Phone Book Management

[JoshMundy]

I am looking for a way to manage a phonebook across multiple devices in our organization.  I need something that will not allow the phones to be able to edit or delete the contacts.

Currently, we have a gmail account that is set up on each device (roughly 50) and we are just sharing that phonebook for each phone (iOS and Android).  The problem is some users have changed or edited the phonebook in the past and it causes a headache for other users who may need those numbers, and then I have to go into the gmail contact section and fix all the errors, or when its bad do a restore of the phonebook database.   

Is there a way in Meraki to have a "main" phonebook get pushed to the devices daily, or a phonebook managed by Meraki?

[PhilipDAth]

Have you considered just statically importing them?

https://documentation.meraki.com/MC/MC_Network_Administrator_Guides/Directory_Management/Importing_C...

[JoshMundy]

I saw that but I cannot find where they are trying to direct me.  I cannot find a Phones > Configure > Directory page

[Rob_Mayer]

I am brand new to Meraki, and I am hung up in the same spot.  I cannot find a Phones > Configure > Directory page

[Rob_Mayer]

I submitted a case to Meraki support for this issue, and here's what they said:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting Cisco Meraki Support!

The article - https://documentation.meraki.com/MC/MC_Network_Administrator_Guides/Directory_Management/Importing_C... provides steps to be followed for Meraki MC product and not MDM. Unfortunately, Meraki MDM doesn't have a feature available for pushing out the contacts to devices. 

Although this feature is not available, we take our customer feedback seriously. We encourage you to use the Meraki dashboard to "make a wish" and submit a feature request. You can submit a feature request at the bottom of any dashboard page. Any wish that is made sends an email to our Product Managers and Development Teams. These wishes are taken into consideration and are used to help shape our product roadmaps. The most wished-for items are incorporated into product development.

I went ahead and submitted a "wish" to have the ability to push contacts to a device within MDM.

[PeterJames]

I had looked in to this too: It would be great to manage our staff contact lists remotely.

But like the Meraki support staff pointed out, this is not a feature for MDM - I have made a wish around this.

I suppose you could use the Meraki Backpack feature and keep an updated file everyone refers to. I wonder if another app could access this file automatically and give you the ability to create your own app to manage this.

Meraki - Can you confirm if another app can access the Meraki Backpack files?

I would have suggested the Managed App Config approach but there is no API to link in to this and so any updates would be a manual grind. But again would require app development work, but if your lists are relatively small or change infrequently, it could possibly be worth the investment.

Thank you,

Peter James

[xkam]

I use Owncloud for contacts syncing with IOS. Via Apple configurator (OSX) or iPhone configuration utility (WINDOWS) you can make an importable mobileconfig profile for Meraki which contains a connection to the contacts app in owncloud.

1 - install Owncloud on a webserver that is accesible from outside

2 - install contacts app in owncloud server

3 - create a phonebook in contacts app as admin of owncloud

4 - share this phonebook from contacts app to another user (this user will be the user that we use in the profile for ios later) >> share the phonebook as read only (so your future clients cannot overwrite it)

5 - create a profile for ios in apple configurator or Iphone Configuration Utility.

User: the user that the phonebook was shared to + password

URL: you can find this url in owncloud contacts app when logging in as the user that will contact the adressbook from ios

6 - Use Meraki to import the mobileconfig file

7 - Deploy this profile to your clients

https://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?t=18177#p48265