Make Extension Mobility Userfriendly

Is Extension Mobility userfriendly? If we could simply use 3 digit usernames and a 4 digit PIN, Extension Mobility authentication shouldn’t be a problem. However, this is rarely the case. In a business environment – certainly when Active Directory is used – typically the email address or some other long username is used for all enterprise applications, including Extension Mobility. Which means that the user has to enter this long username string + PIN code via the telephone keypad. This makes the use very inconvenient.

Let’s look at the example of John Doe. He is an employee with ACMECorp and his e-mail address is john.doe@acmecorp.net. The ACMECorp’s Communications Manager is synced with Active Directory (AD) and therefore staff has their e-mail address as their Extension Mobility login names. So to get access to their contacts and be reachable by phone, John and his colleagues need to login by typing their email address and PIN code. Every day, manually, on the little keypad of the phone.

To give you a better understanding of what John needs to enter on his telephone keypad, do it yourself:

services globe, arrow down, arrow down, select, 5, 6, 6, 6, 4, 4, 6, 6, *, 3, 6, 6, 6, 3, 3, *, *, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, *, 6, 6, 3, 3, 8, arrow down, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, submit

More than 50 clicks, every day! Over 50 buttons that John needs to press every time he wants to log into his Extension Mobility enabled phone. It shows how complicated it is to use a potentially very powerful feature like Extension Mobility. Fortunality there are solutions to make Extension Mobility userfriendly.

3 Options to make Extension Mobility userfriendly