Recently I had the honor to speak at TechEd North America in Houston. I had a blast doing the session and I really want to thank those who attended my session. Some of the comments I got after the session makes it apparent that managing Phone numbers in Lync is becoming a challenge lots of organizations need to have a strategy for.

During the session I concluded with the following

Use the E.164 format for all numbers, even the phonenumber and mobilenumber attributes in AD
Use extensions, not for short-dialing, but for authentication
Excel does not scale one, two or three years in to the deployment, I show you the tools you can choose from
Use PowerShell automation and add it to existing user management routines
If you have a complex deployment, use third party tools that have more logic and statistics built-in
- Event Zero’s range manager is one such tool
If you have a multivendor environment, try out UniMax 2nd Nature that can manage other vendors as well
All scripts and oneliners are available at http://lyncnumbers.net