Presence not functioning properly because of Active Directory

AndrewG909 · ‎05-11-2009

When going to the directories on one of our phones we are unable to see the BLF status of other users on the voip system. We were told by cisco that this is due to the fact that the users have special characters in the phone number field in active directory ie. (313)555-5555 And if we want presence to function properly we must remove all special characters in active directory phone numbers. Not that i don't believe cisco, but i have a hard time believing that there is no work around to this. We have over 2000 users at our location and changing active directory for every user would be an administrative nightmare. Has anyone experienced this or know of a work around?

Thanks

Adriano

Tommer Catlin · ‎05-11-2009

there could be some truth behind this. But now are you talking about BLF lamps on phones or are you talking about Presence as in CUPS and CUPC clients?

BLFs do not care about AD numbers. It goes by the device/line. and of course, line numbers can not use characters in CUCM.

Oh wait, I see what you are doing. You are using the BLF indicators on the directory. So yes, I understand. I had to read this about 4x. ha. If you are using CUCM 7.x, I had a lot of issues with the phones firmware with special characters out of the box. 7.01 would not work for me in AD and dialing. It would fail. So I updated the phones firmware to latest and greatest and it fixed my issues with dial. Maybe it will fix your BLFs.

htluo · ‎05-11-2009

Presence in directory is called "BLF on call-list" in Cisco terms.

Usually, "directory" refers to the built-in directory of CUCM. If you use the built-in directory, it'll work.

If you modify the XML file and point the directory to your LDAP (e.g. Active Directory), you got to make sure the phone number in LDAP can map to the actual DN in CUCM.

Michael

AndrewG909 · ‎05-14-2009

Thanks for the replies. They are much appreciated.

Where do you go to tell CUCM to use the local directory in CUCM instead of LDAP (active directory)

htluo · ‎05-14-2009

Go to CCMAdmin > System > Enterprise Parameters. In "URL Directory" field, type "http://192.168.1.10:8080/ccmcip/xmldirectory.jsp"

Where 192.168.1.10 is the IP address of the CUCM publisher.

Thanks!

Michael

AndrewG909 · ‎05-14-2009

Thanks for the info. I'm trying to think why would cisco have pointed it to our ldap database in the first place. I'm thinking it's because we are mid-deployment and not all our users are in the CUCM database yet, maybe only around 10%. So i'm assuming they did this because if we were to point it to CUCM users wouldn't be able to look up other users in our organization who are not in the system yet. Is there any way to pull from both so that we can in a sense have our cake and eat it too (show presence info for users on our system, while still showing directory info on users who have yet to be migrated over)???

Or am i getting too picky now?

htluo · ‎05-14-2009

You can either point to the LDAP or the CUCM, but not both.

If you point to the LDAP, you got to make sure the phone number in LDAP can match the phone number in CUCM.

If they are different, you probably need to configure Directory lookup rules (Call Routing > Dial Rules > Directory Lookup Dial Rules).

Michael