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This was my first time attending Cisco Live (aka, Networkers) and I had a great time.  I started my week off with an all day CCIE Voice Lab techtorial that was really good.  From there, the week continued with a number of technical sessions on a variety of topics.  Aside…

Recently I fielded a question on managing prompts in Cisco's Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) using CRS scripts.  The person posing the question knew that they needed to use the Upload prompt script step but wasn't sure how to authenticate a user to the system.  This process is pretty straight…

Denise and I are networking here with John Chambers at CiscoLive yesterday evening after the CCIE NetVet reception. We noticed that Denise and I were the only two female CCIE [...]

In April I wrote a blog: Audit Logs on Cisco Unified Communications Manager.  This blog focused on new audit features available with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) 7.1(2) and later.  Recent Netpro discussions around a similar topic provided a reminder that there were other aspects of the CUCM system that…

I've been pondering this for a while.  With so much emphasis being put on Cisco's Unity Connection product, what does the future hold for Cisco Unity?  If you're active in the UC space, you know that Cisco and Microsoft are direct competitors in the UM space.  In fact, recent changes…

Hello all, I'm taking a short break to share some good press that's come about for NetCraftsmen this month.  I've recently been featured in a Meet The Expert article in Telecom Reseller.  Telecom Reseller covers a wide range of communications products and topics and they often highlight experts in the…

I’m a proponent of network management automation and found a related blog post, Arno Penzias, former Vice President and Chief Scientist of Bell Laboratories, and a Nobel Laureate in Applied [...]

I’ve been doing some more reading about network event handling and found some interesting articles and a few facts that I’d like to share.  I have my own ideas about [...]

There is a lot of focus on Cisco Unity Connection these days.  In fact, my opinion is that it has  become the lead voice messaging solution in Cisco's portfolio and is being positioned ahead of Cisco Unity unless Unified Messaging is an absolute customer requirement.  With that said, I've spent…

NetCraftsmen has recently been focusing efforts on aligning our UC practice with Cisco's "UC on UCS" vision.  We aren't doing this simply because Cisco is taking a step in the direction of virtualization.  We are doing this because it makes sense. Running Unified Communications (UC) applications in a virtual environment…

I’ve been participating on several network management product forums for the past six months and have some observations that I’d like to share. First, most organizations are focused on network [...]

I recently read a blog by Joel Spolsky titled Applied Infrastructure blog under