD) Tool

The  Connection User Data Dump (CUDD) is a Windows-based remote database  administration tool available on the Cisco Unity Tools website. CUDD  allows you to export specific information about users to a file that can  be viewed or imported into another application, such as a database  utility or Microsoft Excel. When the data is exported, the tool  automatically creates a header row that lists the data type found in  each column of the output, for ease of import into other programs.

The tool is available from the "Superb" Unity Tools site;

http://www.ciscounitytools.com/Applications/CxN/UserDataDump/UserDataDump.html

Maybe these two ideas will help kick-off your journey here.

Cheers!

Rob