Create applications that deliver interactive content to Cisco IP Phones

• Learn information and techniques vital to building and integrating third-party services for Cisco IP Phones

• Understand the development process using XML and HTTP client and server applications to successfully build a service

• Discover advanced services information about objects, advanced runtime generation, and other XML development tools

• Utilize the provided CallManager Simulator to support an IP phone for development purposes Get the most out of your IP phone systems with strategies and solutions direct from the Cisco team

Services on Cisco IP Phones help you enhance productivity, gain the competitive advantage, and even help generate revenue. Services are simply applications that run on the phone rather than on a PC or a web browser. By developing services tailored to your particular needs, you can achieve unlimited goals.

Cisco AVVID IP Telephony provides an end-to-end voice-over-IP solution for enterprises. Part of that solution are Cisco IP Phones, a family of IP-based phones. Cisco IP Phones feature a large display, an XML micro browser capable of retrieving content from web servers, and the ability to deploy custom services tailored to your organization's or enterprise's needs.

Developing Cisco IP Phone Services uses detailed code samples to explain the tools and processes used to develop custom phone services. You'll learn about XML, CallManager, Cisco IP Phones, and the history behind why Cisco chose XML to deploy phone services. You'll find detailed information to help you learn how to build a service, how to build a directory, and how to integrate your service with Cisco CallManager.

This book complements and expands on the information provided in the Cisco IP Phone Services Software Developer's Kit (SDK). With the information in this book, you can maximize your productivity using the tools provided in the SDK and the custom tools provided on the companion CD-ROM. Beginner and advanced service developers alike benefit from the information in this book. Developing Cisco IP Phone Services represents the most comprehensive resource available for developing services for Cisco IP Phones.

Companion CD-ROM
The CD-ROM contains the sample services that are covered in the book, development utilities from the Cisco IP Phone Services SDK, and new tools written specifically for this book such as XML Validator. One of the most useful applications on the CD-ROM is the CallManager Simulator (CM-Sim). CM-Sim significantly lowers the requirements for service development. You only need a Windows-based PC with CM-Sim and a web server running, and one Cisco IP Phone 7940 or 7960.

This book is part of the Cisco Press Networking Technologies Series, which offers networking professionals valuable information for constructing efficient networks, understanding new technologies, and building successful careers.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 12 Ratings

Helpful for an overview, but useless for advanced details - 2005-06-13
Reviewer Rating:
This book is great to get a high level overview of how IP phone services work. However when you get to the nitty gritty of writing an application, this book is mostly useless. Yes, there are lots of examples on how to do very basic things like display a menu on your phone. However, as another reviewer pointed out, there are no detailed examples of how to do anything advanced.
One example, I want to get information about the device hitting my service. There are 2 paragraphs explaining why I might want this information, but on how to get it, this book only says "You can use the Cisco URL Proxy to gather additional information...". No where in the book does it give any more details on how this is used. One more sentence - like 'your service should read these xml pages to get the device info' - would have been infinitely helpful. I found that the Cisco SDK documentation has everything that is in this book and more.

A very useful collection of information in one place - 2003-11-07
Reviewer Rating:
If you want to develop IP phone services, this book will really help you. Almost everything that is in here is available on the Cisco web site...somewhere! I spent days searching through Cisco documents and sample code looking for answers to the "hard" questions such as "how do I know which phone is accessing my service". I found the answer in this book in a couple of minutes.

The book is not for web beginners, however. It does spend a fair amount of time giving you some background in HTML and XML, but only at a very high level. Most of the examples are written in ASP, but no explanation of ASP is given. I don't think that this is unreasonable as the book is aimed at people who know how to write web applications and want to target those applications to IP phones.

As the book was published in 2002, it pre-dates the latest Call Manager 3.3 release, and as such does not describe some new features of Call Manager, such as the AXL API. You do not need this information to write most applications. If you do, you can get it here: http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/570/

No details - 2002-07-09
Reviewer Rating:
This book has some good examples, but lacks any detail.
It skims over all the complicated topics.
Does not do a very good job at demonstrating how to build applications that integrate a web browser and an ip phone.
Very introductory.

A Must Have - 2005-03-03
Reviewer Rating:
This books is a must have for anyone developing services for Cisco phones.

This book isn't about http, ASP, or IIS but gets right to the heart of the matter which is properly using XML as the wrapper for presenting data on Cisco phones. The authors assume you know the language you'll be developing in as well as your server platform and spend practically no time at all discussing them. If you're a web developer already you'll probably be writing services before Chapter 5(p100). If you dont have a clear understanding already of XML, http, a scripting language for your server platform best to bone up on that first.

Although examples are IIS and ASP I was able to use it to write all of my apps in Python for Apache/IIS.

The examples are clear, concise, and the book is a good starting point to build from.

Outdated. Very dissapointing for a CiscoPress book - 2008-07-20
Reviewer Rating:
I purchased this book with the intention of writing services for CM ver 5 and ver 6 (soon). This book was a total waste of my money and my time to read it. The focus on Windows programming and reference to CM ver 3.1 shows how old it is.
Most of the information I already knew (from the Cisco site and SDK doco) however the nitty gritty information I was looking for was absent.
I also think it is poorly written; far from the technical excellence I have experienced in other CiscoPress books.
If I had known this, I wouldn't have bothered buying the book. Extremely disappointed.
I have tended to buy books with the CiscoPress logo without question. After this experience, I won't be doing that in future.

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