Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s Native Integration with Active Directory
Zero-Touch Cisco UC On-Boarding
For IT professionals, the holy grail of any automation initiative is the complete elimination of any manual work. For UC Engineers, Voice Managers or Telecom Engineers specifically, zero-touch on-boarding of new unified communications users is the goal. Luckily, Akkadian Provisioning Manager includes a native integration with Microsoft Active Directory which facilitates zero-touch on-boarding.
On a high level, there is a 4-step process between Akkadian Provisioning Manager, Microsoft Active Directory and the Cisco suite of unified communications applications which is easily deployed.
Step 1 – Akkadian Provisioning Manager looks for new employees in Active Directory. If new employees are found, Provisioning Manager moves on to Step 2. You can set how often you want to check AD for new employees – every day, every hour, whatever.
Step 2 – Akkadian Provisioning Manager automatically creates accounts for any new employee it has found, in all the relevant Cisco unified communications applications. You can even customize which UC applications are provisioned based on AD Groups, by matching it with a Group in Provisioning Manager.
Step 3 – Akkadian Provisioning Manager then sends the phone number of the new employee to Active Directory where it is stored with all the other employee information.
Step 4 – The final step to close the loop is for Akkadian Provisioning Manager to send an email to the new user with all the new details about their unified communications accounts.
All this happens in real-time without any manual work from the IT team or the ServiceDesk. This process has multiple benefits:
Elimination of manual work
Better provisioning consistency and reduced errors
Cisco UC Provisioning Software Helps Design Firm Leo A Daly
Since 1915, Leo A Daly has been providing designs for architecture, engineering, interiors, and many other planning services. In the past century, the company has developed an impressive reputation. Now, internationally recognized for its work, Leo A Daly has 34 offices around the globe.
Migration from a Legacy PBX System to Cisco Unified Communications Manager
The company recently found itself with a challenge as the voice environment was operating on two different platforms, an older, end-of-life PBX system and a Cisco Collaboration system. The company decided to migrate all 800 users to one, updated Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM self-provisioning). Additionally, the firm wanted to update its users to newer Cisco Collaboration features. While planning for the upgrade, Leo A Daly’s IT team discovered that the time required to provision each user, device, and application could total 30 minutes-per-user.
This inefficient process requiring a lengthy provisioning time was not an option for the company. With over 800 employees to migrate to CUCM, the provisioning process would have consumed 400 hours of staff time. This meant the migration would consume a full-time employee’s work week for approximately ten weeks. Although the end product of the CUCM migration would offer the company much value, the IT team could see that the migration project was on track to tie-up the IT staff, keeping them away from more important tasks.
Software Offers Provisioning Efficiency and Collaboration Adoption
As the legacy system was end-of-life, Leo A Daly needed the migration team to upgrade and deploy as quickly as possible. The company found a solution to their provisioning dilemma when they were introduced to Akkadian Provisioning Manager™ from Akkadian Labs. For Leo A Daly, the decision to use Akkadian software for its migration needs, primarily came down to efficiency. Tim Milan, an Information Technology Specialist with Leo A Daly, was part of the team that helped purchase and deploy Akkadian Provisioning Manager.
“What we like best is Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s ease of use. It auto-fills everything— you add extension and user ID and everything else fills in. Creating templates was very easy.” Tim Milan, Information Technology Specialist, Leo A Daly.
Using Akkadian Provisioning Manager, the IT team at Leo A Daly was able to reduce the time to provision from 30 minutes per user down to just five seconds per user. This time savings was all it took for management to see the value in Akkadian Provisioning Manager. But for Leo A Daly’s IT professionals, the draw to Akkadian Provisioning Manager was about more than just time. The IT team wanted to expand collaboration offerings to the company’s business units.
Utilizing Akkadian Provisioning Manager allowed the team to provision Leo A Daly employees with new collaboration tools, without additional steps. The CUCM migration and upgrade could now include new collaboration technology rollout and adoption.
IT Team Offloads Provisioning to Office Administrative Team
Because the software is so easy to use, it was now possible for less experienced staff to take on provisioning tasks. However, before handing over responsibilities, the IT team needed to protect the business-critical UC environment. The IT staff was able to partition access, and therefore protect their CUCM, allowing the receptionist and office administrator to become provisioners. “The distributed workload frees up the technical staff for higher level tasks,” said Milan.
For Leo A Daly, the ROI was clear. Not only did the company save hundreds of hours on provisioning, it also increased its access to new Cisco Collaboration applications.
Akkadian Labs Support and Software Stand Out
On working with Akkadian Labs, Milan had this to say:
“The support we received from Akkadian Labs was awesome. The support team was quick to reply and had great answers.”
Milan was thankful for the recommendation to use Akkadian software that he received from the company’s Cisco Collaboration partner. That one recommendation led to an effective transition, one that has satisfied Leo A Daly’s business unit users, as well as the company’s IT professionals.
Like Leo A Daly, small, medium, and large businesses utilizing Akkadian Provisioning Manager have seen noticeable improvements on time spent account provisioning. These companies see their IT staff spending time on other projects, leading to a sizable return on investment.
Akkadian Provisioning Manager will provision the following in 40 seconds: end user, extension, voicemail, device profile, Jabber desktop, Jabber mobile, single number reach
The latest software release introduces Akkadian Reporting Manager™
New York, NY—May 10, 2018–Software firm Akkadian Labs adds new features to Akkadian Provisioning Manager™, the premier Cisco provisioning solution for enterprise and mid-market companies. The latest version of Akkadian Provisioning Manager includes several new features, as well as upgrades to many core components. One new feature is Akkadian Reporting Manager™.
“As we release new versions of Akkadian Provisioning Manager, we continue to expand and build-out its capabilities. Akkadian Provisioning Manager has grown from a provisioning solution to include Akkadian Visual Phone Editor™, Akkadian Remote Phone Control™, and now Akkadian Reporting Manager™” said Tom Bamert, Akkadian Labs CTO.
With the launch of our latest Cisco automation tool, the latest version of Akkadian Provisioning Manager empowers IT administrators to better manage their Cisco CUCM self provisioning) environments.
New features added to Akkadian Provisioning Manager include: • Akkadian Reporting Manager • New administrative dashboard • Auto-provisioning with Active Directory integration • Hunt group provisioning • Expanded support of Akkadian Remote Phone Control Companies interested in seeing these features of the software, should visit the Akkadian Labs website and request a demo.
About Akkadian Labs Akkadian Labs has built powerful and flexible tools for both the IT administrator and the technology user. Whether the IT administrator
This announcement comes amid Cisco’s new offering of Hosted Collaboration Services (HCS) Shared Architecture and its recent lifting of restrictions of provisioning tools.
NEW YORK, NY—July 25, 2017—Akkadian Labs software, akkadian Provisioning Manager (APM), is now a great fit for provisioning Cisco HCS and HCS Shared Architecture. APM offers many administrative benefits and cost savings to Cisco value added resellers (VARs) who are adopting HCS Shared Architecture to provide UCaaS. Already popular with end users and VARs, APM automates provisioning and streamlines processes.
APM supports administration of the full line of HCS Shared Architecture devices, including Cisco Jabber (desktop and mobile), Cisco IP Phones, Cisco DX series, and Cisco SX series. The New York City-based Akkadian Labs team developed APM to simplify the complicated user/device provisioning process within the Cisco Collaboration environment. Since the solution’s inception, the team has continued to build out and expand APM’s features to include:
“We are excited to offer APM to our partners as they expand their UCaaS practices. APM will offer streamlined provisioning and automated administrative tasks—bringing both optimized performance for clients, as well as ROI to our partners,” said Tom Bamert, Akkadian Labs CTO.
To learn more about APM and to request a demonstration or free trial, please visit the Akkadian Labs website.
About Akkadian Labs
Akkadian Labs offers software products and solutions that integrate into Cisco Collaboration and Microsoft Unified Communications environments, as well as other business-focused enterprise applications.
New York, NY–Akkadian Labs will be demonstrating the power of its newly launched Visual Phone Editor™ in booth 2033 at Enterprise Connect, March 27-30, 2017 at the Gaylord Palms Convention Center in Orlando, FL.
Visual Phone Editor™ is a simple, intuitive tool used to manage Cisco phones using your mouse. The tool makes it simple to add and rearrange lines, intercoms, speed dials, and busy lamp fields on phones and expansion modules. Visual Phone Editor™ is the latest tool added to akkadian Provisioning Manager (APM), a leading Cisco UC provisioning solution.
“With the launch of Visual Phone Editor™, Akkadian Labs is further simplifying Cisco UC Administration,” said Tom Bamert, Chief Technology Officer. “APM already greatly simplifies repeatable Cisco UC provisioning tasks. With the release of Visual Phone Editor™, APM now provides a solution to overcome the most dynamic provisioning challenges.”
Clients adopt APM for their UC management because of the solution’s power and flexibility. The software is easy-to-use, as well as highly customizable to each company’s Cisco UC environment. APM is used by enterprise clients spanning all industries from higher education and healthcare, to energy and retail that are looking for ways to streamline their UC management.
Companies interested in streamlining Cisco UC provisioning should watch this video demo of Visual Phone Editor™ at work, or visit Akkadian Labs in booth #2033 at Enterprise Connect.
About Akkadian Labs Akkadian Labs focuses exclusively on creating innovative collaboration software that maximizes business results by improving the way people communicate and work together. For more information visit www.akkadianlabs.com.
About Enterprise Connect For more than 26 years, Enterprise Connect has been the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise IP Telephony, Converged Networks and Unified Communications in North America. Enterprise Connect brings corporate IT decision makers together with the industry’s vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise networks and communications. Enterprise Connect owns and produces No Jitter, providing daily blogging and analysis of enterprise communications, and it also serves the community with a weekly email newsletter and a Webinar series. For more information, visit enterpriseconnect.com.
Enterprise Connect is organized by UBM plc. UBM is the largest pure-play B2B Events organizer in the world. Our 3,750+ people, based in more than 20 countries, serve more than 50 different sectors. Our deep knowledge and passion for these sectors allow us to create valuable experiences which enable our customers to succeed. Please visit www.ubm.com for the latest news and information about UBM.
Corporate America announces the winners of the 2016 Software & Technology Awards.
With the corporate landscape becoming increasingly digital, many businesses are being defined by their online presence, and as such the need for quality technology support is increasingly vital.
It is with this in mind that Corporate America announced the 2016 Technology & Software Awards, which are now in their second year. The magazine focuses on showcasing the hard work and commitment of the many businesses, departments and individuals across this market who are not only keeping their clients at the top of their game, but also driving innovation and, potentially, changing the way we do business for the better.
Corporate America recognizes Akkadian Labs as a leader in Unified Communications, as well as Best Cisco Provisioning Software Provider.
Akkadian Labs offer a range of unique solutions designed to support clients with all their Cisco collaboration needs. With a diverse selection of solutions and a commitment to excellence the firm is well positioned to offer clients the very best software products on the market. –Corporate America Software & Technology Awards
Akkadian Labs, a leading Cisco Solutions Partner, has announced the release of Akkadian Provisioning Manager (APM) 4.8.
NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – October 11, 2016) – APM is the popular Cisco Collaboration software developed to simplify the complicated user/device provisioning process within the Cisco Collaboration environment. This release expands the software’s already robust provisioning capabilities of CUCM features.
“The functionality of APM continues to advance at a rapid pace,” says Tom Bamert, CTO of Akkadian Labs. “With this latest version of APM, we are incorporating new features requested by our fast-growing customer base.”
APM 4.8 introduces many great new features, including:
LDAP-based automated de-provisioning – automatically de-provision users based on their LDAP statuses in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) end user directory, preventing orphaned devices when users are deleted by CUCM.
Client matter code (CMC) and forced authorization code (FAC) support – support for adding, deleting and editing CMC & FACs in CUCM.
Generate MAC addresses – provides the ability to generate dummy MAC addresses to enhance APM’s self-provisioning service.
Email provisioning results – easily email the summary or details of APM’s provisioning actions.
Overwrite device option – provides the ability for APM to overwrite an existing device while provisioning.
Configuring Extension mobility auto-logout – during a user delete within extension mobility environments, APM will now automatically log out the user from all devices, in order to properly end CUCM extension mobility.
APM’s popularity with Cisco Collaboration administrators stems from the software’s use of templates and a single pane of glass interface to make provisioning a repeatable process. Along with the new features and provisioning enhancements, the latest APM release has several new template and user interface enhancements, such as expanded provisioning options within templates. For other features and more details, please see APM 4.8’s release notes.
APM 4.8 supports Cisco Collaboration service releases 8.x and above. Also, APM 4.8 is available for Windows servers or as a virtual Linux appliance.
About Akkadian Labs Akkadian Labs focuses exclusively on creating innovative collaboration software that maximizes business results by improving the way people communicate and work together.
akkadian Provisioning Manager (APM) will provision the following in 40 seconds: end user, extension, voicemail, device profile, jabber desktop, jabber mobile, single number reach
Provisioning Cisco Collaboration gets even easier with phone swap tool
The mobile app from Akkadian Provisioning Manager is just one way the Cisco UC provisioning tool is helps UC admins save time. Released alongside phone swap, are the self-provisioning and license pools features.
What is CUCM Phone Swap
What is CUCM phone swap? Phone Swap app provides the ability to swap or copy configurations between almost any Cisco IP phone. For example, the Cisco IP 7900 series has reached end-of-life. Many organizations are replacing these phones with a newer model. Without Akkadian Provisioning Manager, this can be a tedious task of manually provisioning the new phone, re-associating the line to the device, and then the device to the user. But, Akkadian clients have an easier, smarter way. Akkadian Phone Swap allows you to simply select the source phone, enter a few details about the destination phone and you are done.
Self-provisioning
The next time-saving feature we’re happy to announce is self-provisioning. When your company has a new employee starting, simply provision the user using a dummy mac address. When the new employee first arrives at his new desk, he can complete the provisioning process by entering his self-service ID on the phone and Akkadian Provisioning Manager will handle the rest.
License pool manager
Our third new benefit saves time and money by helping to more effectively manage licensing in Cisco Communications Manager. Akkadian Provisioning Manager already does a great job of associating end users to phones, but what about situation where phones are not associated to users? These could be common area phones or phones in retail or manufacturing locations. License pool manager help organizations by:
Automatically creating local licensr users in CUCM
Automatically assigning phones to these license users
Managing the ongoing process as phoned are deleted and added to the CUCM end user template being used
Try Akkadian Provisioning Manager risk-free by scheduling a customized demo.
Zero-touch provisioning has been used in the Cisco networking world, but how can you bring zero touch provisioning to Cisco Collaboration?
Akkadian Provisioning Manager connects IT and HR with our REST API.
Are you using ServiceNow? Workday? Peoplesoft? If so, then you could experience zero touch provisioning with Akkadian Provisioning Manager.
The Akkadian Provisioning Manager (APM) API is a game changer for those utilizing Cisco Collaboration as well as workflow systems. Now, if HR opens a ticket for a new employee in ServiceNow, for example, APM’s REST API initiates the provisioning process without the Cisco Collaboration administrator taking any action. Plus, tickets for exiting employees will kick-off requests to decommission users. Welcome to zero-touch provisioning.
Join our customers leveraging Akkadian Provisioning Manager’s API to automate provisioning. Contact us to learn more about bringing Akkadian Labs’ Cisco Collaboration provisioning software into your workflow, or, get started by downloading a free trial below.
Why not fully automate the provisioning process with APM’s REST API? To learn more about zero-touch provisioning and our native active directory click here.
New features designed to reduce administrative overhead
We’re constantly looking for ways to make Cisco Unified Communications Manager administrators’ lives easier, and we hope the latest release of Akkadian Provisioning Manager™ will do just that. The driving force behind the new features is to reduce Cisco Unified Communications Manager administrative overhead. We are proud to announce the following new features:
We’ve introduced a web services API to allow companies wanting to integrate provisioning with a workflow management system. Now, programs like ServiceNow, Workday and PeopleSoft will kick-off the provisioning request, automating onboarding or off boarding employees.
DN pool management across multiple clusters
Directory number pool management for Cisco Unified Communications Manager allows you to search across multiple clusters and company sites, cutting time spent on provisioning new employees and giving even more flexibility to your team on how to manage your Cisco Collaboration environment.
Bulk delete
Another simple, time saving feature is the new bulk delete function. What if you have a crop of summer interns leaving to go back to school? The bulk delete function will allow you to decommission their devices in seconds.
Enhanced reporting with global search
Now, finding a needle in a haystack isn’t the challenge it once was. We’ve enhanced reporting so not only does it provide better information, but you can find almost anything using global search. In a matter of seconds, Akkadian Provisioning Manager can search by reporting data by name, directory number, MAC address, etc. and pinpoint the exact record in question.
Site templates
Finally, we’ve added a way for you to apply location-based settings using site templates. This helps reduce administrative overhead and quickly apply location specific settings using a simple drop-down menu.
