This week is a first for me. I’m at Cisco Live in San Diego. It’s been pretty awesome so far I have to say! Full Disclosure, I was brought here by Cisco to talk to Analysts about ACI. However, I should also point out my only session was closed door feedback on why we chose the solution, and how its helped us to date. Since we are only at the early stages, it was a short conversation.

In this the third part of my mini series on using the CUCM API, we start to get further into the Ju-Ju, and check web app changes via the API, before then going on to make a change via the API itself. As before if you haven’t gone through the previous two posts then please, head back to the start and we will see you back here shortly. Whats your motivation today?

In this part 2 of my API adventure, I will be looking at repeating what we did Part 1 via SoapUI, but this time in python using the suds library. If you haven’t read that yet, then really, please go back and do that. This will not be wildly useful otherwise. Getting SOAP-y with Python suds Yeah I went there… So, we have a process that allows us to programatically look stuff up.

Ick, I know. Python has long been the language of choice for engineers looking to make their day go that little bit quicker or easier. With deepening skill levels, more and more complex repetitive tasks can be disected and segmented into functions and reuable code, such that a competent scripting engineer can go from blank page to automated process in a matter of hours in most cases. It is for this reason that I sit here to write this - an advocacy for ALL Cisco engineers to down tools and spend however long you need to get good at this.

This is one of those posts that I will constantly refer back to… ;) In my day job it’s clear to me that we need to automate more and more of the dumb day to day stuff. One of those things is Leavers and Starters on our phone system. We employ Cisco CallManager, much like the rest of the world, and if you have ever spent any time with it, you will know that its VASTLY over-complicated to manage.