What is Cisco Extension Mobility? For many RSconnect visitors perhaps a no-brainer since they use the RSconnect Active Login Manager to make the Extension Mobility (EM) feature more secure and user-friendly. For others, a brief introduction may be useful.
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Not so long ago in most organizations, users had their own desk and their own fixed-line telephone. With their own desk and phone, they could easily be reached and their desktop phone contained their own settings and contacts.
This traditional setting is rapidly changing. Although each organization differs in terms of corporate culture and business priorities, in general we see that they make the transition towards more flexible office arrangements. Typically, people work at various locations and desks during the week, and – boosted by Corona – people also work (partly) from home. This means that a personal desk is no longer the rule, it has become the exception and people share so-called flexible desks. Still, these flex desks are often also equipped with fixed-line telephones. So, many users work daily at another desk with another desk phone. And that makes it complicated since they still want to be reachable via their own number and use their own settings and contacts. This is the reason that Cisco developed Extension Mobility as a value-added service on top of their Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM).
Extension Mobility is a value-added VoIP service that allows you to log in to another phone. That phone loads the settings of the user’s personal desk phone. Extension Mobility allows the user to receive calls via his or her personal number, make calls using its own contacts, check the voicemail and use other phone settings (such as line appearances and speed dials).
For this, the user requires an extension mobility account, provisioned via the service management team. Part of that account is that the user has a personal UserId and a PIN code. With these credentials, the user can activate the feature for each EM supported phone in the network. Many Cisco IP telephones support Extension Mobility, although the specific user steps to log in may differ per phone type and the organization has configured the service.
Typically, end-users can activate Extension Mobility on a phone by clicking the applications/services button and subsequently choosing the EM option. Logging in is done by entering your UserId and PIN. The UserId could for example someone’s email address. Entering plain text on a basic telephone keypad means that you often have to press a button multiple times. So, the letter ‘c’ means that you type three times the button ‘2’. After successfully entering the credentials, you receive a message ‘login successful’, and then the telephone will be loaded with the user’s settings.
Be aware that there is no automatic logout after a certain time-out period or at the end of the day. The user is logged in to Extension Mobility until the user manually logs out. So, this is the responsibility of the end-user after a flex-desk session. To do so, you must browse back to the EM menu where you will find the log-out option.
The beforementioned manual steps make Extension Mobility not very user-friendly. Users are also not stimulated to use the service (which makes people difficult to reach). While people also hesitate to log out if they think that they will use the same desk the following day. So, there are user experience and security issues. However, our ALM solution makes the service more convenient and secure.
