President's Letter
by Mike KokCIPTUG (Cisco IPT Users Group) is an independent association addressing the needs of Cisco Unified Communications users around the globe. Founded in 2001, membership includes 1300 end users from over 500 companies representing a variety of industries, knowledge and experiences. Additionally, Cisco along with 100 CIPTUG Vendor Members actively support and participate. Throughout the year members engage in a wide range of educational programs, interactive forums and collaborative activities to:
• exchange information, experiences and best practices.
• influence Cisco and Partners' product enhancements and directions.
• enhance product knowledge and technical expertise.
• network with others.
The 2008 conference Nov. 10-13 at Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando includes keynote speakers, Cisco executive presentations, “Birds of a Feather” discussion groups and 70 educational workshops focusing on customer case studies, new products, future product development sessions, best practices and interactive panel discussions. Our Partner Pavilion features Cisco and Partners demonstrating technological innovations and applications, an Application Bake-off Competition and hands-on learning labs. The program also offers optional Pre-conference Training Courses conducted by Cisco Learning Partners.
Whether you are just beginning installation, exploring ways to push your system to the next level and/or interested in expanding your knowledge and expertise, we encourage you to join CIPTUG and attend the Conference. We look forward to seeing you in Orlando.
Annual Conference
Over 65 CIPTUG Vendor Members will be introducing and demonstrating their latest offerings. Attendees will test-drive IP-based UC solutions, products and services. The Technical Assistance Center will be staffed by Cisco TAC Engineers, providing attendees one-on-one responses to technical questions, concerns and issues. And new this year, the Pavilion will include a live lab where users can demo and experience multiple UC products and related applications to see hands-on what will work best for them as well as two days of lunch roundtable discussions focusing on a variety of UC-related hot topics and vertical market issues.
Educational Workshops
70+ educational workshops presented by enduser experts, Cisco Product Development Teams and Partners. Within each major technology track – Conferencing, Contact Center, Messaging, Phone Systems, Security – individual session content will focus on specific topics such as Real World Case Studies, How To Best Practices, System Management, Product Overviews, Product Roadmaps (Future Direction), Troubleshooting and Training.
Golf Tournament and Outing
CIPTUG along with vendor sponsors will host the 1st Annual Golf Tournament and related activities for conference attendees. The stress-free best-ball tournament will provide an additional opportunity to network with other users and enjoy more of the conference in a relaxed but intimate environment.
It will take place on Sunday, Nov. 9 at Falcon’s Fire Golf Club between 12:00 and 6:00 pm. Register and more info at ciptug.org.
Chapters
Baltimore - Heather Martin ciptug-baltimore@ciptug.orgBoston - John Turner ciptug-boston@ciptug.org
Central Virginia - Rick Arsenault ciptug-central.va@ciptug.org
Chicago - Jeanine Lee ciptug-chicago@ciptug.org
Denver (forming) - ciptug-denver@ciptug.org
Houston - Wendy Weinberger ciptug-houston@ciptug.org
Minnesota - Jacquie Mannick ciptug-mn@ciptug.org
New York Metro - Andre John ciptug-ny.metro@ciptug.org
Northern Virginia/DC - Dewayne Kendall ciptug-nva.dc@ciptug.org
Northwest - Christopher Norman ciptug-northwest@ciptug.org
Orange County (CA) - Brian Buckler ciptug-orange.county@ciptug.org
Phoenix (forming)- ciptug-phoenix@ciptug.org
San Francisco Bay Area (forming) - Noelle Grotegut ciptug-sfo.bay@ciptug.org
Sacramento CA (forming) - Ginger Kavan ciptug-sacramento@ciptug.org
San Antonio (forming)- ciptug-san.antonio@ciptug.org
South Florida - Rey Leon ciptug-so.florida@ciptug.org
Southeast (GA) - Kathy Tarkington ciptug-southeast@ciptug.org
United Kingdom - Gerard Gough ciptug-uk@ciptug.org
Utah - Royce Weight ciptug-utah@ciptug.org
Events
Aug 6 - Captaris Webinar
Aug 14 - ActiveObjects Webinar
Aug 21 - Northern Virginia/DC Chapter Meeting
Aug 28 - Austin Logistics Webinar
Aug 31 - Taske Technology Beta Program
Sep 18 - Southeast Chapter Meeting
Sep 10 - Taske Technology Beta Program
Oct 14 - Veramark Webinar
Oc 31 - Taske Technology Beta Program
Nov 10–13 - CIPTUG Annual Conference
Dec 10 - United Kingdom Winter Meeting
Dec 11 - Southeast Chapter Meeting
Dec 31 - Taske Technology Beta Program
Membership
CIPTUG offers two types of memberships:
Corporate Membership - End Customers
Vendor Membership
CIPTUG offers corporate memberships to IT/VoIP management and support staff of enterprises that have deployed/implemented, will be deploying/implementing, or are considering deploying/implementing a Cisco Unified Communications solutions. Companies can chose from full and local membership packages ranging in size from one member to over 1000 members.
CIPTUG Vendor Membership
CIPTUG offers vendor membership to Cisco employees, Cisco Learning Partners, Cisco approved Technology Developer Partners, and Cisco certified IPC Resellers. Vendor membership provides an integrated way to participate with the CIPTUG end-user membership community. Vendors can chose from six vendor membership levels – each providing different opportunities to enhance vendor visibility through on-going membership participation, advertising opportunities, monthly outreach activities and participation in the annual conference.
Perspectives
Unified Communications Security
by Kevin Flynn, Sr. Manager, Security Technology Marketing, Cisco
Properly configured, UC can be as secure as traditional phone and communications systems. It is now being utilized in some of the most security conscious locations in the world including government agencies and major financial institutions.
Multiple levels of defense mechanisms are required. Should an attacker penetrate one layer, he is stopped at the next. A comprehensive, systemic approach is required incorporating all layers – applications, endpoints, call control and network infrastructure. Protection of each is critical and they should be designed to work together and be managed as a whole.
Good security means proper implementation of policies, deciding who gets to communicate with whom and enforcing those decisions. Organizations should take into account their legal and regulatory environment. Creation and enforcement requires utilizing technologies and expertise from various groups. Network, security, voice operations and business executives should be involved.
At Cisco research and development experts work together to craft solutions that incorporate routers, switches, firewalls, encryption, wireless, call management, telephones and software. We look at solving today’s security problems and plan in advance to craft solutions for ones that may become more widespread at some future date.
From the Data Guy
by Todd RoarkRecently I deployed MeetingPlace Express 2.0. Of all the Cisco IPT products I’ve installed and tested MPE is the easiest thus far.
Tweaking configuration after install is relatively easy. Most customization is accomplished within the administration menus and is straightforward. The email template requires some familiarity with HTML but docs clearly explain the mechanics of the language property file. I customized the templates according to the input of management and peers and composed a simple user guide complete with graphics which I converted to PDF with bookmarks.
Once everything was online I needed to get it tested one last time. My project partner had already logged into MPE and setup up his profile and created a few meetings. I deleted his profile so he could review the documentation I had composed. Clearly the Cisco docs say that deleting the profile also deletes all meetings created by the profile. He logged back in and created his profile but couldn’t create the same meetings because resources weren’t available. As far as we could tell the meetings were deleted so there shouldn’t be a conflict. Out of options, we called TAC.
The engineer agreed about the root of the problem, which he thought might be a bug. It seems that deleting profiles, which deletes the meetings, should free up the resources but didn’t. We needed to recreate the meetings exactly and needed a way to purge the entries from the MPE dbase.
The mtginfo command is used to display information about a specific meeting. It will not display recurring meeting information and I needed to purge all recurrences. The important part of the display are the Unique ConfID and ReadConf, 0x23 (35) the hex and decimal IDs of the meetings. The next command was cptrace. Specifically we used cptrace –C; the command alone didn’t reveal the hex “C” value IDs.
Between these two I can find all the unique IDs needed for purging meetings using CSTest. The menu was a bit less than intuitive because Option 2 takes you to “schedule a meeting” where “delete a meeting” option is found. But there is a catch; you must use the decimal value of the unique system IDs. So you need to convert all the hex “C” values from the cptrace display to decimal for meeting recurrences. If you use CSTest to delete a hex value then you’ve deleted the wrong meeting. Also the system IDs all meetings in contiguous order so you need to be sure to know the decimal ID for the last meeting you want to delete.
Once I managed to purge all the meeting recurrences my peer was able to recreate them exactly, including the ones I deleted using the hex values. It was all in a day’s work and we learned a cool trick to add to the bag.
Telecom Reseller publishes various OEM and dealer supplements on a regular basis. Please contact us for more information.
The publishers of this web site assume no responsibility for statements made by advertisers in their advertisements, nor do they assume responsibility for statements or opinions expressed or implied in the various articles, features and columns.
Listings and ads may link to web sites which do not have a formal privacy policy. They therefore may set cookies and/or collect personal information without warning, and may not adhere to the web privacy standards we abide by and advocate.
Please note: Our website is best experienced with a modern, standards-compliant browser. For more information, or to upgrade an older browser, follow this link.
Website problems? Feedback? Use our Contact Form.
© 2007 Telecom Reseller. All Rights Reserved.
