Howto:Maintaining a Phone Directory in the PBX

Applies To

This information applies to

PBX, all platforms, V7 and later

More Information

Problem Details

A shared phone directory for all users is a common requirement in PBX systems. Although there are sophisticated solutions based on LDAP services available (e.g. Metadirectory), some customers ask for a small and easy solution which is implemented directly in the PBX and does not require any external components. Here is how to do it.

System Requirements

The goal is to make the global phone book available in the phone's directory client for outgoing calls and for reverse identifaction of incoming calls. You will need a PBX and you will need to configure the phone's external LDAP client accordingly. The solution will also work with the LDAP Directory Search object.

Configuration

The idea is to configure directory entries as normal user objects. These will be looked up by the phone's directory client. Unfortunately, all these numbers obviously start with the trunk access prefix (usually 0) and would thus conflict with your trunk object. The solution is to create a separate node for phone book entries (say telbook for example). This eliminates the conflict as there will be no trunk object in this node. All phone book entries must be configured with the node property set to telbook then.

Entries

To add an entry, you would create a user object and configure it as follows

Set Long Name to some unique id, e.g. telbook-donaldd-mgm
Set Display Name to the name you want to appear in the phone display (e.g. Donald Duck, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
Set Number to the number to dial (including trunk prefixes, e.g. 007031730090)
Set Node to the phone book node you created (e.g. telbook)
Leave PBX empty
Check the Hide from LDAP check-mark

Telephone LDAP Directory Client

On the client side, you need to configure the LDAP directory client in Configuration / Registration x / Directories accordingly. Here it goes:

You may want to clear the enable check-mark in the PBX box if you want the phone to display phone book entries only. However, leaving it checked will nicely show a merged list of PBX extensions and phone book entries
You need to check the enable check-mark in the External LDAP Server box
Set Server to the IP address of your PBX
Set Port to 389
Set Username and Password to the credentials of an LDAP server account with at least read priviliges (usually ldap-guest and ipxxx)
Set Search Base to cn=PBX0
Set Mode to basic
Set Object Filter to (node=telbook)
Set Name Attributes to dn
Set Number Attributes to e164

Administrative Access

Maintenance of the phone book nbow requires admin rights in the PBX. However, this maintenance is usually delegated to personal that shoud not have modify rights on the system's overall configuration. To work around that problem, you would create a special PBX user (say telbook-admin) with limited access rights. You need to

Create a new User object
Set Long Name and Name and to the desired name (e.g. telbook-admin)
Leave Number empty
Set Password to the desired password
Set Node to you standard node, but not to the node you are using fir the phone book (e.g. to root, not telbook)
Leave PBX empty

On that user object, you would set special access rights. To do so, you open the Rights dialogue (by clicking the + sign in the Rights column) and

Select Administration of all Objects from the drop-down list
Set Limit to Node to your phone book node (e.g. telbook)
Leave Limit to PBX empty