Lync Snom Phone Manager

Note: Also see my Lync Snom Configuration Manager Post for more Snom related fun.

In a previous blog post I released a tool for managing Polycom VVX phones that was well received by the Lync community. So I thought that it was only fitting that I go back to the drawing board and engineer a new tool for managing Snom phones. The tool's front end works in a very similar way to the VVX manager tool with some minor tweaks and differences, however, the backend has been completely overhauled to work with Snom devices (which turned out to be a lot of work). Rightio, let's skip the chit chat and get down to the brass tacks…

Lync Snom Phone Manager

Version 1.0:

• The Lync Snom Manager has the ability to query the Lync Monitoring database (if you have one deployed) and find all the IP Addresses of Snom phones connected to your Lync server. It will then scan all the IP Addresses of Snom phones supplied by the Monitoring database using a fast multi-threaded discovery method to connect to and learn about all the Snom devices on the system.
• If you do not have a Lync Monitoring Database you can simply type an IP Range (format: "192.168.0.1-192.168.0.20" OR "192.168.0.0/24" OR add multiple with comma separation "192.168.0.0/24,192.168.1.0/24") into the listbox and press the "Discover from IP Range" button. The tool will then scan the phones using a fast multi-threaded discovery method to see if they are at each IP address in the range.
• If a Snom handset that is not logged in as a user is discovered, it will be added to the user list under the name “SnomNot@LoggedIn_<index number>”. This allows you to use the tool to access these devices even though they are not logged into Lync.
• Find out information about Snom handsets connected to a Lync system (IP Address, the Lync server that the handset is registered to, user policies, PIN status).
• Remotely reboot Snom handsets using the "Reboot" button. Reboot a selection of handsets by selecting (hold shift/ctrl) multiple users in the list, then press the ‘Reboot’ button. Or reboot all the Snom handsets on a Lync system with the “Reboot All” button.
• Remotely set a Snom phone's configuration back to factory default settings by pressing the "Reset" button. To be safe. you will be warned before this function is actually completed.
• Set the PIN for a user - either a random PIN (if the PIN field is left blank), or specify a PIN number by filling in the field. This can also be done on multiple selected users.
• Lock and unlock the PIN for a selected user with the "Lock PIN" and "Unlock PIN" buttons. This can also be done for multiple selected users.
• Easily connect to the Snom phone web interface of any user on the system by clicking the “Web Config” Button.
• Test PIN and device bootstrapping by entering a PIN number for the selected user and pressing the "Test PIN" button.
• Export your Snom phone deployment information. This outputs a CSV file that contains all the Users, IPs, Firmware Version, Serial Numbers, Lync Server, and MAC Address (if available) for all logged in phones. If you select the "More" checkbox you will also get the additional Lync settings for the phone (this is slower).
• Import previously exported phone data. This allows you to import previously exported phone data, which can save you time “Pinging” IP address ranges looking for phones. The “Rescan” option will make the Snom Phone Manager tool connect to each device in the imported list and update its information. This is to help try and avoid importing stale data with incorrect IP Addresses in it. If you trust that your phone IP Addresses have not changed from when you previously exported the data, you can untick the “Rescan” option, and all settings will be imported directly from the file (much faster but less safe).
• Variable for https connections to the Snom web interface. Change the variable $script:useHTTPS to be $true if you would like all web interface connections to use https instead of http. This will also require that you change the $script:WebPort variable to be "443" as well (or whatever port you set in the configuration file for https). These settings can also be added in a settings file if you don't want to edit the script.
• Remotely view what is showing on the screen of the phone by pressing the “Show Screen” button. This will load another window that will show you what is on the screen of the phone, and will refresh approximately every second. This feature can be useful for remotely troubleshooting issues with users' phones. Example:

Version 1.01 Update:

• Added support for common area phones. The Display Name is also shown as part of the User Information section in order to make Common Area Phone identification easier.
• Added window resizing capability.

Download Version 1.01:

System Configuration Requirements

Lync Configuration

In order to use the Snom Phone Manager, you will need to make sure that the phones have some settings configured in them. Fortunately you can use my Snom Configuration manager Tool to push these settings to the phones (rather than individually configuring each phone, or using a separate config server). The following settings need to be configured in your Lync server Client Policy PolicyEntry settings:

Web Username:

Name: snom_http_user 

Value:  snommanager

Web Password:

Name: snom_http_pass  

Value: snommanager

Authentication Type – The tool uses Basic Authentication over HTTPS

Name: snom_http_scheme

Value: off

In order to get to get to many of the configuration settings in the phone you need to set the phone to Administrator Mode. This mode has its own password setting, and if it is not changed from the default setting of “0000” there will be a message displayed on the phone screen (Admin mode password not set). This password should also be set for security reasons:

Admin Mode Password:

Name: snom_admin_mode_password

Value: snommanager

Admin Mode Password Confirm:

Name: snom_admin_mode_password_confirm

Value: snommanager

Using Lync Configuration Manger to make these settings:

Script File Variables

There are two methods for changing these variables in the script file:

Method 1: Preserve Code Signing Method

The script file has been signed so it can be used on sites that have restrictive script execution policies in Powershell. This means though that if any element of the script is edited, the signing becomes invalid and you will not be able to run the script. So to get around this issue I have made the script be able to take variable input from an external file. :)

To an external settings file, simply create a file  (or edit the file I supplied in the zip file with the tool)  named "LyncSnomPhoneManagerSettings.cfg" in the same directory as your Snom Phone Manager script is in. The file must be in the following format:

SnomHTTPUsername=snommanager

SnomHTTPPassword=snommanager

SnomAdminModePassword=snommanager

WebPort=443

useHTTPS=true

IPRanges=192.168.0.1/24,192.168.1.1/24

When the script runs it will look for the settings file and parse it into the appropriate variables.

Method 2: The "Who cares about code signing" method

In the script file you will need to set the following settings to match whatever you have configured in your Snom phones:

#Edit these settings if you would like to use a custom username and password for your Snom devices.

$script:SnomHTTPUsername = "snommanager"

$script:SnomHTTPPassword = "snommanager"

$script:SnomAdminModePassword = "snommanager"

Monitoring Database Discovery Permissions

In order to discover phones from the Monitoring database (this is not required for the IP range discovery method), the user logged into the server will need to be a Domain Admin or have “Select” privileges granted on the LscCDR database's Registration table for a security group they are a member of (eg. CSAdministrator). For more details on how to grant these privileges, please refer to the manual process in my article about Group Call Pickup permissions here. Note: the database and table being edited in this case are different than the ones documented in the article, but the process is the same.

The Wrap Up

It’s as simple as that! So now you have a solution for managing your Snom phones' configuration via Lync Client Policy as well as a tool for accessing and managing individual endpoints. What more could you ask for?? Actually, don’t answer that… I’m sure there are plenty more things you would like… I’m working on it ;) 

Read more →

Lync Snom Configuration Manager

Note: Also see my Lync Snom Phone Manager Post for more Snom related fun.

Are you tired of having to maintain a separate configuration server for your third party Lync compatible SIP phones? Well you’ve come to the right place… At Lync Conf this year Snom officially released a feature (it had actually been available for quite some time) that allows you to push configuration settings directly from a Lync Front End server to Snom Lync UC Edition phones. This saves you the effort of setting and managing a separate server containing configuration files. This is an enormous step forward as it will not only reduce your workload but it will also reduce the number points of failure in your Lync deployment.

The way Snom has made the Lync based configuration settings work is by leveraging settings in Lync Client Policy called CsClientPolicyEntries, which was originally introduced in Lync 2010 for sending special configurable settings to Lync clients. An example of this in use is for pushing the photo URL setting back to Lync 2013 clients.

If you’re interested in knowing more about how the Powershell settings work behind the scenes, Matt Landis has a post here about it. The short version of this story is that any setting in the phone that you can see in the configuration file can be pushed to a phone using Client Policy settings. All you need to do is take the name of the Snom config setting and pre-append “snom_” to the start of it and then add this setting to a Client Policy Entry within Lync.

If you’re not so interested in learning all the Powershell behind this, then try using this new tool that I have made…

Lync Snom Config Manager

Version 1.0

• Create or Delete Client Policies.
• View all PolicyEntry settings for each Client Policy within a Lync environment.
• Add, Edit, Delete, and Delete All, CsClientPolicy PolicyEntry settings.
• Click the "?" button to go directly to the Snom Wiki page for the selected setting or if no setting is selected go to the base Wiki page.
• The script is code signed! (thanks to Digicert)
• Export settings from a policy to file.
• Import settings into the Snom Config Manager tool. This is useful for copying settings between policies, or just saving copies of settings. Note: You can also import Snom configuration files, however, this is not recommended (see the "What about...?" section for more details). 
• Importing configuration files can be done by merging with current policy settings, or replacing any existing policies settings.

Download Version 1.0

Import Mode Details

When you have pressed the “Import Config” button the contents of the file that you select to import will be displayed in the list view. At this stage you are in "Import Mode", meaning that all the settings from the file have not been applied to a policy yet (to let you know you're in "Import Mode" the settings will be displayed in red). This gives you the opportunity to view the settings and Add/Delete settings before you write the settings to a Client Policy setting in Lync (at which time they will become live in the system).

Import Mode Example

Once you have edited the settings as you would like in the Client Policy, you then select the policy that you would like to apply the settings to from the import drop down box and press the “Upload Config” button. Once you have done this, the setting will be written to the policy within Lync. If you select the “Cancel Upload” button the upload will be aborted. The "Merge" radio button will give you the option to retain all the current settings in the Lync policy and add the imported settings to the existing settings (it will also replace any existing settings that have the same setting name as the one being imported). The "Replace" radio button will first remove all settings from the selected Client Policy and then import the new settings in the place of the old settings.  If the “Import Blanks” check box is unticked then any blank settings (usually if importing an actual Snom config file) in the config file will be ignored and not imported (Note: you cannot enter blank settings into a Client Policy, so you will need to give these settings values before completing the import process).

Example Configuration Settings

Below are some examples of settings that you might want to use:

Set the HTTP Server User and Password

Take back control of your Snom devices! You may have noticed that when you use PIN Auth on a Snom device it will set the Extension number as the Web Admin user name, and the PIN number as the Web Admin password. I personally find it a bit weird that the user should have access to the configuration of the phone and the Administrator doesn’t. So use the following settings to Push out your own Administrator Username and Password for the web interface:

Web Username:

Name: snom_http_user 

Value:  snommanager

Web Password:

Name: snom_http_pass  

Value: snommanager

Set the Admin Mode Password

In order to get to get to many of the configuration settings in the phone you need to set the phone to Administrator Mode. This mode has its own password setting, and if it is not changed from the default setting of “0000” there will be a message displayed on the phone screen (Admin mode password not set). This password should also be set for security reasons:

Admin Mode Password:

Name: snom_admin_mode_password

Value: snommanager

Admin Mode Password Confirm:

Name: snom_admin_mode_password_confirm

Value: snommanager

Turn off the Security Warning

If you really want to leave this setting as the default “0000” you can suppress the phone displaying the error with the following setting:

Name: snom_ignore_security_warning

Value: on

Change Language Settings

If you have users within your organisation with different language requirements, you can create separate Client Policies and push them different language settings:

Name: snom_language

Value: English

Note: Be careful with language settings as some use special characters, eg. “Español”. See the settings WIKI here.

Snom Hotline

Do you have a snom phone that you want to automatically call a specific person when it’s taken off hook? Well, try this setting:

Name: snom_action_offhook_url

Value: https://127.0.0.1/command.htm?number=john.woods@mylynclab.com

Turn off keyboard lock

Keyboard lock can be a blessing and a curse. Security is good, but too much can be annoying. If there are some phones that you don’t want Lync settings to control the keyboard lock for, then switch them off with this setting:

Name: snom_server_enforced_kb_lock  

Value: off

Timezone

If you have your Snom phones deployed in different timezones you can push them the correct timezone for their location with this setting:

Name: snom_timezone

Value: AUS+10

These are just a handful of examples of settings that you can push to the phones. If you want know more, read the Wiki and try out the settings in the lab until you get your required blend of settings for your deployment.

Important Considerations for Policy Deployment

When you are deploying Client Policy settings for Snom phones you must ensure that any policy entry that you add also gets included in all other Client Policies in the system (I call this symmetrical policy deployment). The reason for this is that when a policy entry setting is pushed to a phone, the phone will retain the client policy settings in its memory even when it is moved to another policy, or has had another user sign into it!

Symmetrical Policy Deployment Example

To highlight the issue, this is an example of a non-symmetrical policy deployment. In this deployment there is an off hook action that has been in deployed in the “Snom Hot Line Policy” policy that has not been deployed in the “Snom Basic Policy” policy:

A Bad Policy Deployment:

Lync Policy: "Snom Hot Line Policy"

snom_action_offhook_url!: https://127.0.0.1/command.htm?number=john.woods@mylynclab.com

snom_admin_mode_password!: snommanager

snom_admin_mode_password_confirm!: snommanager

snom_http_pass!: snommanager

snom_http_user!: snommanager

Lync Policy: "Snom Basic Policy”

snom_admin_mode_password!: snommanager

snom_admin_mode_password_confirm!: snommanager

snom_http_pass!: snommanager

snom_http_user!: snommanager

If we have a user that starts off being deployed in the “Snom Hot Line Policy” policy that then gets moved to the "Snom Basic Policy”, the off hook action will be retained. This is not at all what you would want in a real world deployment, however, there are ways around this. One way is to reset the phone’s configuration before moving it to the new policy, which can be quite a bit of hassle. The other way is to ensure that all of your policies contain an off hook action setting that will return the setting back to its original state. Below is an example of this:

A Good Policy Deployment:

Policy: "Snom Hot Line Policy"

action_offhook_url!: https://127.0.0.1/command.htm?number=john.woods@mylynclab.com

admin_mode_password!: snommanager

admin_mode_password_confirm!: snommanager

http_pass!: snommanager

http_user!: snommanager

Policy: "Snom Basic Policy”

action_offhook_url!: <SPACE CHARACTER>   //Reset to default - Simulating a blank setting

admin_mode_password!: snommanager

admin_mode_password_confirm!: snommanager

http_pass!: snommanager

http_user!: snommanager

Note: For settings that have a String type you can use a <SPACE CHARACTER> to set the setting back to blank. This works because the phone appears to trim all white spaces from the setting before applying it to memory. This does not work for Boolean (True/False) type settings, as the phone will set anything that it not explicitly “yes” (including space characters) as being “no”. So be sure that for Boolean settings you explicitly either set “yes” or “no” for the setting (if you need to know the default value for a setting look it up on the Snom Wiki).

What about…?

Below are some Snom Client Policy Questions that I wanted to know the answers to, and as a result I tested. These might also be of use to you:

1. What are all of these configuration settings?

Snom has a wiki that contains a list of all the settings. Clicking on the "?" button will take you to the wiki page for the selected setting.

2. Are settings case sensitive?

No. For example, “Deutsch” or “deutsch” can be used.

3. Are settings special character sensitive?

Yes. For example Espanol  and Español are not the same, the phone will not parse an regular “n” to be a “ñ”.

4. Should I just export the whole config out of a Snom phone and import it into Lync?

No. Whilst the Lync Snom Configuration Manager tool will allow you to import a whole configuration file that you have exported from the phone, you should only import the settings that you specifically want to control. There are two main reasons for this: Snom config files are full of blank settings (which cannot be imported and will lead to non-symmetrical settings between policies), and you don't want to import settings that might be used for PIN login.

5. How do you make specific settings in the phone go back to default value?

Client Policy Entry settings within Lync can’t be blank (Lync will give you an error if you try to use an empty value for Client Policy Entries). This poses an issue, because Snom phones use blank config settings to indicate that a setting should set to the default value.

Settings for values that are strings, like a URL for example, can be removed by replacing them with a <SPACE Character>. When you set a space character in Client Policy, the phone will trim the leading and trailing blank space characters and apply it to the configuration. This will result in a space character being turned into a blank setting.  However, if the setting is a Boolean (ie. yes/no) value and you set it to a <SPACE Character>, it will not set the setting to the default value. It instead interprets anything that is not the word “on” as being “not on” (ie. off).

Example: If you set snom_show_clock which has a default value of ON to <space character> it will make the setting OFF and the clock will not be displayed.

The result of this is that you need to be explicit when making settings using Lync Client Policy Entry settings. If you want a setting to be the default setting, you will need to look at the snom web site, determine what the default setting is, and then explicitly set that in Lync (ie. don’t try and enter blank settings).

Note: I have raised this with Snom and they are working on a solution for blank settings, hopefully we’ll see it soon.

6. What happens if you move a user from one policy to another?

The expectation here might be that the phone would default all of its values and apply the new policy to a fresh configuration. However, this is not reality… What actually happens is that the phone will retain all of its settings from the previous policy and then apply the new policy settings over the top of the old ones.

Example: If you had a phone in a Policy that had a hotline configured in it, and then moved it to a policy that had nothing set for the hotline setting, the phone would continue to function like a hotline phone.

Where this might also catch you out is when you have users with different Client Policies hot desking on the same phone hardware. When the settings get written to the phone they will be retained for the next user that logs into the phone as well!! So look out for this…

In practice this means that all of your policies need to contain settings for every other setting that you have in another policy. So if you have a hotline configured in one policy, you need to have the hotline setting configured to “nothing” (<SPACE Character>) in all other policies. This is kind of annoying… however, something you need to be prepared for!

The only other option here is to reset the configuration in the phone before moving it to the new policy. This can be done using the Lync Snom Phone Manager tool (coming soon!) and pressing the “Reset” button. This option is very open to human error though, because you may move a user to a new policy and forget to reset their configuration. I don’t recommend this as a practical deployment option though.

7. How long does it take for a setting to push to the phone?

The answer to this is that it’s variable. It appears to depend on where the phone is in its registration cycle. A registration period can be quite long, so it can take many hours for the settings to be pushed to the phone. It is recommended to reboot the phone to know that the settings have applied.

8. Will settings be applied without rebooting the phone?

The answer to this seems to be that it depends on what the setting is. For example if you move a user from a policy set for English to one set for Spanish, the setting does not take effect on the phone interface until you reboot. However, if the policy you are moving to has an offhook policy (for example) this does get implemented by the phone. So to guarantee that the settings have taken effect it is best to reboot the phone. (You can also get the phone to re-register by pressing  Menu key, 3, 2, 1. Or use my Lync Phone Manager Tool to remotely reboot phones)

The Wrap Up

Now, kick back, relax, and feel your blood pressure lowering whilst you manage your Snom configuration in style from the comfort of your slightly smelly office cubicle. If you have any issues with the tool, let me know.  Next post will be another tool for remotely managing Snom phones… J

Read more →