Practical VoIP Using VOCAL

Chapter 4. Provisioning Users

Provisioning is a term used to describe the processes and procedures used for entering data into a phone system. The make allinone script that you read about, and perhaps ran, in Chapter 2 provisions system configuration data to the VOCAL servers. We are currently working on an automated process to add users to the system; at this time, however, they have to be entered by hand, one-by-one.

VOCAL was built with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and ASPs (Application Service Providers) in mind as the installing customers. These organizations have on-site staff trained in managing user accounts and IP networks. Normally, personnel with different skill sets handle each of these responsibilities; therefore, the provisioning screens are organized into two major divisions, one for the administrators and the other for the technicians. This chapter covers the administrators’ screens. Chapters 5 and 6 cover the technicians’ screens.

While administrators can enter usernames and data into the system, individual users may also manage certain aspects of the accounts, such as blocking calls to specific phone numbers and telling the system where to send forwarded calls. These users could be individual subscribers or employees of subscriber organizations. This chapter provides a tour of the administrator screens and includes a description of the screen that end users see when they look up their account configuration through their web browsers.

The focus of this chapter is on the structure of the GUI environment, with only a few procedural instructions. We encourage you to play around with the different fields. If your aim is to add users to the system without assigning any attributes or permissions, all you need to do is add new users and fill in the Name field with a local number, such as 1000 or 1001. Everything else is optional.

Quick Step for Provisioning Users

This section provides instructions about adding users without going into great detail. The detail is provided by the remainder of the chapter.

Prerequisites

Before you can run the Provisioning GUI, VOCAL must be compiled and installed, and, at least, the Provisioning server must be running. You must also have the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Version 1.3.1_01 or later installed with the NPX_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable set and the Apache server running. See Chapter 2 for more information about all of these.

To run the Provisioning server, you can either run vocalstart to start VOCAL, as shown in Chapter 2, or, for testing purposes, you can run the Provisioning server by itself.

Tip

The make allinone script ends with VOCAL running. So, if you just finished your installation and you haven’t stopped VOCAL, it’s running.

If you want to run the Provisioning server by itself, from /usr/local/vocal/bin, type:

               pserver -vLOG_DEBUG_STACK ps-.log

The log file is found in /usr/local/vocal/log.

You must also set the environment variable in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.cshrc file to:

NPX_PLUGIN_PATH=<JRE path>/plugin/i386/ns4

For JRE 1.3.1_01, the JRE path was expressed as:

/user/java/jre1.3.1_01/

We cannot predict how this path will be changed by future versions of the JRE.

Accessing Provisioning

After compiling and installing VOCAL, as shown in Chapters 2 and 3, do the following to provision users:

1. In the browser’s location or address toolbar, type:

                        http://<local host>/vocal/provisioning.html

   <local host> is the name of the host where the Provisioning server is running.

   The provisioning page comes up with a login screen, as shown in Figure 4-1.

2. Log in. Select Administrator, type vovida as the Login ID, and vovida again as the Password. The User Configuration screen, as shown in Figure 4-2, appears.

3. Right-click anywhere over the user listings on the User Configuration screen. A small menu, as shown in Figure 4-4, appears.

4. Select an option. See Table 4-4 for descriptions.

The rest of this chapter explains the screens that are involved with provisioning users and the fields found within those screens.