CollabCert's CCIE Collaboration Bootcamp

Around a year ago I completed a 9 month journey to attain the CCIE Voice. There were a lot of ingredients that contributed to achieving this goal. One of the most valuable ingredients was the CCIE bootcamp program I attended. I am of the opinion that incorporating a bootcamp program into your IE training plan goes a long way to ensuring success. Moreover, my belief is that the effectiveness of an IE bootcamp program is primarily rooted in the abilities and effectiveness of the instructor not the company selling the program.

The instructor of my IE Voice bootcamp was Vik Malhi. Vik recently launched his new venture, CollabCert, which is a training company specializing in the Cisco CCIE Collaboration track. I was invited to participate in the inaugural bootcamp of this IE training program. The following provides my thoughts on the bootcamp experience.

Using SQL to Reconfigure a Dial Plan - Updating Directory Numbers

I have had this blog entry in the draft folder for quite some time. I decided to dust it off and bring it to the front of the queue after receiving the following query on Twitter:

@ucguerrilla got one for you.  Trying to update 1xxxx and 3xxxx in pt-Internal to 401xxxxx and 403xxxxx... any idea of sql query? :)

Can you accomplish this via SQL? Why, yes you can. About a year ago I completely rebuilt a customer's dial plan using 100% SQL. While I won't be discussing the ins and outs of all of that in this entry. I do plan on getting into the mechanics of doing broad changes to digit patterns using SQL.

Cisco Live 2014 Experience

I can't tell if time moves faster before, during, or after Cisco Live. It has been two weeks since Cisco Live 2014 in San Francisco, yet it feels like I was at Lefty O'Doul's just yesterday. 

Before it got too far away from me, I wanted to recap my experience. For no reason other than I feel "wrong" if I don't. This year, I think the best way to sum up my Cisco Live 2014 experience is to focus on how, over time, my connection with the Live! event has evolved from being a member of the audience to becoming part of the event.

My Latest Project - Guerrilla Tools Sneak Peak

I came into 2014 with a goal to blog more frequently than I did in 2013. While I didn't have as lofty a goal as Tom over at networkingnerd.net, I was, shall we say, inspired. I planned on trolling through my "blog ideas" list to churn out some content.  Well, clearly the universe (or fate or whatever) had different plans and I had to adjust priorities. Free time was at a premium and I opted to work on a side project more often than adding content to the blog. Both would have been nice but coding has a calming affect. 

Yeah, I am that breed of nerd that finds solace tinkering with things like coding to center myself. We all need hobbies. Anyway, the side project I have been working on is starting to evolve into the real boy I hope it to be some day. I think it is far enough along to share with readers.

Right now, I am just calling the project "Guerrilla Tools". I'll probably rename it but that is a decision for later. The initial version is focused on functionality that complements one of the prominent series in this blog: the SQL Query Series.

Cisco Live 2014, Is That Really You?

 I am amazed at how fast May has arrived. I am definitely not what I would consider prepared for the annual pilgrimage to the convention that is Live! May is a tough month to be doing the convention thing. Graduations, kids in school, etc. etc..

Fortunately, I don't need to waste energy thinking about it. This thing is going off whether I am ready or not, and I am looking forward to the ride. I think this will be my 6th or 7th Cisco Live event (formerly Networkers). I guess I could pull out hats and do an official count but I am sure no one cares. 

This year will be my 2nd Live! event in San Francisco. I am sure this time will be far more rewarding than the first go around. I am really looking forward to seeing some of my colleagues that I haven't seen since Orlando 2013. I am also going to get to spend time with some NetCraft folks that I don't get to see often. We work together but, well, we work and that falls under the category " 'Nuff said".

The absolute best thing about Live is the first day. The nerd herd, in all of its triumphant glory descending upon the Moscone Center like we own the place. That is what I am looking forward to because it is the sign that Live! has started. A signal that sets the train in motion, gets the gears going -- mind alignment complete. A trumpet sounding an off-key tune that blasts a warning: "THIS house is OUR house.... for about a week, and then we'll leave you be. We promise...."

Before I get back to the grind I'd like to send a special thanks to Dan Bruhn and the team that runs the Cisco Support Community and the Cisco Designated VIP program. I appreciate the invite to participate in the program and the support in getting to Live! this year. You are all tops in my book.

If anyone wants to hookup at Live! send me a tweet (@ucguerrilla). I will be there starting Saturday.

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Thanks for reading. If you have time, post a comment!

Using the Cisco UCM Route Next Hop functionality for Inter-Office Site Code Dialing

Most administrators of the Cisco Unified Communications Manager are probably familiar with the Hotline Feature that was introduced with CUCM 8.0. At least, that is my assumption. I also think that a fair number of people "discovered" the Hotline Feature on their quest for a solution to "black list" callers based on calling party number. Until recently, that was the #1 use case in my designs. 

A month or so ago, I was working on a design for a customer where the phones were deployed with an E.164 dial plan solution but dialing between office locations required a 3-digit site code prefix. The customer wanted to preserve the 3-digit site codes for calling and called party information elements. There are somewhere around 50 sites. So, we needed a way to gracefully handle any-to-any calling with a requirement to transform called and calling party information based on call origination and call destination. The following gives a summary of the technique applied to this problem.

Using SQL To Query Translation Patterns

For this installment of the SQL Query Series I am going to address a question posed in one of the comments I received from a reader. The reader asked: "how can I run a numplan query that shows all translation patterns with called party transformations".  Excellent question and it touches on one of the queries I use on a fairly regular basis.