The

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

Extension Mobility feature, sometimes referred to as hoteling, allows a user to temporarily configure another IP telephone as their own. The user must log into that IP telephone with a

username A user is a person who utilizes a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username include login name, screenname (or screen name), accoun ...

and

PIN A pin is a device used for fastening objects or material together. Pin or PIN may also refer to: Computers and technology * Personal identification number (PIN), to access a secured system ** PIN pad, a PIN entry device * PIN, a former Dutch ...

. Once logged in, the phone has the user's profile information, including their extension number (the reason for calling it ‘extension mobility’), dial permissions and other feature settings (e.g. call forwards). Extension mobility is often by people who frequently travel between different company locations. They can use any fixed-line phone in the company as if it is their own telephone by logging in. Extension Mobility is also useful in situations where people don’t have a dedicated desk of their own. In a flex-office where people just enter and pick a desk, they can easily register on that desktop phone and use it as theirs. It is convenient since people can use their own features, but also it makes people reachable. The number of missed calls will be minimal.

The Login Complexity

There are a few issues with the use of extension mobility. One must to log into the telephone via the telephone

keypad A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads. Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric in ...

. However, if the username is easy and the PIN is short, this may not be the biggest problem. However, in organizations that use services such as

Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of Process (computing), processes and Windows service, services. Initially, Active D ...

(where the username is shared across multiple applications), the user must enter their

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineer ...

via the telephone keypad.

Login Alternatives

In general, this login issue sometimes results in suboptimal usage, such as when people ‘forget’ to log in or log out. The consequence is that they are either not reachable, or that a telephone can be used unauthorized after the employee leaves his desk. One option that users have is the possibility to configure the so-called one-click login. Certain user profiles are pre-configured for certain telephones and the user can simply select their profile using a single button. This provides a solution in small teams where people require the flexibility to use their own profile but can completely trust each other. However, in other situations a

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

solution like the Active Login Manager may be the solution. Using this

client software In computing, a client is a piece of computer hardware or software that accesses a service made available by a server as part of the client–server model of computer networks. The server is often (but not always) on another computer system, i ...

, the login procedure for the telephone is synchronized with the login of a user's laptop or PC. Whenever the user opens their laptop, the telephone on that same desk is automatically logged in.

References

{{reflist Voice over IP