[FAQ] RPRM Polycom phone Provisioning guide

[SteffenBaierUK]

Hello all,

The objective of this short overview is to explain briefly how to setup a Polycom RealPresence ResourceManager 10.1 or later to support Polycom Phone provisioning.

A great video detailing this can be found => here <=

Or from a Polycom Employee Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

NOTE: Please contact your Polycom reseller or Polycom Sales Engineer for a proof of concept and access to any ISO’s or OVA files or licenses required to set this up!

The Polycom RPRM supports Hyper-V or VMware or a physical Dell server.

1. Install the ISO or OVA on your virtual Environment. Once installed access the console to setup the RPRM Network Credentials
   
   The Username is: polycom
   The Password is: polycom
   
   
2. Enter the network Credentials to match you environment and after this the RPRM will re-start
   
   
3. Wait about 10 Minutes and then browse to the IP or FQDN of the RPRM
   
   
   The standard initial username is: admin
   The standard initial password is: Polycom12#$
   
   You will get prompted to change this to something more secure
   
   
4. Initially the admin user does not have the right to audit Polycom phones so you either need to create a new user or add this to the admin user.
   
   Browse to User > Users and either select the admin user or create a new user.
   
   
   Now assign the Role of a Device Administrator to the user.
   
   
   
   You can also integrate RPRM into Active Directory but this is outside the scope of this FAQ.
   
   
   
5. Any license would need to be added here:
   
   
   
   
6. The next step would be to assign a site(s) in order to create separate sites to match the environment.
   
   
   
   The above expects a Site Name, a Description and a Location.
   
   In addition define the Subnet
   
   
   
   If this would not be defined the RPRM adds everything into the Internet / VPN
   
   
   
7. The RPRM uses PlcmSpIp as the standard User Name and Password. This can be changed here:
   
   
   
   
8. Usually after this initial setup you can either import new endpoints via Endpoint > Monitor View > More Import/Export Audio Phones and/or automatically add the phones whilst using a DHCP scope as shown => here <= in detail.
   
   The DHCP Option 66/160/161 FQDN or IP for the RPRM is 
   
   http://FQDN or IP Address/phoneservice/configfiles/

If the password was changed from the above standard PlcmSpIp the DHCP option can also include the new password.

http://domain\username:password@IP_Address_or_URLphoneservice/configfiles/

NOTE: If the password as an example contains an @ please replace this with %40 instead.

Example:

http://Username:%40123$@IP_Address or URL/phoneservice/configfiles/

The above would use @123$ as the password or the phone would interpret the @Symbol as the separator between the password and the IP Address or URL.

Note: In order to use HTTPS please add a certificate to the RPRM or disable Common Name Validation on the Phone end. Polycom Phones out of the box automatically trust the Certificates listed in the Certificate Updates documents posted regularly => here <=. The phone could initially be provisioned via HTTP and then once it loads its configuration via the RPRM a certificate for HTTPS could be provisioned.

Option 1:

• Importing all phones via a CSV File:
  
  
  
  The format of the CVS file is defined in the instructions which you can see above. You can in addition simply export a file and use this as a template.
  
  
  
  

  Devices can be imported and re-imported to change associated groups in bulk without changing other configurations.

  
  The advantage of this is all phones would already be setup with their registration details and utilize the DHCP Option.
  
  
  

Option 2:

• Manually providing the RPRM details via the Phones Web Interface
  

Once the phone is connected to the RPRM provisioning Server the Web Interface or Admin Password for the Phone changes to 789.

This can be changed by browsing to Endpoint > Phone Management > Configuration Profile and copying the AdminPassword-ProvisioningDefault.

This would then be required to be assigned to a Global Configuration within Endpoint > Phone Management > Profiles Deployment. 

Added phone(s) can now be found via Endpoint > Monitor View

Selecting an individual phone:

Will provide access and details to configuration used or log files:

• The actual configuration for the phone(s) is split into Global, Endoint Groups, Endpoint Models, Sites or Endpoints
  
  
  
  
  
• Usually the Global section would only be used for a general common configuration like a password (as explained above) or a background Image.
  
  
• Using the Endpoint Groups as an example we can add and Group certain Endpoints together. In the below example we used a VVX500
  
  
  
  We call this new group VVX500 Endpoint Group
  
  
  
  And we associate this:
  
  
  
  This results in a new group
  
  
  
  
• Browsing to Endpoint > Phone Management > Configuration Profiles you can either create a new profile/configuration (blue) or modify an existing one (red) once it is selected
  
  
  
  Either create and define what this profile does or change the name provided if cloned
  
  
  
  The options for editing or changing this vary
  
  
  
  You can simply start typing/searching for a parameter(s)
  
  
  
  or paste from a previous XML file
  
  
  
  

Get or Set Configuration Parameters

Via Endpoint > Monitor View > More > Get/Set Parameters a device can be checked to what value a parameter has been set:

Using the above will store the value within the phones <PHONE_LOCAL section. This will appear as made locally on the phone as explained => here <=

Software Updates via RPRM

Via Endpoint > Phone Management > Upload Software Updates Software can be added.

Usually you would select the Polycom hosted Server and create a new configuration profile based on the software version as this allows you to assign this to a existing or new configuration profile via Endpoint > Phone Management > Configuration Profiles

Apply versus OK

Throughout the application you will see Apply and OK appear in regards to Configuration Profiles and Group Memberships.

 Will save the changes and devices that are impacted of the changes will be notified at the next polling period for the affected devices.

Will Save the changes and immediately notify all devices that are reachable that there are changes that need to be applied immediately.A Pop-up notification is provided to confirm this action as it will generally always reboot the phone(s). Always be aware of your context when applying changes

Automatic Updates

As a factory default when provisioning a Polycom phone from RPRM the Phone will check daily between 03:00 and 05:00 for any configuration changes.

In order to change this you would copy Provisioning-Polling-Daily-SpecificWindow within Endpoint > Phone Management > Configuration Profiles and change the time to suit your setup and then assign to a profile.

Endpoint Monitor – Device Status

Troubleshooting Tools

Via Admin > Maintenance > Troubleshooting Utilities several Troubleshooting Options are available

• Restart > Restart the RPRM
  
  
• Shutdown > Shut down the RPRM
  
  
• Traces > This enable the user to start a Trace and store this in the System Log File. Please be aware that this is a Network capture as shown => here <=
  
  
  
  
• Resource Manager System Logs > Get the full set of Resource Manager logs and any traces
  
  
• Resource Manager System Report > Generate and download Resource Manager System Report.
  
  
• Test Network Connection > Troubleshoot network issues using the traceroute and ping programs. This includes a PING or Traceroute
  
  
  
  
• View UC Management Log > View UC Management Log
  
  

Advanced Functions – Global/Model/Site

Reboot Phones – All phones within the selected scope will be rebooted as long as they are not isolated behind a NAT’d device.

[SteffenBaierUK]

Gathering Logs in order to supply Poly Support:

Navigate to Endpoint > Monitor View and select an Endpoint and click on "View Details" 

As a result on the left side an overview of all the Device Details are listed and all files can be downloaded:

Or simply individual Log Files:

In addition the amount of log files and the individual size can be modified to cover a longer time period.

Endpoint > UC Management > UC Management Settings

• Log File Rotation Size 512KB to 10240KB
• Number of Retaining Files (per name): 0 - 10
• Days to Retain Phone Files: 0 - 30

[SteffenBaierUK]

Endpoint Monitoring and Alerts

Start out with setting the Alert > Alert Level Settings

In the above example, we set the Heartbeat Timeout, to critical.

Set a new Remote Alert Profile

and either enabled in General Info and set all Resource Manager alerts and send the trap assigned

Or instead set this for VVX, SoundStation, SoundPoint and Trio again for Minor, Major and Critical in device type

The next step is to assign this to a specific User > Users as an example:

Ensure the relevant User has a valid Email address within General Info.

and ensure to chose the Associated Alert Profile previously created

The final step is to ensure the SMTP Server is set up correctly via Admin > Server Settings > E-mail:

Note: The SMTP Mail Server must support to send emails without authentication!

Or set up SNMP via Admin > Server Settings > SNMP Settings instead:

More details can be found => here <=