More CM6 notes

I believe Penn State's VoIP users will be really keen on CM6's built-in presence and busy-lamp speed-dial features. These two go hand-in-hand and are one of those "it's about time!" sort of things. Busy-lamp speed-dials allow a user to set up normal speed-dial keys that display, using graphical icons and the color of the button (if using a capable phone), whether that number is on-hook (available) or off-hook (busy). It's a speed-dial with status information. This is a far better way of monitoring line availability than setting up shared line appearances just for that functionality, which we do today. Another cool trick, enabled by the presence feature: you can see those available/busy icons in the call lists, too. Now, when I look in my missed calls list and see that I missed a call from the boss, I can also see right there in the list if the boss's phone is busy and decide whether or not it's a good time to call back.

I disagree with the instructor's comment on Tuesday that SIP on endpoints "sucks." It's good that CM6 fully supports the SIP protocol for trunking and endpoints, and it gives administrators a lot more options including remote softphones on various platforms (Cisco's IP Communicator softphone is Windows-only). On the other hand, the SIP firmware for the Cisco IP phones is ridiculously bad, and I can see no reason you'd want to use Cisco IP phones with SIP firmware on Call Manager. The features just aren't there. The third-gen Cisco phones have better SIP firmware and could be used with a third-party PBX, but there are a number of less-expensive alternatives.