MiCollab - adding external contacts to the Directory

[VinceWhirlwind]

Users can add in their own contacts via their MiCollab client, but I was wondering what would be the best strategy if I wanted to add some contacts so they can be globally available to all the MiCollab users.
For example, the Helpdesk for the videoconferencing suites is an external number and it would be good to have that globally available to everybody in MiCollab.
 
I guess I could create a MiCollab "user" whose number is a speed dial to that external number, but I just wanted to see if anybody has come up with better ideas for doing this?

[ZuluAlpha]

Following

[johnp]

I guess it may depend upon whether yo have these as speedcalls. If they exist as speedcalls, in the latest version create a user with the desired name, add a phantom phone which is the speedcall, you could also add other pbx phone. Think phantom may show in Micollab service as dialable, where as other might need editing under user account

[moona]

Three ways we do this

1) Manually add a User in Users & Services in Micollab. Just give them a random username + pw. Go to Configure Micollab client service -- > Accounts --> User you added.
Go to Phone Numbers and manually add the phone number here

2) IDS sync with customers AD environment. Pull through external contacts who have the Contact parameter in their AD

3) Sync with a basic external LDAP database. We used OpenLDAP with a customer schema

Mitel's inbuilt ability to do this easily is almost non existent. It is pretty woeful to be honest.