October 24, 2009

SCUPA - a remote call control for the none-certified OCS phones

Hi, :)

a lot of people using Communicator still like the option to remote call control a phone. Fortunatly, it seems that someone has listen to this wishful thinking, especially for the one's using none-certified OCS phones from snom. (this post is not related to traditional RCC with 3.party SIP ua CSTA ecma TR / 87 gateway or TAPI approach!)


The tool is called SCUPA, a result of a very ambitious UCMA development project at SINC a german based MS Gold partner. To project-page (for the EN part simply scroll down). I had the luck to get hands-on the version 1.0.5.0, wich will be available soon on the project-page. Please consider this as a proof of concept and so please do not judge it too early. The developer team is well aware that there is still space for improments, indeed also in terms of security. From my point of view, for the UC application pioneer times we live in, they made a quiet seamless integrated useful add-on. Good job SINC! :)

Ok,now lets have a look: SCUPA comes as an MSI, so install and mass deployment - no problem. :)



When you open OC you will find a new extra option - hit SCUPA configuration:

You simply enter the IP adress of the snom phone you like to control.

No authentication to the phone? Yep!, remember its a PoC atm. You have to clean up the http webserver user account & password info at the snom phone. Access the webserver of the phone, go to SETUP, Advanced, QoS/Security and clear the user and pw line:

Additionally you can ignore the security warning via setting:


Please, dont forget to hit save at the bottom. Now back to OC and enter a number:

When the normalized number is marked, the rightclick offers you the Call via IP-Phone option. For a half second you will see something like this:

Maybe this can be suppressed in future releases. atm just ignore it :)

The up-popping menu is very ease to use and of course you get more numbers by selecting someone from your well known contacts:


For OC the current SCUPA PoC is a great first step. In combination with a snom OCS edition phone also the status is correctly changing to "on the phone". If you have not seen it yet, the contact list on snom OCS edition respects also the status information correctly (e.g. snom 820):


(live screen like shown on the 820 phone display - no photoshop fake ;) )

 



And Yes, :) you also can control all snom's without the OCS firmware, connected to your sip provider or ip-pbx, if you like. (afaik, only the snom M3, DECT to SIP is an exception.)



Unfortunatly atm, you can't call-control from Outlook or Sharepoint, as this will lead to an enterprise voice call with OC client (e.g. screenshot from Outlook 2010beta, but it's equal behavior in MOSS or former Outlooks):

It is also the case with TEL: URI's :( like this one: TEL:+4930123456789, you can't intercept the behavior with the current version of SCUPA.


The roadmap for an advanced version of SCUPA sounds promising for snom OCS edition owners:
  1. secure call control via https with enterprise enrolled certificates on the phones
  2. secure password and account changes to the snom, from within scupa - so no need for the user to enter the snom webserver directly.
  3. much more control options / scenarios and interop between snom and scupa.
But atm this is all still up in the air and your feedback is highly appreciated at the SCUPA team! If you are interested, please feel free to contact the team leader Jan.Dierich (aahht) sinc.de - of course also possible via OCS federation!

I wish you a good testing experience, like I had so far! (btw.: Win7 x64 can possibly be an issue atm. - faced some app crashes). The version I used should be public available during next week, or regarding Win7 an improved one ;)

Have a great weekend,

ocs phone guy

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post.
    I've been thinking about pbx and OCS integration possibilities and this is quite interesting.

    Matt
    http://windowspbx.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. thanks for sharing knowledge.

    I want to example code for pbx and ocs integration in c#


    Santhakumar
    http://techkadal.com

    ReplyDelete