A bit of background info

Hi everybody, I wanted to give you a little update on how our experience with Lync has been so far and how are we doing device-wise.

By now we completely replaced our legacy 3CX environment and sold most of the old Linksys SPA941 phones we used with it. All these phones had to be replaced with new, Lync compatible ones though. We did a pilot experiment to see if people were ready to just ditch their deskphone and use headsets all the time. As you can guess the answer is a big fat NO. A handset is just too convenient to have, you can’t expect sales people and developers to be wearing a headset at all times as if they were in a call centre, so the result is that many calls were going missing, etc.

That’s when I started exploring which alternatives were available. The key requirements for most people were:

• Being able to use the phone regardless of their computer being turned on and Lync logged in
• Most users were happy with having basic functionality on their phone (making phone calls, receiving them, joining a conference) and would use Lync client for more high-level functionality

With these two requirements in mind, we ruled out all the USB handsets (Polycom CX200, etc.), it had to be Ethernet, and possibly not break the bank.

So we started talking with Snom, who have been developing an OCS compatible firmware for the past years, which runs on most phones they produce. They have been extremely kind and agreed to send us a sample of three models they distribute which support the OCS firmware:

• Snom 300 – a no frills phone perfect for people who don’t live constantly on the phone, or for communal areas
• Snom 821 – a nice colour display phone which provides enhanced presence, and advanced telephony features
• Snom 870 – their top-of-the-range touchscreen phone, suitable for power users and management

Now, if you used an Aries-based Lync Phone before (e.g. Aastra 6725ip, or Polycom CX600) you will be accustomed to the ease of deployment these phones enjoy, just plug it into the Ethernet, and via USB to the computer, and Lync client will deliver all the necessary settings to the phone, ask you to enter your password and presto, you’re all set.

The problem with Snom phones so far, instead, was that the user was either required to type in his SIP uri, domain, username and password using the clunky phone keyboard, or find out the IP of his phone, open the web interface and do so via web. Not the easiest experience for an end user, especially if not technically minded.

But this now has changed thanks to a great piece of software developed by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority, which automates the provisioning of Snom phones into your environment.

Snomtastic!!

This is what the Hardware inventory looks like in Snomtastic

Snomtastic does many things, and covers all the functionalities one would expect from a mass deployment provisioning tool:

• Hardware inventory
• Remote reboot
• Multiple configurations
• Firmware updates
• Easy login for the users

The easy login part is covered with a tiny client utility you can easily deploy by group policies, which asks the users to enter their Active Directory credentials, and automates the login on the phone, mimicking the experience you’d get by using a normal Aries/Tanjay phone.

Unfortunately, because the software is not in production stage yet, the installation process is very manual and prone to issues with the webserver (e.g. if you run a 64bit version of Windows and IIS you will have to do a few undocumented tweaks to the IIS settings), but our friend Drago Totev wrote a super-detailed how-to in four parts on how to get up and running with Snomtastic. He will also provide you a copy of the database back up with a few tweaks to support newer phones.

To be honest I don’t feel like I need to add anything to the excellent job he did at writing that tutorial, it literally covers everything, also the firmware updates. With a bit of patience everybody can get Snomtastic up and running by following it.

One thing we hope to see in future Snomtastic releases is the ability to add more managed settings to the ones available via web interface, while now it requires changing the database schema by hand. I can see this becoming a key feature as Snom releases newer versions of the OCS firmware which add support for additional settings (i.e. the server-controlled remote keyboard lock option which appeared in v8.6.6.4).

The only caveat I found so far, is that if you try to reset a provisioned phone to factory settings, it will still hold some parameters in the memory, and you’ll end up locked out from its web interface. None of the factory passwords worked for me to gain access to it again. The only solution is these cases, is to follow this procedure and flash the phone with the recovery firmware, then re-flash it with the latest OCS firmware (make sure to be on a network where it won’t pick up the DHCP option 66 again, or you’ll be back to square one).

So, there you go: by getting Snom phones and Snomtastic you’ll have an easy-to-manage environment, with high quality Ethernet desk phones, without having to compromise on price and get USB handsets of limited functionality.