Avaya Equinox App
IP Office

Equinox on IPO R11 with Self Signed Certificate

Setting up Equinox on IP Office R11 Server Edition/hosted with Self Signed Certificate

In order to get Equinox client to securely connect to Server Edition or Hosted IP Office, we need to have a certificate.  In a previous document, we showed how to create a 3rd party certificate, but maybe you don’t want to use 3rd party, maybe you want to leverage IP Office’s ability to create a self-signed certificate.

1 million foot view of the differences.Certificates that have been signed by a Certificate Authority go through some level of validation and there are only a finite number of Certificate Authorities worldwide. Most devices / browsers already have the Certificate Authorities Intermediate Certificate installed and can therefore easily validate the authorities certificate chain. Depending on the purpose / usage of a certificate would define the level of validation (and cost) associated with those certificates. The plus side to Signed Certificates is that there is no need to load self signed certificates onto most browsers or devices as they are already trusted. The Downside however is that signed certificates have to be maintained on an annual basis and updated before they expire.

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IP Office

Automate Spaces Install on Avaya R11 Equinox

With IP Office Release 11, Avaya Introduced Equinox as the UC/Soft-phone App.  differing from other UC clients for IPO office, Equinox gets its IM/Presence components from the cloud.  More specifically, the Zang Cloud, or Zang Spaces (http://zang.io/products/spaces).  With Spaces you can sign up for a free account, and have some feature rich collaboration similar to the likes of Slack or Microsoft Teams.

If you like a video rather than reading….

As you can see in the diagram below, the Equinox client connects to the Cloud for IM/Presence needs, while connecting to the local IP Office (premise or hosted) for its telephony features.

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Equinox client for Avaya IP Office - now known as Avaya Workplace
IP Office

Equinox on IP Office R11 Essential Edition

Equinox on IP Office R11, seems to be giving everyone some fits.  For this example, I defaulted an IP500 licensed for Essential Edition.

The installation will be part of the SIP Extensions guide.  (https://downloads.avaya.com/css/P8/documents/101048082)

First, we will work on Essential Edition, so, see below for what licenses we need.

So, we obviously need the Essential Edition License.  For the user, we need a “SoftPhone License” (Avaya Part number 383113, IPO R10+ SFTPHN 1 LIC)

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IP Office

IP Office Release 12.1

IP Office Release 12.1 went GA on December 5, 2024 and here’s what to expect with the update.

R12.0 License is Valid for R12.1

There is no specific 12.1 license – the R12.0 license is valid for both 12.0 & 12.1. Version 12.2 may be released sometime in 2025 but we don’t know if it will require unique licenses or not.

Linux Versions contain IPv6 Support

The Linux versions of IP Office (Server Edition, Virtualized, etc.) now contain IPv6 support. It appears this support only extends to communications between SIP phones and/or a session border controller. There is an implication in the release notes indicating external SIP trunk IPv6 support does not exist at this time. The 500v2 chassis does not support IPv6.

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IP Office

IPO R12 Now Available

Avaya IP Office release 12 is now available on PLDS.

One of the things we noticed right away was that our Demo IPO 500v2 with an R11 license seemed to run without errors or warnings on R12. We’re not sure if this is intentional or whether the system will go into grace mode eventually because it’s only been a few hours so far.

The GA bulletin regarding R12 has been published as GlobalIPOfficeTechnicalBulletinR12.0GA and of particular note in the document is the statement “There are no additional Service Packs planned for R11.1 after 11.1.3. Service Pack 2 June 2024 all future fixes will be delivered in R12 Service Packs.”

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IP 500v2 Release 12
IP Office

IP Office Release 12

IP Office Release 12 is planned for general availability by April 30, 2024 and here’s what to expect with the update.

OS Change to Rocky Linux

The backend OS for Server Edition and Application Servers is changing from CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 9. This is coming just in time since CentOS 7 is slated to be end-of-life as of June 30, 2024. It also means that the upgrade is more complex than some previous major releases. It is, however, expected to be much the same as the process was for going from R11.0 to R11.1. Fortunately, Rocky Linux should be much easier to upgrade than the process was for CentOS 6 > CentOS 7 > Rocky Linux 9.

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IP Office

Set time on IP Office

VM Pro/Manager:

The time is normally obtained using Time protocol (RFC868) requests. Note this is different from Network Time Protocol (NTP). The Voicemail Pro server and the Manager program can both act as Time servers, other RFC868 server sources are not supported.

If the IP Office system time is wrong, open Manager, and check:

System ➤ System tab ➤ Time Setting Config Source = VoiceMail Pro/Managermantad1.png

Note that if you are running Manager when the Voicemail Server starts, Voicemail does not start it’s time server daemon. Therefore, always close Manager before you start or restart Voicemail Pro.

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IP 500v2 Release 12
IP Office

Re-config IP500 w/DTE

The DTE port on the back of an IP Office Control Unit is not normally used when configuring an IP Office system. However the DTE port can be used to erase the system’s operational software and/or configuration if necessary.

Due to the drastic nature of these actions they should only be performed if absolutely necessary to return a system back to working order. In either case you must ensure that you have a backup copy of the system configuration.

Access to the DTE port requires a serial cable between your PC/Laptop and the IP Office (such as a standard modem cable).

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IP Office

Editing an IP Office configuration in Excel

Back to IPOfficeHelp.com

HOWTO: Editing an IP Office configuration in Excel
Kyle L Holladay, Sr

Many items in your IP Office configuration can be edited directly in the configuration.csv file outside of the Manager application saving a large amount of time. This guide will provide basic information on how to export your configuraiton.csv and edit select User information. Until you are comfortable with this method I would suggest that you limit its use to a lab environment

Note: You MUST NOT add nor delete any records when using this method. (i.e. you cannot add/delete an extension, user, incoming call route). You must create all records in Manager before doing your Export. You can then modify the information associated with that record using the method below.

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Avaya IP Office voicemail pro module
IP Office

Use hunt group status in Voicemail Pro call flows

This post describes you how to use the different status of a hunt group (in service, night service, out of service) as a switch within Voicemail Pro call flows.  Posted from Florian Wilke’s site: (https://blog.fwilke.com/use-hunt-group-status-in-voicemail-pro-call-flows/#more-865)

The challenge

Didn’t you have the challenge that the local users should be able to switch between different ways a call should flow through Voicemail Pro? And wouldn’t it be nice if it were possible to do this through a phone button? And furthermore… shouldn’t it be possible to light the button if a chosen condition is set? And all that from different users and phones?

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Avaya CPaaS connected to IP Office
IP Office

Configure Avaya CPaaS SIP Trunks with IPO

There is a commercial offering for Avaya SIP trunks, See this doc.

In a pinch if we needed some trunks for a customer, we have used Avaya CPaaS for SIP trunks.  This is (so I have heard) the equivalent of a Twilio SIP trunk.

You can claim a number in less than 10 minutes, and provision the IPO in as much.

First, let’s set up the SIP trunk and grab a new number.  Go to cloud.zang.io.

CREATE A DOMAIN

From the dashboard, go to SIP>DOMAINS.

Click on Create SIP Domain

Assign the domain name.  The Domain name you enter will prepend the “sip.zang.io”.  Give the Domain a friendly name.

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