telisca ClickNDial

ClickNDial overview

With ClickNDial, Cisco IP Phone user can easily select a phone number in an application or search for it, in personal contact list or corporate directory, and dial from his PC.

ClickNDial avoid the user to retype phone numbers already available on his PC. ClickNDial increases user’s efficiency and comfort.

With ClickNDial Cisco IP Phone user can:

- Select a phone number in any Windows application (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Outlook, Notes, Excel, Word, business application…) and dial by pressing a short key.

- Dial from his personal contact list, which may have been imported from an Excel file or text file.

- Dial directly from Outlook contact form,

- Dial from recent calls list,

- Search in Corporate Directory (Active Directory, Lotus Notes, LDAP, …) and dial,

ClickNDial is easily deployed on Windows XP SP2 PCs.

ClickNDial is based on Cisco Web Dialer SOAP programming interface which use few CallManager resources and do not require any external (CTI) server.

ClickNDial is supported on Cisco Unified CallManager 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0

ClickNDial user interface

User authentication

During the first use of ClickNDial, the user must authenticate himself, in order to define his IP Phone or telephone profile (in extended mobility mode). ClickNDial supports fixed mode IP Phone or Extended Mobility mode.

According to the parameter setting of the administrator, the user will also be able to change some parameters of ClickNDial (phone number capture hotkey, user interface settings …).

Select from a Windows application and dial

ClickNDial user selects a phone number in a Windows application and press a specific hot key or combination of hot key. The phone number can be selected in an email body, a Web page, a text document, an Excel list, or any field in a business application.

Phone number is filtered according to dialling rules defined by administrator. A small window appears showing dial progress while phone is dialling. The user may then decide to hang-up by pressing the hang-up button.

Dialling from personal contacts list

ClickNDial is started at the beginning of Windows session and minimized in Windows taskbar. It can be opened from Windows taskbar.

User may build his personal contact list or speed dials list by entered them in a grid or importing them from an external Excel or text file.

User car filter contact by pressing the first letter of the contact label.

It can also define favourite numbers that can be selected directly.

Search in Corporate directory and dial

ClickNDial can be configured to enable searching in Corporate directory (Active Directory, Exchange, Lotus Notes, Open LDAP, …) .

User can search in Corporate Directory by pressing the first characters of contact last name or first name. Contact results will display, administrator defined, fields like last name, first name and department.

User may then select from several phone numbers assigned to contact or eventually display a more detailed contact form.

Dial from Outlook contact form

ClickNDial includes an Outlook 2003 add-in which adds a button in Outlook contact form taskbar. From this taskbar, the Outlook user can select a phone number defined in contact form and dial directly. Phone numbers are formatted according to dialling rules defined by administrator.

ClickNDial administration

ClickNDial administrator is a separate application installed only on administrator PC. It enables administrator to define and update ClickNDial configuration file that is deployed with ClickNDial and may be updated automatically.

Telephony configuration

ClickNDial administrator defines Cisco Web Dialer parameters including the use of secured https protocol. It choose default authentication mode depending with the opportunity when Extension mobility is used to define a proxy user that avoid the user to enter his CallManager password.

It is also possible to define a specific mode requiring the user to authenticate with his password for the first configuration but using proxy user when dialing. This is useful when security policy requires user to change their password periodically. This avoids the user to enter his password again in ClickNDial.

Corporate directory configuration

The administrator defines the parameters of connection and authentication to Corporate Directory using Active Directory or LDAP client.

It also defines the attribute that will be displayed in contact result list as well as optional contact form.

Dialing rules configuration

ClickNDial format the numbers to be called according to dialling rules defined by administrator. These rules make it possible for example to remove the local country code, add the international prefix, add external number, remove prefix between parenthesis, remove all non numerical characters, …

Requirements

ClickNDial is a client application running on Microsoft .Net 1.0, .Net 1.1, .Net 2.0. It can be deployed easily on Windows XP SP2.

The solution is based on Web Dialer interface which is freely available on Cisco Unified CallManager from version 4.0 to 6.0x. It does not require a specific server. Https connection to Web Dialer is supported.

ClickNDial works with Active Directory or LDAP compatible corporate directories using windows authentication (Active Directory) or proxy user authentication. Secured and Secure/Kerberos authentication is supported.

Configuration defined by ClickNDial Administrator may be deployed with ClickNDial installed package. It then may be updated automatically from a defined intranet web address (URL).

User configuration may be stored on local drive with eventually a network backup or directly on network personal directory. Then personal configuration and contact list are saved in case of machine failure or change.