About Roger

I started working on PBXs in the early 90s and loved it. I had a computer as a kid and was a fairly decent programmer and I continued to develop those skills. Through the 90s I was a PBX administrator for 17 sites, then a field technician, then a customer managing voice/voicemail/WAN, Then responsible for dial-up at a major ISP. Right before Y2K I made the jump to “Professional Services” consultant in telecommunications. In the early 2000s, this was typically IVR design with host integration and screen pops for call centers. Back then, shaving 30 seconds per call in a busy call center could add up to serious money. I’ve been a vendor, a customer, an employee, and a consultant and I’ve watched the telecom industry change. Old-school phone guys had to adapt or die. I consider myself very fortunate to have adapted. And I have never stopped learning.

Here’s a little more about me and the Avaya network I tended for many years. Alas, it is gone now.

86 thoughts on “About Roger”

  1. Ed

    This is one of the most useful BLOGs I’ve ever found. Please put me on distribution, or better yet, get this baby RSS feed enabled.

    You rock!

    Keep the faith.

    Reply ↓
  3. Fei

    I had purchased 9670G for Ipoffice 500V2 , But it’s not working , office manager showing unknown ip handset , and the phone button is not working . I had put the bin & 96xxupgrade into tftp server. Any idea ? Many thanks

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hmm, I’m not familiar with IP Office, but on Communication Manager you can alias a phone to a different set type. For the 9670G phone, you alias it to a 9630 or 4620SW or 4621SW. Or you could just configure it as a 9630 in software and hope for the best. I agree that different firmware might also be the trick. It’s a pain, but you could back-rev the firmware if possible. Good luck!

      Reply ↓
  4. Richard

    Hi Roger,

    I’ve been through your entire blog and it sounds a little like my life on a web page :0) and very much enjoyed reading it.

    In the past I thought about doing the same sort of blog for Avaya newbies with a lot of the content that you have written but I didn’t think people would read it.

    The problem I have now though is that I’ve been in the same company for a number of years, we are using (don’t laugh) CM 3.1.3 but we are finally (fingers crossed) upgrading to Aura

    As a engineer that went through this do you have any tips, I’m worried my old school skills will be lost on this new system.

    Regards

    Richard

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hey that’s very kind Richard! I completely agree with you – I figured nobody would read it. Then I got to the point where I started the blog for my own reference. Or for my colleagues who had a question about setting up digit translation or something (although ironically I don’t share this blog with my co-workers.) I think you should start a blog with tips. I’ll read it! Or if you’d like to guest-post here you are welcome to do so.

      As for your old-school skills, they will always come in handy. I think your background provides a great foundation. The new generation of “phone techs” will probably never have the same love or passion for telecom – they will likely see voice as simply another real-time application on the network. It’s not really a bad thing, but does make me a little sad. I have to go fix a fax machine in a few minutes. How’s that for old school? You’ll always need it. I hope the upgrades get approved! Keep me posted!

      Reply ↓
      1. Richard

        Hi Roger,

        Did you resolve the fax machine issue?

        There is something nostalgic about hearing that training tone of the fax machine, we only have a few left in the business as electronic fax is so popular and then of course people e-mail everything now.

        I was working in a service desk when you were doing “professional services” and ended up looking after voice by accident, the company had a few analog phones but they were mostly digital. Not long after the company was growing large and a new site was commissioned, I was now working on 2 fiber connected G3r cabs, S8700’s and 4620 IP Phones with some rather annoying S8300’s as LSP’s

        Our network was all Avaya as well with mid spans to power those pesky POE phones, it didn’t take long for Cisco to take over the network though. I picked up Cisco quite easily and finds that it helped a lot with implementing and troubleshooting the voice systems.

        That’s kind of you to let me post on your site I have all sorts of notes stored up, not sure how useful they would be now for anyone using newer systems though to be honest.

        I’ll probably just carry on reading yours for now thank you

        Richard

        Reply ↓
      2. Jim

        Here here Roger, 35 years and counting, fortunately I was given the opportunities to move with the technology and keep the skills up. Enjoyed the articles and thanks,

        Jim

        Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Modular messaging is every 6 months, but that’s Windows. I would think Call Manager would go several years without a reboot. Here in California we have to power down the high-rise buildings every year for fire and safety testing, so in the old days phone systems were rebooted annually at most. Now that our CMs are in the datacenter, we don’t *have* to reboot them ever. But there are so many patches available that we can schedule them every six months or so, especially with things like shellshock. I cannot think of a time I had something “strange” happening in my voice environment where a reboot fixed it. I’ll ask around and see if Avaya recommends a reboot cycle on the CM. Otherwise, I would just let it hum along until you have to reboot for maintenance purposes. Are you recommending a reboot and getting a resistance from management? Are you using version 6.x with System Platform?

      Reply ↓
    2. John Waber

      About nine years ago when I worked in Avaya Tier 3, I came across an official Avaya document that asserted there was no reason to proactively reboot the Communication Manager server.

      However, I have worked in lots of IT roles, and my personal opinion is that CM in particular, and all servers in general, should be rebooted about every six months. I have seen reboots fix all sorts of mysterious problems.

      And “reboot” means to me a power OFF then ON of the physical server including System Platform / Avaya Virtual Platform. (With true VMware, the reboot would be just of the Avaya virtual machine.)

      You should reboot CM after loading any patches (either to the RHEL operating system or to the CM application), and that should be happening at least every six months. Do not take the foolish position that “if it aint broken don’t fix it”. Avaya creates those patches for a good reason.

      Unless you are fighting a problem that looks like a software bug, you want to let an Avaya patch or service pack exist for 90 to 120 days before you load it. That’s about how long it takes for Avaya to realize there is a problem with a patch or service pack and issue a fix. But don’t wait longer.

      But if you are fighting a problem that looks like a software bug, get your software as current as possible. And do a reboot. Then call for help on your issue. You know the support engineer will close your ticket if the software is not the most current, so don’t waste time. I have loaded lots of patches on customer’s systems, and the problem has gone away. But going back to the primary theme of this post, I strongly suspect that it wasn’t the patch that fixed the problem but the reboot of CM that made the problem go away.

      My recommendation to reboot CM every six months extends to all the survivable CMs (LSP and ESS) in your environment. On a “sunny day” they are doing nothing useful, so you can reboot them in the middle of the day without needing a maintenance window.

      Reply ↓
  6. Nick G

    We had a 5.2 server crash after 1400 days, so I thought maybe we should be rebooting once a year.
    I thought I would ask the experts. : )
    Thanks!

    Reply ↓
  7. BobH

    Roger,
    Great reading , I have been working with phones for past 20+ years . Due to me being in IT phones always were part of our service. I now manage a 20 site Avaya solution in the America’s networked to a 15+ site Cisco solutions in Europe / APAC. Only over the past 1-2 years has telephony taken on a greater role and is now seen as It’s own service in the company I work for. Upgrading and standardizing the Unified Communications solution is a huge objective over the next year plus for out team.

    Bob

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Thank you for the kind words Bob. As much as I love telephones, I’m finding it difficult to find the time to blog about it. I really appreciate your encouragement and I’d love to hear about your experiences with the migration to UC. Have you decided which way to go? Avaya vs. Cisco is certainly worthy of more space than this. I should write something up about my experiences with each. 20+ years! Nice!

      Reply ↓
  8. ron

    Hi Sir Roger,

    Are you familiar with Avaya One-X attendant? Recently where experiencing stations that cannot login to Avaya Call Server saying ” Please wait while the communication with the Avaya call server is established” Logging into extension … ”

    Thank you sir.

    Ron

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hi Ron! Thanks for your comment.

      I am not familiar with this product, but I have a buddy in London who is having trouble. Actually, I think it’s the same error message you are getting. Our business partner recommends patching System Platform and CM to the latest versions. We are going to try to apply the upgrades and patches one-at-a-time and see which one clears the errors. I’ll confirm the error message with him and keep you posted.

      Reply ↓
  9. Gabriel

    Hi Mr. Roger, i’ve read some of your posts and i was wondering if you would like to help me, i’m having issues with an ip phone 9650 which is working and it just reboots or freezes and need to unplug and reconnect the poe ethernet to get working again, i tried with the clear option from the menu CRAFT# twice and doesn’t work, it does the same thing, can i upgrade the firmware from the usb port? o any idea make it work right?

    Best regards and congratulations for your job.

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      I don’t know how to upgrade the firmware from the USB port, but you can upgrade it by manually configuring the HTTP server address in the settings menu. I have a public web server with firmware posted for emergencies. I just put the public IP address of that web server in the phone and it hits the web server at startup. The only touch to the phone is configuring the HTTP server’s address. The rest can be done from the web server.

      I had a phone that would lock up all the time when I put the “log” level into debug. It’s a long shot, but you might want to check that. Do you know where that is?

      Reply ↓
  10. Gabriel

    Is it the one the craft menu? i’ve just enable to debug and will monitoring, i’ll let you know what happen.

    Thanks a lot.

    Reply ↓
  11. Julio Ribeiro

    Hi Roger!
    I’m wondering if it is possible to access IP Phone Avaya 9650 (or 9608) via telnet or SSH. I tried to enable SSH in 96xxsettings.txt ( SET SSH_ALLOWED 1), but did not work for me. We need to access remotely some of terminals in order to make some changes in configuration without need a local user in front of telephone…
    If you have some ideas, would be great.
    Thank you in advance

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      I’ve always wondered about SSH but never tried it. I’m about to roll out Avaya Diagnostics Server at one of my sites, which should allow this type of configuration. I will ask around and see what the deal is with SSH. If there’s an option for it in settings, we should be able to get it to work. Do you get prompted for login?

      Reply ↓
      1. Julio Ribeiro

        I didn’t get any prompt (I’ve tried SSH1, SSh2, ports 23, 5023, 22,…) although having connectivity from my desktop to IP Phone (no firewall). But as I can see here https://support.avaya.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4828, maybe this will be only the first issu…even I overcome the dificulties of establish the communication (prompt), probably still will need the password (or key) to connect…

        Reply ↓
  12. Steve Gill

    Hello Roger,
    Excellent site. Thank you.
    We have an issue that may be very obvious to you.
    We are running Avaya communications manager with a SIP service for accessing the public network.
    (This includes session manager and session border controller.)
    All three machines are running the latest software as of the date of this post along with patches and firmware for the phones and txt files on the Utility server.

    Or question is pretty straightforward:
    When we make an outgoing call from a phone (eg. Avaya 9608 – H323) we see the digits dialled displayed on the phone display as you would expect.
    During the call setup we then see the number repeated on the screen so we have two sets of numbers:
    eg: 0123456789 0123456789
    We can see that this occurs during the SIP messaging from a trace on the SM.
    SIP 183 message.
    We see an incoming sip message in the trace that reads something like “0123456789” <0123456789@acme.com

    Is there anyway to remove this second line either by changing the content of the display or stopping this context at the CM or SM?

    Any ideas or solutions would be gratefully received.

    Once again Thank you anyway.
    Steve

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Aha! This explains the “Show ANSWERED BY on Display” field on page three of the trunk group! I’ve always wondered why someone would want that. I believe if you set that to yes, then your phone’s displays will say “ANSWERED BY 0123456789”. Would that be better?

      Reply ↓
  13. AKS

    Hi,
    This is my first interaction on this website. Actually i have AVAYA AURA 6.x system installed at my clients place. I have following query.
    1 :- I do not want my 96xx series phones to request for Login when they boots up.. I want them to register with SM / CM without any user intervention ( without login in prompt). Can we somehow map subscriber number with phones MAC id, so whenever the phone restarts, it does not ask for user login / password. ( i have seen 46xx file, where password can be set to #)
    2 :- I have a GPS in my network. I want my Avaya server to be synchronized with this GPS and all my approx 300 phones to be synchronized with Avaya server. What i have seen is that i can set my Avaya server to either work in internal ( works as clock server ) or external mode ( Client)

    Best Regards

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Good questions!

      For auto-login, I am not aware of this feature but you can prevent logging out in the settings file. So if you’re worried about people logging out, you can prevent that. I’ll look up the setting if you’re interested. Avaya has a product called the “Avaya Diagnostics Server” and it allows you to control a phone remotely, but looking at the docs, I think the phone has to be logged in. I asked a friend of mine about auto-login or MAC association and he hasn’t heard of it either.

      For your second question, do you mean NTP? Are you looking to synchronize the clocks? Yes, you can do this within the server settings in CM. When you log into the web interface, there is a link called “NTP Configuration” in the Server Configuration section. Here you can enable NTP and set the servers. Unfortunately, when you enable NTP, you will need to restart CM so check your Time Zone Configuration first since you’ll want to make sure you’re in the right time zone.

      You have probably noticed that each “location” has a timezone offset. So this is how the phone knows its own timezone relative to the CM.

      Let me know if you’d like more information about restricting logout. I have seen it occasionally in conference rooms, but I have never set it up.

      Reply ↓
      1. AKS

        Hi,
        Is there any way i can program hunting group ( parallel ring) in AVAYA Aura6.2 in SIP platform. Actually I want to program one touch dialing key on my AVAYA 9608 / 9641g SIP phone for this feature.

        Reply ↓
  19. Nav

    Hi Roger,

    I’ve got a query and was hoping that you could help.

    I’m working on a IVR application for which i want to set up AAS agents. Unfortunately I am unable to create and AAS agent and get the following error when trying to do so “Cannot have AAS agent on IP softphone port extension”. The station type is 4620 , with IP softphone -Y.

    The CM does have 4 AAS agent already created, one is assigned 4620 type phone and 3 – 7434ND type.
    This is our Lab environment and we have no CM expert as we are into CTI and IVR development.

    Further, if I try to change a station type and set port to IP, i get the following msg “Cannot change a LAN port to ‘IP'”. No idea wht that is all about .

    Would appreciate if you would help me with this and guide me towards a solution.

    Thanks and regards,

    Nav

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hey Nav! I’m not familiar with AAS agents, but from the error you describe, you may try disabling the IP softphone for this station. It’s the field on page 1 when you ‘change station’ called ‘IP SoftPhone’. If it’s a ‘y’ now, try stroking it to ‘n’.

      Reply ↓
    2. Waheed karwani

      Hi Nav

      What version of soft client are you using? I had the same problem and it due to the version of the soft phone I was using and did not support the set type. Also if you want to change the phone type to ip try setting the type to 9608 this should do the job.

      Reply ↓
  20. Lee

    Hi Roger,

    Was wondering if you could help. I’m setting up Avaya One-X and have tested it with a few different phones and it works fine except when I try to connect it to my home phone, which I need it to do. It’s just a basic home line run through a router but for some reason it will not connect to Avaya. Any ideas?

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hey Lee.

      Avaya has created many products and apps with the “One-X” brand. It’s rather frustrating actually. So are you trying to use One-X Lite, or One-X Mobile? Is this on a smart phone or PC? Or is it a remote hard-phone?

      Reply ↓
  21. Mark

    Hi Roger,

    I have a bunch of 4621SW IP phones, using the SIP 2_2_2 binary – We use these handsets to talk natively, direct to an asterisk server… they have been working fine for years…
    However! – using Wire-shark, we can see the handsets are enabled by default” with ‘silence suppression’ and this is playing havoc with our new Voice analytics platform that we trying to implement…
    So, without using an Avaya Gateway, do you have any idea how we can ‘disable’ the ‘silence suppression’ option within the 4621SW handset? (I’m thinking recompiling a special bios and downloading using TFTP?!) any other potential solutions would be gratefully received.

    Regards

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      I think the 4621 uses DHCP option 176. So…
      1) whatever DHCP server is assigning IP addresses to those phones, add a scope option 176 with the string HTTPSRVR=10.56.43.21 or whatever web server you want to use
      2) on that web server, right at the root, post the 96xxupgrade.txt and 46xxsettings.txt files that you get with every version of firmware from avaya’s server. If you don’t want to update the firmware, just erase everything from the 96xxupgrade.txt file except the last line that points it to 46xxsettings.txt
      3) when the phone boots, you should be able to “watch” it go through the files it’s downloading – it displays them on the screen
      4) you can also check the web server’s logs to make sure the phone is GETting the expected files
      5) once it’s all working, then you can update the firmware and/or tweak the settings.

      If you have any trouble, please let me know!
      Roger

      Reply ↓
  22. Mark

    Many Thanks Roger, for your reply; I’m familiar with rolling out images to handsets.
    The issue is that *without* using an Avaya Gateway, do you have any idea how we can stop the handsets from using ‘silence suppression’ by default. i.e. disable Silence Suppression.

    Thanks

    Reply ↓
  23. chris peralta

    Hi! Trying to upload a SSL Cert renewal to AAC via the Element Manager. Getting the error: “Add operation failed: Error occurred processing the PKCS file”. Got the new cert from Symantec. Avaya and my business partner have not been of much help. Any help on this Sir?!!!?

    Reply ↓
  24. rfcomm2k

    I have been trying to get help with this and now turn to you. I am new to Avaya, just started working on one in February. I have been tasked with what should be a simple problem but finding answers on how to achieve the desired results is like trying to hit a moving target from a mile away.

    There are some phones on this site that are COR 4 and the description for COR 4 is 215 and 610 calls only. (my site is in AC 610). These phones can also dial toll free numbers. Except for one specific number. If I change the COR on my phone to 4, I can dial 918775659998 and the call completes OK. Or any other toll free number. EXCEPT if I dial 918775659999. Then it is restricted. I listed ARS ANA and see an entry for 1877 points to route pattern p1. I did a trace and it shows a denial using route pattern 14. Obviously SOMEWHERE that specific number is entered in a toll restrict table, but I cannot find it.

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Okay, are you ready for a crazy ride? That ‘p1’ in the route pattern refers to a “partition-route-table”. First, “display cor 4” and check out the “time of day chart” on the mid-left of page 1. Remember that number.

      Then, “display partition 1” and you’ll see a list of route indexes and associated PGNs. “p1” refers to route index 1, and then go to the column referenced by that time of day chart. And THAT is the route used for that phone. This method is not used much anymore. It was in place before “location specific routing”. In fact, until you asked about it, I didn’t know either. I had to ask a buddy of mine with that ‘p1’ meant.

      Anyway, I don’t know if that helps you find the trouble or not. As I re-read your question, it could be location-specific routing. Have you followed the routing flowchart that I made for Avaya routing? http://rogerthephoneguy.com/?p=329

      It should walk you through each step of the process, including location specific routing and translations. But it doesn’t have the ‘p1’ info. I might try to add that later. Let me know if any of this helps. And welcome to Avaya routing. Sorry it’s such a hassle.

      Roger

      Reply ↓
  25. Lin

    Hi Roger,

    I have to agree with many of the posts here, this is one of the most useful BLOGs I’ve ever found. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

    I’m hoping you can help me with an issue I have dialing out from the InAns call log of an Avaya 2420. How can I insert the “9” ARS code and/or “91” ARS + LD codes? I’ve tried playing with the Calltype Analysis table without success.

    Thank you for your assistance.

    Lin

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Oh thanks Lin!

      For VoIP sets, this would easily be done in the 46xxsettings.txt file.

      For digital phones, I’m not sure. I would think there’s a config setting for this. If you want to compensate in ARS, then it would get complicated. First off, do you get 1 plus ten digits for every external call in your call log? If so, that makes it much easier. I think you can create an AAR digit-conversion entry that looks like this:

      list aar digit-conversion Page 1

      AAR DIGIT CONVERSION REPORT

      Location: all

      Matching Pattern Min Max Del Replacement String Net Conv ANI Req

      1 11 11 0 ars y n

      I’m not able to try it on my system (I don’t have a lab), but this will take any 11-digit “extension” that starts with 1 and force it through ars routing. It also allows for additional conversions (hence the ‘y’ in the ‘conv’ column)

      If you want to try this, you’ll also need to tell your CM that anything starting with 1 is an 11-digit extension in the dialplan analysis table. And then I think you’ll need to create an entry in the uniform dialplan table to tell CM that anything starting with 1 that’s 11 digits long should go over aar. And THEN you can manipulate the AAR.

      Have you seen the ARS analysis flowchart at http://rogerthephoneguy.com/?p=329 ?

      All of the above assumes you do not have any current extensions that start with 1.

      There MUST be an easier way to do this. I would hope the digital station would have a simple setting for this.

      Thanks again!
      Roger

      Reply ↓
  27. Marty

    Hey Roger,

    This is a Great Blog-site.

    I have come into a situation I’m not sure where to go in ASA or web-browser…Night Service auto-on & auto-off feature.

    The vendor installed CM 5.2 / S8300 for one of my sites and setup an auto on/off of the night service. I have tried using the Avaya website with no success. The site has changed their hours of operations and need the phones to ring in the main office earlier then setup currently.

    Do you know where and what the commands are to change the time for the auto on/off of the Night Service?

    Thanks for any help you can share with me.

    Marty

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hey Marty! Thanks for the compliment!

      I’ll check with my buddy on the auto night service, but it’s probably a time-of-day schedule. I just don’t know how the night mode references the time-of-day schedule. And strangely, I don’t see a way to list all time-of-day schedules. You can “display time-of 1” or 2 or 3, but I don’t see a way to list them all.

      Let me know if that site has any. Naturally, you can change the time-of-day schedule momentarily to force yourself into and out of night. If that works, then you found the right schedule!

      Please let me know how that works. When I find more info, I’ll let you know.

      Roger

      Reply ↓
  28. Richard Daschbach

    Hello Roger – It was great to read about your work in the NY Times yesterday. You are so right about this telemarketer plague in our lives.

    In some, perhaps many cases, the person calling is some poor devil working for minimum wage. It is also possible that they are paid on some paltry commission basis.

    The real bad guys are the corporate entities whose goods and services are being peddled.

    A bit over two years ago, I formed a law firm which pursues telemarketers to pay our clients the Federal statutory damages of $500-$1500 per call under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). We charge the client nothing but share the payments we are able to collect.

    Please take a look at our website. Taking legal action is one way to make a dent in this epidemic invasive plague.

    Thanks for your work and be in touch.

    Richard

    Reply ↓
  29. Mark

    Hey Roger, i could really use your help. I have inherited a aged Avaya Definity CM3.1 and AES setup in my new job. The issue is that when i checked the server.crt expiry date it is in Dec 2017!
    The previos phone guy doesnt have the Root password and because of its age it isnt under maintenance.
    We dont run SIP and as far as i can see the only issue when this goes will be the connection between the AES and CM. Thats a pretty big issue as we have twosoftware solutions using TSAPI.
    Do you have any ideas? I thought about self signing certs but without root i dont think its possible!

    Help!

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Wow Mark – I don’t have any ideas either. I’m not very familiar with AES and I *hate* certificates. If Avaya refuses to help, you might be able to find a business partner who can do some research for you for a couple hours of labor. Sometimes a business partner will know an obscure default password.

      But then sometimes you just have to tell the boss that it’s time to upgrade. CM3.1 is really old. The phone system is a critical part of the business and deserves an appropriate portion of the IT operating budget. It’s hard to say that to the boss – sometimes we take pride in nursing along an old system and we consider it a personal failure when we cannot get something working. But this looks like a time when you, as a responsible and intelligent worker, simply cannot hack into a secure system that has been neglected for many years. Do not take it personally and please do not feel bad. Spend $1000 to get a business partner to look at it but if you cannot get it working, take pride that you found it with plenty of time to upgrade or replace the system if necessary.

      Good for you for finding that time bomb!

      I wish I could help.
      Roger

      Reply ↓
  30. Eric Coady

    How to update firmware in individual Avaya 96xx phones, and set up Web Server to do so.
    Thank you.

    Reply ↓
  31. wallace ngene

    Hi Roger,
    I’m new to asterix and only support Avaya client side but with minimum knowledge in managing the Avaya pbx. We are currently running an Avaya G430 pbx model and 9608 plus 1608 headset models.
    We have asterix server setup by one of our consultants but would like to integrate this with our existing pbx as option or option 2 to switch over to asterix pbx while retaining the same Avaya headsets.
    We are also in the process of integrating a sip line to asterix since the pbx has only 1 primary card linked to a different service provider.
    Is it possible to intergrate Avaya headsets to asterix?

    Reply ↓
  32. C. Carter

    Hi Roger,

    I’ve been reading all your posts since we’ve forklifted the Nortel Succession and replaced it with Avaya MGs. I’m deep into Avaya CMS and have created a nifty little Real-Time Display program that doesn’t use CLINT. It uses the CMS Scripting and I programmed PowerPoint to show the data collected in SQLite. It’s not commercially viable, but nifty nonetheless.

    Now I’m working another cool program (Scalable Vector Graphics, Linux) that shows were every extension is on property (similar to google maps) and was wondering if you knew of a way to interface with the Cable records in ASA? If you do then I think I may have a commercially viable program for 911 (when 911 is handled in-house).

    Pleasure reading your posts and hope you have great holidays.

    Thanks,
    C

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Oh that sounds awesome! Well done!

      If you “list station”, the cable records are on that screen, right? You can look through my tutorial about parsing Avaya output and make a cron job that pushes the cable record to sqlite.
      Or I think you can schedule an export from asa that runs and dumps to a csv. But I don’t think you can run as a service. You have to have asa running on a logged-in Windows workstation.
      Will your program show phone locations on a web page? Or only on the Linux workstation?

      I’m impressed, C! If you get around to posting something about it, let me know and I’ll link to it. Or you’re welcome to “guest post” something here if you’d like.

      Roger

      Reply ↓
  33. C. Carter

    Hi Roger,

    Send me in an email and I’ll send you the SVG site and documentation on how I used PowerPoint to create a Real-Time Display.

    I’m checking out the ASA Export now, thanks.

    Have you ever done anything with 911 Alerting?

    C.

    Reply ↓
  35. Sathish Kumar

    Hello Roger,

    Hope you are doing good, I am Sathish, I am fresher and starting my career in VOIP/Avaya CM. But i am really confused where to start and what are the basic things i should know to start troubleshooting issues related to CM.

    Can you please help me what should i starting studying, I have basic knowledge of networking.

    If possible please drop me a mail to dsathishkumarb@gmail.com

    Hoping for the best. Thanks!

    Regards,
    Sathish

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Wow that’s an EXCELLENT question. I should blog about that. Actually, that’s kind of how this blog started.

      I would recommend you start by becoming a “power user” of whatever phones and voicemail your company uses. If they’re using 9630s, then learn those. MAS or AAM? Learn all the options. Walk around (or call) and talk to the heavy users like receptionists, secretaries, call center agents, etc. Find out how the buttons are programmed and try to make more phones that do the same thing. It’s VERY overwhelming. I’m going through this exact same thing at a new job with Cisco, so I can sympathize. I’ll email you.

      Reply ↓
  36. Bradley Marks

    Hi Roger

    Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this site. I am making the transition from CS1000 to CM and this site has helped me a great deal.

    Regards
    Brad

    Reply ↓
  37. Kevin

    Hi Roger,
    This site has been very helpful. I had some ideas that I’d like to discuss offline if you are willing.
    Kevin

    Reply ↓
  38. Herman

    I need to change avaya 9611 ip to sip firmware can you kindly send a step by step document on how I can go about it please.

    Reply ↓
  39. Trisha Hartman

    new user of avaya 8.1. am trying to dial outbound and I do list trace and see that it is somehow prepending an 8191 to the beginning of my LD number. I can not find where the 81 is coming from.

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hi Trisha,

      This can be in the route or digit translation. I have a pretty decent flowchart of outbound dialing on my home page. It will show all the places where digits can be added.

      Reply ↓
  40. Alan Williford

    Has anyone created a windows based program, similar to traceSM?
    There is some back story on what is driving me to ask this… I’m just trying to make my life simple…
    Alan

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      I really doubt it. I wish TraceSM existed for Cisco. I tried to write one, but alas, I lost the source code when the virtual machine went down. Learned quite a lesson there.

      Reply ↓
  41. Heron

    Hey Roger,

    Do you have any article related to TEHO and Avaya configuration? SMGR and CM.
    Also I know that there is a lot of regulations about this subject.

    Reply ↓
  42. John

    I work for an unnamed company with several third-party telephony platforms. One of them we have to add the extension for an agent into a table for it to be associated to the recording on one of the other platforms. Don’t ask why we have more than one. With that said the table is has DRS extensions in the title. No-one knows why. Do you know what DRS would stand for when using Avaya phones?

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      I just asked a buddy. He said the only DRS he knows about is the data replication service between session managers and the system manager. Probably not related to your tables?

      Reply ↓
  43. JPeyton9

    Hey Roger,

    Sorry to hear about the loss of the Avaya environment, but the future is always bright! 🙂 Do you have anything in your cookbook that would allow use to use python or some other external process to build/duplicate a station and/or agent in CM. We have this external list for new employee onboarding, and are trying to automate the various parts of onboarding that we can. We would love the ability to duplicate a new extension and possibly an agent ID based on a set of existing templates, based on the users role on our onboarding list.

    Reply ↓
    2. roger

      Thank you! I have come to love and respect Cisco. And I’ve built some pretty cool automation tools. Looking forward to sharing at some point.

      Reply ↓
  44. Allan

    Hey Roger. Just wanted to say great read and ask your advice on an issue. In Avaya we created a new station range and agent range. 8 digit vs or previous 7. Station works and is able to make inbound and outbound calls. Agent works when logging into old station range. The new range doesn’t allow agent login though. AAFD displays a message: waiting for features – offline. Any ideas?

    Reply ↓
    1. roger

      Hi Allan! I did not know, but I asked a buddy of mine and he had some ideas.

      First, if it’s SIP, you need to make sure PPM works and all the configured buttons show up on the station.

      And he said this:

      I believe that when the new agent stations were created, the following buttons were not programmed on those phones.
      – auto-in
      – manual-in
      – agnt-login
      – aux-work
      – after-call
      I can tell you from personal experience that if these buttons do not exist on the agent phone the AAFD client will not let the agent sign in and will respond with the “waiting for features – offline” message.

      Reply ↓
  45. Sean

    Hi Roger- wealth of knowledge you have here…. Have a question for you…

    What command can I use in a Vector to convert all incoming 11 digit ANI’s to 10 digit, dropping the leading “1”. I only want to do this on a single call type, consisting of 2 VDN’s that point to a single Vector. Ultimately, the 10 digit ANI would be part of a screen pop string in an application that only recognizes 10 digit extensions (not 11).

    I don’t want to change or affect anything else on the CM, just calls on this single incoming call type.

    -Thanks!

    Reply ↓
  46. Neil Perry

    Thankyou Roger – your blog has been consistently useful to my role as an Avaya engineer and you sharing your knowledge and experience has been very much appreciated.

    Reply ↓

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *