There is not an easy way to centrally manage the Personal Directory of Cisco SPA IP Phones and it has been a frustration for users of these popular handsets. I wrote a small application to manage the personal directories of Cisco and Linksys phones in 2011 which made things easier.
MDM Cisco SPA Personal Directory Manager
There is now a new solution which makes managing the Personal Directory on the Cisco SPA series phones very simple. It is a web service which also has a companion desktop application to enable Cisco SPA users to make calls directly from Windows desktop.
If you just want to go ahead and try it out, please register for an account by visiting:
https://ciscospa.mdm.co.uk/
Here is a quick video that shows how to set it up and the functionality it provides:
Cisco SPA Handset Compatibility
The web service and application is compatible with:
- Cisco SPA 303
- Cisco SPA 501G
- Cisco SPA 502G
- Cisco SPA 504G
- Cisco SPA 508G
- Cisco SPA 509G
- Cisco SPA 512G
- Cisco SPA 514G
- Cisco SPA 525G
Key Features
- Centralised Web Based Personal Directory Administration
- Custom contact entries for each device
- Unlimited number of contacts
- Ability to group contacts into categories
- Central administration of screen saver
- Make calls directly from your Windows Desktop without having to use phone interface
- Integration with Microsoft Outlook – call contacts from your Outlook address book.
Please give us any feedback that you have on the solution via this blog or through the main site. We really hope you enjoy using it. We will be replicating the functionality to work with Yealink phones in the near future.
Here are some screenshots of the solution:
I see SPA 504G is not listed as compatible , is there a reason?
Because I forgot to put it in the list, it is absolutely compatible.
How about compatibility with Linksys SPA942?
I considered adding compatibility for SPA942, but it is quite tricky to do because they work in a different way.
How many 942s do you have?