{"id":32,"date":"2007-12-07T10:40:39","date_gmt":"2007-12-07T09:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/12\/07\/automatic-auditing-of-pabx-equipment\/"},"modified":"2007-12-07T10:40:39","modified_gmt":"2007-12-07T09:40:39","slug":"automatic-auditing-of-pabx-equipment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/12\/07\/automatic-auditing-of-pabx-equipment\/","title":{"rendered":"Automatic Auditing of PABX Equipment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As part of my &#8216;real-world&#8217; job, I write decoders and web interfaces for PABX auditing tools. This is a job that I have done now for nearly 18 years!<\/p>\n<p>I decided therefore avid reader, that you should have a little look at what I do!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Imagine that you have 50 telephone systems in your network, and 10,000 extensions hanging off those PABX&#8217;s. How on earth do you audit them?Lets look at the options;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Man in a van&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Remote Audit via proprietary software<\/li>\n<li>Rely on your maintainer&#8217;s site records<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><u>Man in a Van<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whilst this can be effective, it is has huge cost and environmental disadvantages. In addition, it is hugely time-consuming and can be inaccurate (imagine 10 different engineers all documenting the information in a different manner)<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Remote Audit via Vendor Software<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ok &#8211; this is quite useful, but generally not particularly effective when you have multiple PABX&#8217;s. The reasons are;\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You cannot automate the process<\/li>\n<li>You cannot compile the\u00a0data to give a\u00a0enterprise view of your estate<\/li>\n<li>The information is proprietary to each\u00a0vendor<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong><u>Rely on Maintainers Site Records<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Really?\u00a0 :o)<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>So&#8230; a solution was required&#8230;We needed basically achieve the following tasks;<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Capture the configuration of a PABX regardless of the Vendor<\/li>\n<li>Store that information centrally<\/li>\n<li>Allow reporting of the configuration in a common manner (that didn&#8217;t require PABX training)<\/li>\n<li>Provide &#8220;enterprise&#8221; reports<\/li>\n<li>Allow these reports to be run from ANY machine without installing any software (basically, &#8220;Web-based&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li>Allow non-trained users to &#8216;explore&#8217; the PABX in a tree-like manner<\/li>\n<li>Automatically show any changes between two scans (e.g. &#8220;Swaps&#8221; or &#8220;Moves and Changes&#8221;)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The solution was &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mit-comms.co.uk\/asset_manager.asp\" title=\"Asset Manager\">Asset Manager<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; This application, borne from the company I work for, meets all of the about and more.<\/p>\n<p>At present we support Mitel, Nortel, Siemens, Avaya, Ericsson and\u00a03Com PABX&#8217;s, with more being added all the time. There is a live online demonstration at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mit-comms.co.uk\/asset_manager.asp\">www.mit-comms.co.uk\/asset_manager.asp<\/a>\u00a0which lets you explore the &#8216;tree&#8217; and other reports.<\/p>\n<p>The report engine is written to work with IE5.5+, Opera and FireFox without any plugins or applets.<\/p>\n<p>Here are some\u00a0examples of the reports it generates:-\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/treeview.jpg\" alt=\"Asset Manager Tree View\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/cardmap.jpg\" alt=\"PABX Card Map Report\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/swaps.jpg\" alt=\"Asset Manager Swaps Report\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/12\/handsets.jpg\" alt=\"Asset Manager Handsets Report\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As part of my &#8216;real-world&#8217; job, I write decoders and web interfaces for PABX auditing tools. This is a job that I have done now for nearly 18 years! I decided therefore avid reader, that you should have a little look at what I do! Imagine that you have 50 telephone systems in your network, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-applications","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.internet-tools.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}