Script Prerequisites

Create a New Client Policy to Support Hot-Desking

As indicated in the TechNet article, a client policy should be created to enable hot-desking on common area phones. The PowerShell command below performs the following functions:

• Creates a new client policy named KCDEMO-CommonAreaPhoneClientPolicy
• Enables hot-desking
• Defines a hot-desking inactivity value of 30 minutes

Table 1 – Common Area Phone Client Policy

Create a New Common Area Phone Voice Policy

As indicated in the TechNet article, a restricted voice policy should also be created for common area phones. The command below performs the following functions:

• Creates a new voice policy named KCDEMO-CommonAreaPhoneClientPolicy
• Assigns PSTN usages of KCDemo-Internal, KCDemo-Local, KCDemo-LD, and KCDemo-International
• Disables Simultaneous Ring
• Disables Call Forwarding
• Disables Delegation
• Disables Team Call
• Disables Call Transfer

Table 2 – Common Area Phone Voice Policy

If necessary, additional conferencing and PIN policies could be created at this point. This blog will simply focus on the client and voice policies.

Script Creation

Common Area Phone PowerShell Script

Once the prerequisite policies have been created, it’s time to create the common area phone script. Credit should be given to the Lync PowerShell article for providing the initial structure of the PowerShell script below and to Jason Shave’s blog for providing background on assigning common area phone SipAddresses and dial plans.
The script below will perform the following functions:

• Prompt for a CSV file to import
• Create an output text file in the same directory as the PowerShell script
• Import the contents of the CSV file
• Create a new common area phone account and define the display name, registrar pool, organizational unit location, description, line URI, display number, and SipAddress
• Assign the KCDEMO-CommonAreaPhoneClientPolicy client policy to each common area phone account
• Assign the KCDEMO-CommonAreaPhoneVoicePolicy voice policy to each common area phone account
• Assign the KCDEMO-CHI dial plan to each common area phone account
• Sleep for 60 seconds
  • Errr wait… Why am I making the script pause for 60 seconds? If the script does not pause, the script will output an error similar to Table 3 below

Table 3 – Error if Script Does Not Pause for ~60 Seconds

• After pausing for 60 seconds, the script will retrieve the PIN information and ultimately set the PIN for each common area phone account in the CSV file

The code for the CommonAreaPhones.ps1 PowerShell script is below.

Table 4 – Common Area Phone PowerShell Script

The formatting of the CommonAreaPhones.ps1 script should appear similar to the Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 – CommonAreaPhones.ps1 Screenshot

Common Area Phone CSV File

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For the script to perform its function, important pieces of information should to be funneled into the script. To handle this funneling, a CSV file should be created with the appropriate attributes such as:

• DisplayName
• RegistrarPool
• OU
• Description
• LineURI
• DisplayNumber
• SipAddress
• PIN
• VoicePolicyName
• ClientPolicyName
• DialPlan

The contents of the common area phone CSV file should appear similar to Table 5 below. The PowerShell script contains variables that match each column of the CSV file. For example, to import the display name the PowerShell script uses $importedCommonAreaPhone.DisplayName and looks for DisplayName as the column header.

Table 5 – Common Area Phone CVS Import File

Once the CSV file is created, the final formatting should appear similar to Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 – CommonAreaPhones.csv Screenshot

Script Execution

To execute the script, perform the actions below.

• Launch the Lync Management Shell as an administrator
• Change directories to the script location and execute the script (.CommonAreaPhones.ps1)
• Input the name of the CSV file (CommonAreaPhones.csv)

Figure 3 – Script Execution

Once the script execution completes, the PowerShell output should appear similar to Figure 4 below.

Figure 4 – PowerShell Output

The transcript file will be created in same location as the PowerShell script. The output should be similar to Figure 5 below.

Figure 5 – Transcript

Finally, the common area phone contact objects should appear in the OU that was specified in the CSV file.

Figure 6 – Contact Objects

To avoid any space issues with copying/pasting of the code above (or em-dashes – thanks Andy Olson), the script and CSV file can be downloaded here: Common Area Phone Bulk Creation Script.
Comments welcomed!