UCM and the side-car

Earlier last week, I was asked to setup a new phone for our IT Director. I've setup phones before so I figured it couldn't be too big of a task. I'm definitely not well-versed with Cisco's Unified Communications Manager (aka, UCM) but I knew enough to be dangerous. What I thought was going to be a simple swap turned into something more than I'd bargained for.


Being asked to do something isn't that big of a deal. I'm asked to do things all the time and I make it happen one way or another. However, things are a little different when you're asked to do something for your boss's boss's boss's boss.

It started off with a simple email asking me to set him up one of our new Cisco 7975 IP phones. A bit of background: All of our IP phones I've seen around have been Cisco units but they were usually lesser models. Single-line 7911s, dual-line 794x devices, 6 line 796x devices... you get the idea. Most of the phones were 7942/7962 models while the older phones were 7941/7961 models. There really isn't that big of a difference between the 1 to 2 models. There's rubber bits where the handset sits so it's not as loud when someone hangs up and the text on the monochrome screen is slightly sharper. Past that, I can't really see much of a difference in day-to-day usage. My only big qualm is that the screens aren't backlit at all. Our office is dark most of the time, lit by monitors and the 4x 55" TVs we have on the wall in front of us for Network/Server monitoring. In here, seeing anything on the screen of the phone is a task.

The 7975 was a different story. This thing had a much larger, color, BACKLIT screen! It was no Retina display or anything but it seemed certainly extravagant compared to the monochrome screens found on the rest of our phones of our office. It made the Director's current 7961 unit look downright ghetto.

At first I thought that IT Director (ITD) already had a 7975 somehow (despite my never having seen one around the office nor had I ever seen any in our inventory). If he already had one and I was to replace it, than it's as simple as finding the phone in UCM and changing the MAC address from the old unit to the new unit. Simple. Of course, tasks like this are rarely that simple.

If you have to replace somebody's phone with a different model device, there's no real way to copy the information from one phone to another. You basically have to start from scratch. He only had a few extensions that I could initially see so it shouldn't be that hard. Then I found out about the side-car. ITD was one of the only people in the office with the Cisco 7914 side-car. This took his 6-line phone to being able to handle an extra 14 lines, totaling 20 lines. ITD had his few extensions and then 20 other people's extensions as well, several of which weren't even working for the organization anymore.

We have phones with the 7914 side-cars around. Our reception desk has a phone with 2 of them in fact. There was actually an issue with them "dropping" every so often. After actually inspecting the desk area, we found out something interesting; The phones themselves are powered via PoE (which we already knew) but the side-cars were powered by Cisco power adapaters, something we didn't know. The power adapters plugged into a basic 6-outlet power script that sits.... (care to take a guess?).... right at the secretary's feet. She'd kick it accidentally, causing the power adapters to come loose over time. I fixed it with some ghetto-engineering (IE, moving it to a nearby cabinet).

I brought that bit up because the 7975 units with the side-car are the exact opposite; The phone needs more power than PoE can provide but the side-car doesn't need a power adapter. It's powered through the phone. That alone took me a good 15 minutes to figure out.

I'd configured phones before and I've setup extensions but this was the first time I had to actually figure out how to add-extensions to a device before. Using the Modify Buttons Template button in UCM made me die a little inside every time for one reason: You can only add one line at a time. You have to click Modify Buttons Template which opens a window with 2 columns: Associated Items and Unassociated Items. Items are things such as Speed Dials, Extensions, Actions such as forward, hold, etc. In order to add multiple lines, you have to move all of the "None" entries from the Associated Items to the Unassociated column, move the new line from the Unassociated column to the Associated Column, click Save, refresh the main page of UCM and then you're back in business. Now you have to setup that extension. It's as simple as clicking on the "Add a new DN" link, typing the extension number at the top, and the rest mostly auto-fills. There are plenty of other settings you can tweak but for my purpose, I've had to change very few of them. Once you've setup that extension, if you've got more to setup, rinse and repeat.

After setting up a few of his extensions he had on his old phone, I realized that I'd need to configure the side-car as well. In this case, the 7914 side-car isn't compatible with Cisco's newer phones we had. It was only compatible with our 7941 or 7961 devices. Only the 7916 side-car will work with our 7942s, 7962s and 7975s. I told my boss about it, end-of-story for a few days.

A few days, later, we get the side-car in. It's a pretty plain thing but it does the job. It has 12 buttons for using items configured on it, and 2 page buttons so you can flip between 2 different "pages" of items on the side-car display. in UCM, you can actually configure up to 48 separate items for these guys. Pretty neat.

In order to configure items for the side-car, it has to register on the phone first. This is where it got tricky. I unplugged my phone, plugged in the 7975+7916 in it's place but only the phone comes on; No side-car. I try the other port on the side-car (you can daisy-chain up to 2 side-cars together) but still no cigar. I find a setting in UCM for the phone itself to specify a side-car and set that properly. Save, Apply Config, wait.... nothing still. After an hour or so of screwing with this, I plug my phone back in and hook this new color unit and it's side-car up on the conference room table in our office. Mere seconds after I hook it up, I see the side-car start to register. If the table wasn't so heavy, I might've flipped it right then and there out of rage.

The next day, I spend another hour figuring out how to add extensions to the phone (The fun is described earlier). ITD had about 15 extensions on the old phone so I set those up without even a second thought. Once the extensions were added, I had our IT Support fellows deploy the phone. Done, right?

Wrong. A few hours after the phone was hooked up, My boss asked me to go see ITD, said it was something about the phone. ITD had some requests; On his old phone, extensions other than his wouldn't ring but still pop-up on the screen. Also, he wanted more people's extensions and hands me a list of about 18 people. He also said that his old phone had speed-dials setup on the side-car. He wanted to see someone's name on the side-car, press the appropriate button and have the phone dial them. I hadn't set that up, though I thought I had. I tell him I'll go take a look and see what we can do.

Making the other extensions not ring was pretty easy. In UCM, when you're in the extension settings for an extension, you can set the ring-settings to "Flash Only". This will still allow the alert to show up on the main display of the phone but no audible ring. Adding extensions for other people wasn't that big of a deal either, since I'd already figured out how to do that. The tricky part came with setting up speed-dials and extensions so it worked the way he wanted it to.

After some testing on my own phone, I learned that if you want other extensions to show on your phone, they must be listed in the device properties under "Associated Items". If they're not, they might as well not even be there. ITD already had his extensions and a couple speed-dials on the main display of his phone so I was focusing on what I could put on the side-car. After looking through his list of current extensions he had, I found out that about half of them are no longer with our organization. I added the others to his speed-dials and added their extensions and removed the extensions or speed-dials from users who were no longer with us. As I mentioned before, you can assign 48 items to the side-car but only the first 24 will show up on the 2x 12-item pages on the side-car itself. I manage to get his list of people down to 24, so he had 24 speed-dials showing on the side-car and 24 extensions, all listed as "Associated Items" in UCM so the extensions would alert if they're called.

After it was all said-and done, I'm now a lot more comfortable with managing devices in UCM and I went "above and beyond" on a project for management. My boss's boss's boss even mentioned to me that he initially thought I was going to get it started and hand it off to one of the SysAdmins. Even ITD emailed me saying I did a good job and that he appreciated it. :)

Now, to replace the aging relic on the secretary's desk.....