Using Personal Address Book for Caller ID

[mrasool]

Does anyone know if it is possible to make your personal address book on a 7960 phone work like a cell phone. For example once you have a contact stored in your cell phone the next time that caller calls you, you see the name and number calling. Can you store the information in the Personal address book so that the next time that same caler calls back you see their name and number

[stephan.steiner]

I've just developed such an application for a client the other week as this functionality is not available by default on the call manager. I've used jtapi to find out when a phone is ringing, then looked up the phone's current EM user and finally performed an LDAP search in the part of the tree that belongs to the currently logged in user.

[Micronas]

Is it possible that you mail me the sourcecode of your jtapi-application? I am looking for this feature since CCM 3.1.

Thank you.

Harry

[mrasool]

Hi Stephan,

I like to get more information on the application you developed. How can I get this application. I am not using extension mobility if that makes a difference.

[stephan.steiner]

The product description is quite simple: For all incoming calls, look up the caller number in the personal directory and if found display the caller number as well as the name on screen via a simple CiscoIPPhoneText. I sent the app for review to the customer next week so we'll see if there are any other requests. But since somebody paid good money up-front for this I can't just hand it out.. I like to remain in good graces with my employer.

Assuming that in your non EM scenario a user owns a phone (as in the phone has a owner user id set), it would not be a major effort to adapt it to do another LDAP lookup instead of the LDAP lookup to get the user id (which is necessary to search in the proper personal directory).

Even without phone ownership, you could still make a match by looking at the phone number set on a user, but that would be prone to error (ccm admin configuration improperly done, like setting the wrong extension in the user, having two users with the same extension (still in the user config.. that has no effect on lines)) and slightly slower.

[Micronas]

Money talks...

no more comments..

[mrasool]

Can this application use the Groupwise personal contact directory or does it only use the personal address book available on the IP phone? Can it do both? Also, would it be possible to try this application out for short time period before making the decision to by purchase it.

[stephan.steiner]

It only uses the personal directory on the IP phone. While possible to look up the caller in any directory, there's one rather important detail not to be forgotten: if you stick to the call manager, you have your user id that uniquely identifies a user. You may not have the same user id in Groupwise, AD, Notes, etc (which is a topic to have given many admin headaches and will generate some business for me in the near future :), so you somehow have to define a mapping between the ccm user that is logged into or controls the phone, and the groupwise account where you want to make your query.

I've never thought about trial versions but I guess I could simply put a limit on the number of devices you can monitor to make it a trial. However, first I have to finish a couple more applications the same client has ordered.

[mrasool]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. Please let me know when you can let me try the trial version so I can show management how it work. Also, if you can give me the cost to purchase this application.

[scottgund]

I am interested in your application. Would if be possible to modify it so that it queries the Corporate Directory versus the Personal Address Book. We are integrated in with a PBX that is not going anywhere anytime soon and we are needing internal caller ID. We receive a 10 didgit number right now... Would be interested in purchasing this if it is able to perform this caller id...

[mrasool]

I would like to try this application out ASAP. Please let me know when I can get trial version. If you can just allow me to be able to use this application for one user, that would be very helpful. What is the cost of this application?

[stephan.steiner]

Keep in mind that we just got out of the lab.. I'd rather have our client try it out and make whatever amendmends may be needed before going out on a broader scale (support and adaptation is all paid for, and I have been using the same ccm release the client uses to make sure things work out.. I don't know which version you are running).

Also, one thing I asked our client but haven't gotten an answer for yet (everybody is on ski holidays right about now) is whether you even want a lookup in case there's already a caller name (because the caller is a ccm subscriber) or not.

If you can live with the em enabled version, I can easily whip up a trial build (supporting a limited number of phones..), but I'm overloaded as is so changes in functionality, whether it be swapping out the em lookup with a controlling user lookup in the dc directory, or even changing the ldap lookup to support custom directories is problematic at this point.

How many lines are we talking about in the end? I figure price should be in some relation with the number of lines.. e.g. if you have 20 lines, the price per line would be higher than if you have 200 lines, and if you have 2000 lines the line price would be next to nothing.

[scottgund]

I am running ccm 4.1 I would be looking at ~700 lines. We currently have 13 IP phones deployed. But, we are moving from a PBX solution over to ccm. I can populate personal address books if that is what I have to do instead of the ccm Corporate Directory. This is a temporary solution until we can migrate everyone off the PBX.

[stephan.steiner]

@scottgund: populating the personal directory would mean no changes (except for swapping out em lookup by ldap lookup of the phone user.. but there's some sample code in the SDK so it's just a matter of duplicating that.. and I think I'll add a mode switch that allows to select between pure em lookup, pure ldap lookup and a combination thereof) but on the other hand, you'd have to replicate the directory for every new user you add to the ccm. I hope to have a limited demo version (supporting the first 5 jtapi controlled phones) ready within a week. You could then fill up the personal directory for the test users, and if it works the way you expect it, I would consider making the ldap lookup module less constrained (right now the base path, port and a bunch of other things are hardcoded because I did not expect the app to be duplicated for other environments so soon... ) Please get me your email so that I can send the demo version when ready.

One thing, what CCM version are you guys using? I'm currently running 4.1.3SR2.. in theory it should be possible to swap out the jtapi.jar with one that matches your ccm version, but I have never personally tried it.

[scottgund]

My e-mail is sgund@samson.com

Let me know what pricing you are thinking about.