Move to the cloud: how LDAP helps implement a virtual PBX

The larger the company, the more difficulties it faces that are unknown to smaller organizations. And this is far from always related to doing business. Virtual PBX used to be perceived by many as a product for small companies, but now the idea is changing. Medium and large enterprises are increasingly using virtual telephone exchanges, but along the way they have to solve rather non-trivial tasks - for example, how to put employee profiles in the communication environment under the control of a virtual telephone exchange and, most importantly, keep them up to date? After all, when the company’s staff consists of several hundred or thousands of people, entering and constant updating of their cards manually cannot be regarded as any other punishment. To make life easier for our customers, we have implemented LDAP protocol support in the virtual PBX MANGO OFFICE.

Usually, the purchase of a virtual PBX involves the replacement of an existing connection. And, of course, the question arises of how to incorporate cloud communications into the business infrastructure, how to set up a single interface for employees so that they can immediately carry out their tasks efficiently on new telephony.

And here LDAP comes to the rescue. This protocol is supported in some CRMs, but until recently, it did not occur among virtual exchanges. However, it would certainly be useful, because it not only significantly simplifies, but also accelerates the transition to a virtual PBX - especially when the company has a large number of employees. Virtual PBX MANGO OFFICE was the first to receive LDAP support.

Easy setup

Using LDAP, you can easily keep an existing base of employees up-to-date: name, position, department, phone number, e-mail. To do this, you do not need to install any additional software, you do not need to import Excel tables, you do not need to enter anything into the system by hand. It is enough to configure the virtual PBX integration with the directory service through LDAP once, and the profiles of all employees will be imported with the necessary rights. Short numbers will also be imported (or created), SIP accounts will be automatically generated, and then you can configure the rules for forwarding incoming calls.



MANGO OFFICE supports all types of LDAP servers for any OS, including Microsoft Active Directory and the popular open server Open LDAP. That is, a company that uses, for example, Microsoft Outlook, can take advantage of the quick export to a virtual PBX and simple data synchronization.

Directly in a virtual PBX, you can assign employees roles with the appropriate access rights. Developing a system of roles, we tried to take into account all the needs of medium and large businesses, making it possible to customize user rights to the widest extent.

Using LDAP, you can quickly transfer roles to a virtual PBX and manage roles through a single interface without having to do this in different databases separately. After connecting the virtual PBX, it is enough to set up the employees once according to their posts access rights to various functions of the virtual PBX - telephony, call tracking, reports, listening to recordings of conversations, etc. And when a new employee arrives or an existing specialist changes his position, it is enough to change his role on the LDAP server, and the corresponding changes in access rights are automatically applied to the virtual PBX.

It is especially convenient that the administrator is not required to update the data in the virtual PBX, they are synchronized automatically. When an employee is deleted or added to the source database, data is changed, all innovations are pulled into the cloud PBX without the participation of an administrator.

When designing LDAP support, we took into account the wishes of system administrators. For example, we implemented the field matching setting, because fields can be called differently in different databases. In addition, many admins add additional fields to the databases. And thanks to the compliance settings, our LDAP is fully compatible with different databases and different formats of LDAP servers. MANGO OFFICE also supports LDAP filters and a separate field for catalog root filters.

In addition, we have implemented a flexible system of synchronization rules. You can specify which fields need to be synchronized with a virtual telephone exchange, as well as set the principles for creating and rewriting fields.

Security

Information security is one of the priorities when implementing LDAP support. Many companies have strict security regulations, so it is often not recommended to open an LDAP server for access to cloud systems. We use LDAPS, a data exchange version with SSL encryption, to protect data.

Conclusion

LDAP support significantly simplifies the process of integrating cloud-based business telephony into the company's infrastructure and access rights system. Using LDAP, you can quickly import an employee database into a virtual PBX, manage credentials, and differentiate employee access to information.