![]() ![]() The larger organization is, the higher chances are. UC and Network teams may operate independently. Reporting requires extra effort and manual data transformation and analysis.It is hard to validate the information and compare it with the actual infrastructure state.Some information may be duplicated across the documents.It heavily relies on your knowledge of each file’s location and purpose.It is hard to search and index the information across distributed files.There are no clear relations between each piece of the information.There is no single format convention nor standard templates across different organizations.įurthermore, some additional challenges arise with regular text files and spreadsheets: It might change from one organization to another. The list demonstrates some general categories. Searching phone numbers through PDF scans of the service provider agreements is adventurous. What external services we have and what we billed for. How do we get access to our infrastructure elements. The actual configurations on the devices and VMs are often the only source of such information. What configuration elements translate #1 into a working infrastructure. ![]() What PSTN pools and internal extensions we have. It is necessary to know what their requirements are and how many lines they offer. What voice interconnections we have: SIP-trunks, PRIs, CO lines. How we assign IP-addresses to our devices. In VoIP environments, this information is still useful to know. Those who spent hours with a tone generator and wire tracker trying to identify the actual cross-connections from a traditional PBX will likely sigh at this point. ![]() Cable paths across patch panels and between ports. Cabling and device interconnection details.Related models, part IDs, serial numbers typically fall into this category. What physical and virtual boxes we have: Voice and UC equipment, virtual machines, PRI and DSP modules, etc. You can typically find such files in most organizations. How it was designed and expected to work. Solution design documents and implementation summaries.To begin with, I would break the pieces of the information we are usually interested in and keeping track of as follows: “What is the problem with that?” you may ask. Dedicated domain-specific documenting solutions for Voice and UC are not that common in the enterprise sector. Based on discussions with other engineers, this is quite typical. It is a good question, how representative this sample is. However, regardless of the region and size, they all shared one thing in common: the documentation related to Voice and UC relied on Microsoft Office and PDF files stored in a more or less structured fashion. I’ve been managing and consulting on Voice and UC deployments serving thousands of users and consisting of hundreds of voice devices and circuits in total. I have seen many examples of how the documentation can be organized since 2011 when I started my career. Using NetBox as Voice and UC Source of Truth might be a good idea. TLDR: I developed a new plugin for NetBox to manage phone numbers and more. Sounds painfully familiar? I have got something that might help. ![]() Do we have a spare phone number for a new service?.Which of these Excel files contains the information I need?.What phone number is that? Where it comes from?.Have you ever been struggling with an enterprise Voice and Unified Communications infrastructure ![]()
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