Auto-Registration is a quick and dirty way of getting the phones up in a hurry, but then you still have to go back and add the user names, call forwarding, user privileges, etc. If they're additionally all going to be LDAP-synched you're going to hate yourself at the end of the day.
Our roll-out was not as large as yours, only 1,700 phones, but we were replacing MITEL phones with CISCO and the users were adamant about keeping their old numbers. We used the BAT tool and imported all the user names and phone numbers and locations from LDAP, then manually sorted that list by location and phone type to pull out the people who needed special phones (i.e., admins, receptionists, etc.) as well as get it organized into departmental boundaries. Next we used a bar code reader to scan-in all the MACS and then submitted the batch job about 100~150 phones at a time. We also had another crew of 3 people opening phones, applying the lables, replacing the 6' handset cords with INDUSTRY STANDARD 12-footers and plug them into a local POE 8-port switch on their desk to pre-download the flash and putting on large AVERY labels on the phones as to where they went (data from the batch job) (this REALLY sped things up during deployment) , then with a crew of 6 we would deploy those 100 or so phones beginning at 5 AM and finishing by 7AM. The rest of that day was clean-up, then starting on the next batch job. Batch prep of 150 users would take a couple days each, but doing it this way we were able to run roughly 250~300 installs a week, retain people's old numbers and not be chasing phones all over the building.
On a greenfield deployment, Auto-Registration might make a lot more sense, but on a forklift replacement of an existing system I think it would create more work than it would save and you'd have a lot of pissed-off users bitching about their phone numbers.
Only my 2¢ worth...
Original MUG/NAMU Charter Member
