Marco Rullo - 7 November, 2019 - 6 ’ read

Let’s face it! Picture Repository for Attendant Console and Cisco Jabber.

Agile Software Development, Attendant Console, Cisco Jabber, Picture Repository

2019 was a year of great changes for Imagicle, especially for the R&D department. Through the blog, we have told you about our Agile evolution journey and the introduction of the LeSS framework. Now it's finally time to harvest. In this post, I will tell you about the new feature that allows you to view photos of your colleagues both on your Attendant Console and within Cisco Jabber (and - literally - save face!).

Winter is coming… in advance!

There are a lot of new features we’ve developed over the summer, and we couldn’t wait to share them with you – so we asked ourselves: why wait? Even if the cold is not so biting yet, we are ready with the Winter Release 15 days in advance!

Et voilà: Winter 2020 will be made available to everyone on the second week of November 2019.

And since there is still a bit of waiting, here’s some anticipation.

As you know by now, one of the products we are most fond of is the Attendant Console. A year has passed since the radical renewal it has undergone, to give it a captivating and modern look and feel in true Imagicle style! And I must say there was no lack of appreciation on your part, in particular for the possibility of customizing it and choose among several skins the one most suited to the person and the mood. After all, for the operator, the Attendant Console is a key tool for daily work, and we believe that a more pleasant and personal design can contribute concretely to improving the workday.

Your communications. Closer.

So we started wondering: what can we do to make it a less cold and detached software? How can we make it even more personal?

If you think about it for a moment, a good part of the operator’s job is to receive phone calls, look for a colleague in the phone book, contact him and eventually forward the call.

Bingo! The idea was born from the desire to ensure that colleagues are not a mere sequence of characters, but a more living and human entity: we needed to give them a face!

Therefore, we decided to liven up the representation of our colleagues, showing the picture both in the colleagues‘ column and in the favorites.

Let’s face it! Picture Repository for Attendant Console and Cisco Jabber.

And, above all, when a call comes in from a colleague, the notification popup will immediately show its face.

which will remain visible even during the conversation in the Main Display, together with the call information.

And if, like me, you’re much more likely to remember faces than names (which just don’t get into my head and – believe me – when three new colleagues join your company every month it can become a real problem

), well, then you will find this feature…salvific, to say the least!

And now you may wonder: once I update the AC, what do I have to do to see the photos of my colleagues?

Well, nothing at all! The AppSuite will take care of everything automatically!

Starting from Winter 20, the photos of your colleagues (stored in one of the standard jpegPhoto or thumbnailPhoto attributes) only have to be present in the AD domain or in the LDAP server that serves the users of the Suite and, automatically, the AC users can give a face even to the most remote colleagues!

Try it and let us know what you think: your feedback is the most valuable input for us!

Photos of your colleagues within Cisco Jabber?
Yes, sir! It’s Imagicle!

I hope you can find it as natural as using everyday communication tools, like Cisco WebEx Teams and Cisco Jabber.

…By the way! It’s easy to say Jabber, but it’s not that easy to see your colleagues pics inside it!

Why do I say this?

I have to ask you to have a little patience and follow me in the depths of the Jabber directory, but I assure you that it will be worth it!

In order to search for colleagues, Cisco Jabber must be able to query a Directory and, to do so, it can use two different technologies:

LDAP, where the Jabber client directly queries a corporate AD / LDAP server to retrieve colleagues‘ metadata.
UDS, where the Jabber client queries the CUCM user registries, through a proprietary REST API called User Data Service.

Now, Jabber can automatically retrieve photos of colleagues from the corporate AD server, but only if you choose LDAP technology and use Jabber within the company intranet, i.e., in non-MRA scenarios.

So, to be clear, if you have Jabber users in mobility, it’s not enough to have the photos of colleagues stored on an AD server.

Without further precautions, this will be the mobile user experience:

In the MRA scenarios (or if the UDS technology is in use) to be able to show photos of colleagues Jabber needs an additional architectural component, called Picture Repository – a web server hosted somewhere in the company, where the colleagues‘ photos have been previously stored.

Simple? Apparently, yes.

But, in practice, things are a bit different: neither the AD nor the CUCM can work as a Picture Repository.
So, you need to set up a web server in the company and upload the photos of your colleagues, and then you have to keep it regularly updated.

Now, here is the catch: who does it? Who, for example, will remember to add the photo of a new colleague to the Picture Repository?

But the Imagicle UCX Suite, of course!

The automatic process that simplifies your life.

With Christmas approaching, we decided to give you a small gift that will simplify your life!

Yes, that’s right: once you have synchronized the UCX Suite user database with an AD domain or an LDAP server containing photos of colleagues, you can use the Suite as a Picture Repository for your Jabber clients. It will show pictures of your colleagues no matter how they are configured, both for users of the company intranet and for users in mobility! And you don’t even have to worry about making changes to photos from the AD to the Picture Repository: the AppSuite will take care of it for you!

Once again, the UCX Suite simplifies your life, helping you to implement and guarantee a feature that is apparently simple and expected by users, as well as surprisingly structured to put into practice.

In conclusion, with just one configuration – synchronize the ApplicationSuite’s user registry to an AD or LDAP server where the photos of the colleagues are uploaded- you’ll be able to have your colleagues‘ photos both in the Attendant Console and in Cisco Jabber.

I find this to be a perfect and concrete example of the philosophy we conceive and implement UC with: smarter, faster, easier!

…Wait! Are you not an Imagicle customer yet? No problem!

Download the trial and you will have your photos immediately synchronized.

Of course, then you will discover that you can no longer do without all the other Imagicle apps, but in the meantime… enjoy them!

Stay tuned: other exciting news included in Winter 2020 are coming on Imagicle Beat!

In the meantime, have a look at the Roadmap!

#stayimagicle