Moving All Stations to New Number Range - Easiest Way w/ ASA? 1

[jessejdavis]

We are getting ready to move all of our DID extensions to a new range (long story on why... but basically changing from an old tie-line based service provider in a different geographical location to a local provider).

Specifically, we are moving the 3000-3299 DID block to 4000-4299. Is there an easy way to do this with ASA? I have looked at export/import, but unless we want to duplicate first and then update the ports later, we would have to delete existing stations before adding the new ones. That would be ok, but export/import doesn't seem to capture all of the station's settings (like softkeys and other button settings). I realize that I could simply add the new stations (no settings) and then swap them with the wizard, but I wanted to see if anyone out there knew of a more straightforward method.

Any thoughts? We are using ASA 2.1.11U3.1 to manage a Definity G3, R011i.01.2.065.3. Keep in mind that I'm an IT guy that has inherited the phones (i.e. newb)

Thanks,

Jesse

 

[happyg123]

Jesse,

Keep in mind that you can modify your DID Intercept annoucement to give out information on the old extensions that are no longer in service. You can change it back once you disconnect the old DID numbers.

 

[jessejdavis]

One other update... It turns out that the export/import function of ASA can do a mass run of the "change user extension" wizard. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until near the end (kind of a "doh!" moment).

One other word of caution, the ASA wizard doesn't handle the abbrv dialing list stuff correctly. It keeps button to list number/item references, but for some reason, all of the lists were emptied. Fortunately, folks haven't really used speed dial that much around here, so the cleanup isn't too bad. We're going to tell them how to program their own buttons anyway.

Thanks again,
Jesse

 

[lopes1211]

WOW! Home come no one has seen that before? It's right in front of our faces! Very powerful tool hidden in ASA and worth a star.

-CL

 

[jessejdavis]

Thanks! I missed it myself after staring at the screen more than once. When I did find it at 1:00 AM I felt a little dumb (like, "I can't believe I just entered all of those by hand!"). Fortunately, I at least had several stations to go back and clean up, so I used it then. These were the stations that wouldn't originally change w/ the wizard because they had messages waiting that needed to be cleared first (took me awhile to figure out how to clear the MWI's).

 

[TechJimF]

Jesse,

Would you be willing to detail the steps you took, or could have taken with the import/export and "change user extension" wizard. (Maybe in a FAQ) We will probably be changing from a three digit to a four digit dialing plan later this year.

My biggest stumbling block is with Modular Messaging 2.0. Haven't found how to change the mailbox numbers from 3 to 4 digit without blowing them out and having the users setup mailboxes again.

Thanks in advance,

Jim

 

[TechJimF]

Jesse,

I have looked at "change user extension" wizard and can't figure out how to use it with the import/export feature. Can you describe how?

Thanks,

Jim

 

[jessejdavis]

Jim,

Sorry that I haven't been able to answer this yet...

1. Go to Advanced, Import
2. Make sure that "station" is selected under "Select an Object"
3. Select "Change Extension Operation" (on the bottom) and click "Ok"
4. On the spreadsheet-like form, just fill in the original extension and then the new extension columns (generally the message lamp and emer. will change to the new extension as well; if they were used before)
5. Click the "Save" button and then the "Execute" button
6. You can watch the progress on the history and schedule tabs at the bottom

Ok, and a couple of tips...
1. If your voicemail system uses the MWI lamp, you'll need to clear any "on" messages before the extension will change(there's a command for this, but I can't remember it right now)
2. Be careful about abbv. dialing lists; for some reason, ours got cleared (they still existed and the stations still pointed to specific entries in specific lists, but there were no numbers in the lists)
3. For more complicated stations, you may need to do some manual cleanup.
4. If something doesn't work the first time, it might work the second time, but then again it might not... ;-)
5. If you want, you can use Excel to easily generate the two columns of data (original/new) and then copy/paste into ASA
6. IMPORTANT: Do a full export of your existing stations before you migrate and use various copies of this file to clean up other stuff (via import) -> Ex: we had to alter the name of each new extension, since our voicemail (Octel) integrates via the number in the name field -> This export can also be very useful if something goes wrong -> In fact, export some other stuff as well (or at least print from the GEDI or Tree), such as abbv. lists, cov paths, etc. (the more info you have, the better; again, just in case something goes wrong)

Also, just a quick how-to on the station export...
1. Go to Advanced, Export
2. Object type is "station," export to file
3. Under the filter field, select "extension" and specify the range to export; in our case, I exported "3*" (w/o quotes) to get all numbers starting w/ the number 3 (you can also just export everything and clean it up in Excel later; this just saves time)
4. Click Next
5. On the next screen, for the field selection, choose everything and click Next
6. Select your file name/location and specify a better delimeter than the default (comma; we used a pipe symbol, |)
7. Click through and run the export

Ok, that's all that I have for now. Hope that helps!

Jesse