Installing RSS feed to cisco ip phone on Your Web Server
Step by step directions on how to install the rss2cisco perl script on your windows or linux based web server.
Summary This document will cover in a step by step fashion how to download, install and configure a perl script to display RSS feeds on a Cisco VOIP Telephone's LCD display.
Index
- Configuring your feeds
- Windows with IIS Specific Instructions
- Linux/BSD/OSX/etc with Apache Specific Instructions
- Setting up the Phone Service in Call Manager
- Conclusion
Configuring your feeds
The first step is to actually download the perl script(download link here
link), but if you can't figure that out without a tutorial then this is probably the wrong task for you. Once you have the script downloaded, open it up in the text editor of your choice. Do note that because it uses unix line breaks, Notepad on windows is NOT a good choice. Wordpad, however, will display it fine. As will any application on Linux or BSD/OSX.
Look for the line "ATTENTION: EDIT THE FOLLOWING VARIABLES" and go to the
$pathto line below it. Do not disturb or change any other characters on this line and inside the single quotes put the location your script will end up at. Such as: 'http://blog.ginc.co.cc/phone_services' Do NOT put a slash at the end of this line as the script will automatically add one later.
Below that line is where we enter the RSS feeds we want. RSS feed configurations are 2 lines per RSS feed. One line is for the title/description, the other is for the URL that the feed is located at. Copy one of the example feeds and replace everything inside the single quotes on the
@descriptions line with the name of the feed. Visit a website you enjoy and find their RSS icon or link. Take the URL to the feed and place it inside the single quotes of the
@feeds line, replacing the existing feed URL. Do this as many times as you want, however Cisco IP phones have a limit of 64 menu items, so you can't exceed that.
That completes all the changes you need to make inside the script. Please do not change anything else unless you know what you are doing. Even changing by accident a single character will cause the script to fail and you'll have to start over again. Be mindful of your editing!
Save your changes to the file,
rename it to cisco.pl and move along to the next step.
Windows with IIS Specific Instructions
These directions are for users who are running Windows server 2000 or 2003 with Microsoft's IIS web server. Please skip them if this is not your configuration.
- Install IIS using Add/Remove Programs if not already installed. (This is left as an exercise for the reader)
- Download and install the Win32 version of ActivePerl from ActiveState
- Click the Start button, go to All Programs, then ActiveState ActivePerl. Click "Perl Package Manager".
- In the console window type exactly:
install XML-RSS - When the install is complete, type:
exit - Open the IIS management console and connect to the web server
- Click on "Web Service Extensions" and ALLOW "Perl CGI Extension" and "Perl ISAPI Extension"
- Right click on your website (probably "Default Web Site") and click "Properties". Click the "Home Directory" tab.
- Make sure "Execute Permissions" is set to "Scripts and Executables".
- Click the "Configuration" button and make sure the extension
.pl is in the list. - Copy
cisco.pl to your website's home folder. (probably C:\inetpub\wwwroot\)
Open Internet Explorer and go to URL that your script now lives at. ie:
http://myserver.net/phone/cisco.pl If you see something that looks like this:
You have completed the configuration sucessfully! If you see an error or the text of the script itself, then something went wrong and you should start over.
Linux/BSD/OSX/etc with Apache Specific Instructions
These directions are for users who are running Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or OSX with the Apache web server. Please skip them if this is not your configuration.
- Install and configure Apache with mod_perl. This is done at install on almost all linux distros, however: (This is left as an exercise for the reader)
- (NOTE: This step must be performed as a super user, such as root) At a shell prompt type:
perl -e shell -MCPAN - In the CPAN perl shell, type:
install XML::RSS - If you see any prompts about prepending dependant modules answer Yes
- When the install is complete type:
exit - Copy/Upload
cisco.pl to the folder of your choice in your web server's public folder. Remember to place it in a suitable location for CGI execution - Note that you may need to rename the file to .cgi if your Apache configuration requires this for execution of CGI scripts.
- Ensure that the proper executable permissions are set for
rss2cisco.pl
Open Mozilla Firefox and go to URL that your script now lives at. ie:
http://myserver.net/phone/rss2cisco.pl If you see something that looks like this:
You have completed the configuration sucessfully! If you see an error or the text of the script itself, then something went wrong and you should start over.
Setting up the Phone Service in Call Manager
Here's where we log into Call Manager's web admin interface and set up the phone service, then apply it to phones. If you don't know how to get into your Call Manager server's web interface what the hell are you doing here?
- Log into call manager and click the "Feature" menu, then click "Cisco IP Phone Services"
- Click "Add a New Phone Service" (it's a small link in the upper right hand side of the page)
- Enter following...
- Service Name:
cisco - Service Description:
RSS Feeds for your Cisco IP Phone - In the Service URL textbox enter the URL to your script, specifically, the address you used to test it in a web browser in the last step.
- Click Insert
Now the phone service is set up and availble in your Call Manager server. To apply the service to individual phones do the following.
- Click "Device", then click "Phone"
- Using the search, find a phone and display it.
- Click the "Subscribe/Unsubscribe Services" link in the upper right corner.
- Select "rss2cisco" from the drop down list and click "Continue"
- Click "Subscribe"
- Reset the phone to apply the changes.
Conclusion
Now that all your steps are done you should be able to go to your phone, load the service, and display RSS feeds. If not then something has gone wrong and you should review the steps and start again from scratch, checking all your work as you go.
