COBRAS Import with Alias Change

[jessakhanian]

Hello everyone,

We'll be doing a COBRAS import soon from Unity 4.0.5 (with Exchange backend) to Connection 7.1.5.  We have tied the new call managers (also version 7.1.5) and Connection servers via AXL, so all users can be imprted from CUCM into CUC.  The end-users in CUCM are local (no ldap integration).  All userID's in the call manager are based on the user extensions, while their mailbox aliases in Unity 4.0.5 are based on AD account names (FirstName+LastName).  We have done an alias remap using the COBRAS Data viewer so that all the records that will be imported into Connection via COBRAS will have the same aliases as their corresponding user's UserID on the call manager.

So here is the question:  Should we first import all the users into Connection from the Call Manager using the AXL connection and then do the COBRAS import (which would update all the mailbox properties and copy the messages over)?  Or should we just do a COBRAS import and not do the AXL import at all?  If we do the latter, when we're all set and done, will the users on Connection be in sync with the users on the call manager?  This is the key for this whole process.  When we're done, we don't want to see any users sitting in the "Import Users" area of the Connection server waiting to be imported.

Hope to hear from you gurus soon.

Thanks.

Joseph

[lindborg]

Import them first and then do the COBRAS import over them - all the data you care about (other than extension and alias) will be updated

just fine that way.

this is the same thing you'd want to do if you planned to have LDAP integration with, say, AD or the like - import the users first and then update their info with a COBRAS import of those users.

if the aliases and extensions match (sounds like they should) then you wont have to do much during the COBRAS import other than confirm the mappings and hit "next" during the import wizard.

[jessakhanian]

Perfect.  Thanks for confirming what I thought would be the right way of doing this.  Appreciate the quick response.

Regards,

Joseph E.

[jessakhanian]

A follow up question regarding this.  We did an import to one of our smaller Unity servers (about 100 users) and everything seems fine. The only thing we have noticed so far is that the old messages that were copied over are being marked as "secure" (I thought that's what I heard).  I had a test mailbox with 2 messages (1 read, and 1 new).  After the import, I accessed that mailbox and listened to the new message and saved it.  I then went back and listed to the 2 saved messages, and both of them were marked as secure.  I then left a new message and listend to it and saved it, but this new message didn't indicate the same status (didn't hear the same recording about the message being secure).

Any ideas?  Is this normal? The import process went OK without any errors (just 3 warning that were un-related).

Thanks.

[lindborg]

That's actually due to a bug in the Connection header parsing logic that was fixed in the 8.x line - if the "IsSecure" flag appears it always marks the message as secure even if the value is "0" (meaning non secure).

An updated COBRAS import was put out the end of last week for a site that ran into the same issue on 7.1(3) - I have it on the temp page of the site, I'll be posting it to the main page later this week but it has been tested:

http://www.ciscounitytools.com/Temp/

it's version 1.1.155.  Give it a try on a test user and the messages should be not marked secure now (this version removes that header flag entirely if the message is not secure rather than marking it "0").

[jessakhanian]

That worked perfectly.  Thanks for the info and the updated version of the tool.

Joseph