Centralized Phonebook TMS

[John Faltys]

We have a deployment that has two TMS installs and a CMA install.

The departments would like to maintain control of their endpoints, bridge, scheduling, which is why multiple TMS plus a CMA.

Everything is integrated to one AD, but endpoints are not stored in AD.

THe dialplan has been integrated under one domain as well.

So, my question is how to create centralized phonebooks under this scenario.

Is OpenLDAP the option?  What about truncation of phonebooks?  Is there a way to solve this?

[Martin Koch]

If everything is very organized and clean you could do some automatic ldap magic.

Most of the time its not that clean or you need some special things (either addresses which

shall not be published or some which should be published differently or in addition,...)

Its most likely an extra ldap server.

I am not sure about the CMA requirements, but at least on TMS you can use a h350 ldap directory for phonebooks.

That could also run on AD.

example here (googled it myself, no guarantee that it works): http://metric.it.uab.edu/vnet/cookbook/v2.1/node169.html

But sure, openldap works fine, use it myself.

For TMS phonebooks you could even import CSV files which could also be located on a webserver.

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[John Faltys]

AD was the first option, but the AD folks don't want endpoints in it.

I read the same cookbook you referenced, so that was my thinking.

However, I understand that truncation happens when the list gets a bit long.

Thanks for the info.

[Martin Koch]

Hi John.

Could you say something about the "truncation" you are worrieng about?

To have an h350 phonebook on the AD server does not really count for me as "endpoints in AD"

as thats most likely referenced as a user or machine account and thats something different, like

a complete seperate database, which happens to be located on the same ldap server.

You can for example also import from the real active directory, which is something different as the import from

the h350 ldap.

but fair enough if the AD guys do not want to mess up their AD. And OpenLDAP is just a

virtual debian/ubuntu/whatever linux session (think there are even windows binaries) away

and at least under linux I know it works fine.

OpenDS (not the one on TMS, thats just for the provisioning, but OpenDS in general should also work.

For endpoints I would not place all systems in one big list, its not really usefull then anyhow,

do not recall the endpoint and tms limitations around that, but there are some as well.

Some sub folders with regions or departments can be quite helpful. If you have

a db you could also generate some clever structure with different views or a lookup

via a webservice and even some dialing could be possbile.

There are even some services around phonebooks, maybe https://www.seevia.me/ could be worth a look

(there might be others or better ones, but that just came in my mind).

Besides that, there is also the way to not import and have a search only phone book.

John: The best way to say thx is to rate the postings!

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[John Faltys]

Regarding truncation, I was researching and found this post Magnus Ohm responded to.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2187741

We have the endpoints really well organized, not in one big list. 

The webservice idea is good.  I will take a look at the services.
Thanks

I thought I rated your first posting, but I see it did not work.  I will try again.

[Martin Koch]

Yes, at least it now shows up, not sure if it shows up instant anyhow.

You can not rate twice anyhow, so no harm can be done :-)

So thank you for rating and giving the feedback +5 for you!

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[Martin Koch]

Regards the ldap truncation on openldap by default it seems to be 500 results:

http://www.openldap.org/doc/admin24/limits.html

But as it states on the same page as well, it supports paged, so I would expect that its not an issue.

Not sure about the limits of AD as I never used that.

I think Opends had some issues on TMS itself ;-)

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