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Background Image Deployment

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arrrghhh

Technical User
Oct 15, 2009
44
US
As a business, we were going to put our company logo on all the phones - Cisco does NOT provide a method of deploying this background in bulk however!

I used the method of putting the backgrounds on the TFTP server, so now all the phones can "see" the background image - the problem I'm having, is now how do I set this background to all the phones?

The only methods that have been suggested to me were a) phone designer, (which is NOT a bulk method) b) some "voip-integration" software that was $90, and in my testing I could not get to work. It also needed access to my desktop from every phone in the network... The admin was not willing to open that up. And c) using WGET to push HTTP traffic that would literally simulate user button presses... as if the user was changing the background manually. I wrote an AHK script to do this for me, and it works... but it doesn't seem completely consistent (could be my script, or some latency) - but the main issue is the users will FREAK if they see their phones doing stuff on its own. So that method is pretty much out... but it seems will be the only one I can work with.

I'd love to hear any other/better methods for achieving this... thanks!!
 
I recently did this for our company. I used the software you mentioned. Considering I updated 5,000+ phones, the $90 spent was well worth it (I expensed that to my company as well). The system the software is running on does need direct access to the phones, so if you have security between the vLANs, you will need to temporarily open them up (the documentation says which ports are used). Once you update all the phones, the network security can be restored.

Do you have LDAP integration? I do and had some issues with the software as well. Make sure you are running the latest version. When you enter the LDAP account info, you need to note the username and password are case sensitive. Once you purchase the software, they do provide support and can assist you with any additional issues. But once running and it updates the phone, the phone "magically" changes the background, regardless of what the user is doing to the phone.
 
Hrm... Yea, I spoke extensively with their support department, and we could not get it running on our system. They literally gave up, decided it wasn't worth the $90 to them - my company was willing to pony up the $90, but if I couldn't get their software to work... well, then we certainly weren't going to pay them anything.

I couldn't even get it to update one phone... I wish I knew what method they were using, they seem to know some secret within the Cisco API that either Cisco themselves don't know about, or intentionally leave open for 3rd party vendors to exploit. Heck, that voipintegration company may have even paid Cisco to give them the API and not provide it to customers... Blargh.
 
so, I just did this manualy.
and alltough we use ext.mobility, it looks like -as with the ringtomes!- it's connected to the phone and not the profile!!??

has someone have the same issues, or is this normal
 
Unfortunately this is how Cisco wants the system to work - it is working "as advertised" as they like to say. The ringtones seem very similar to the background images, in that Cisco seems to believe the user should be in control of them... when that couldn't be farther from how enterprises want to work. Look at AD and all the control it has over individual settings in any computer on the domain. Enterprises want this type of control over their devices, get a clue Cisco!
 
Cisco already has a tool "Cisco Phone Designer" available which you can download for "FREE" if you have a valid CCO account.Its pretty nice as you can categorize phones based on models and deploy background images(company logos) as well as ringtones in bulk.No need to look for third-party tools as they aren't anywhere closer to functionality.
 
So did they update the Phone Designer program? I used that a few months ago, but it only would control one phone... there was no "bulk" method built into it. The reason third-party tools are created is directly related to Cisco making products that forget about the end-user entirely.
 
And I just downloaded the newest version of Phone Designer... same old crap, no way to do it in bulk. Did you even use the software before responding? And you're an instructor? Great...
 
Others in this Forum have posted that you need associate your user with all the phones in CallManager then Phone Designer will work for all of them. I haven't tried it yet but it sounds reasonable.
Do a search in this Forum on Phone Designer and look at all the responses.
 
I see you haven't tried that either. That technically works, but you have no way of knowing which phone is which. You just get a giant list of the word "Cisco" and then the model phone. We have 3 types of phones, and about 3,000 of them total. Then you can select each phone one-by-one... not a very good method either. So far my autohotkey script is the best solution I've come across, unless you can get that voipintegration.com software to function, I could not figure it out even with help from their devs. I think there was a firewall issue...
 
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