Phone Onboarding with Cisco Activation Codes¶
VOSS Automate supports the Cisco Unified CM capability for device onboarding using Activation Codes. This provides a simplified method to register a new phone in the system. This is supported from UCM version 12.5 and later.
This feature allows administrators to create phones without MAC addresses and then share automatically generated activation codes with end users via Self Service or email. The end user can then enter the activation code into the physical device to initiate auto registration.
Once the phone has been activated and registered, the correct phone association takes place in VOSS Automate.
For more information on the detailed functionality of the Cisco Activation Code Device Onboarding capability, including supported devices, refer to the Cisco documentation.
The setup of the feature has been incorporated into our various Subscriber/Phone Management capabilities:
Phones
Subscribers
Quick Add Subscriber
Smart Add Phone
Note
The selected phone type must also be included in the Subscriber’s entitlement profile.
Typical Workflow¶
At a high level in VOSS Automate, there are the following setup steps for this feature:
Initial Setup - enabling Phone types for activation code.
Per Subscriber/Device - setup of the phone details and generation of the activation code.
Provide the activation code to the user for use to onboard the device.
To complete the initial setup and enable the phone type(s) for activation code use:
Login as customer administrator or higher.
It can simplify things to navigate to the hierarchy level of the cluster(s) you want to enable
Enable activation code based registration for a target phone type:
Browse to Apps Management > CUCM > Device Defaults.
Click the Model, e.g. Cisco 7821 on which you want to enable the phone registration activation code feature. Note the device column in the list view to ensure it is the device type on the right UCM cluster.
Select the Prefer Act Code Over Auto Reg check box.
Click Save.
To complete the per Subscriber/Device setup to prepare the phone for onboarding:
Once enabled, you can add the phone, using any of the prescribed Subscriber Management methods (see above), making sure to select the Use Activation Code Onboarding check box. This will remove the device name as a BATXXXXXXXXXXXX device name will be generated when adding the phone.
Once the phone has been successfully added, an activation code is generated, and displayed along with the code expiry time on the relevant Phones form (Subscriber Management > Phones).
Note
The phone activation code must be used to register the phone before the specified expiry date.
The activation code is available in the end user’s self service if the device was associated to a user. Alternatively email the activation code to the end user.
The end user registers the phone by entering the activation code into the physical device.
To see the list of phones that have been setup for activation codes but not yet activated, you can filter the phones list view for device names starting with, BAT, as once they register they have the appopriate device name prefix (e.g. SEP).