Unified Contacts Pro

This step-by-step guide will explain all the necessary steps to deploy Unified Contacts Pro for an enterprise-grade environment in your Azure tenant.

Azure Deployment

Let's start with the requirements and a resource overview. Keep in mind that you need to plan a useful Azure resource design.

Checklist: Prerequisites

• Optional - Azure resource naming convention

• Mandatory - Azure subscription (at least Contributor rights on that subscription)

• Mandatory - Azure owner rights (at least on Resource Group level)

• Mandatory - Azure AD "Global administrator" (Consent to access Graph API)

• Optional - Public Domain CNAME (unified-contacts.yourdomain.com)

• Optional - SSL (Wildcard-) Certificate (or use App Service Managed Certificate)

• Mandatory - Unified Contacts License Key (please contact us for a trial key)

Overview Azure Resource

All these resources are recommended for a production environment.

Type	Description
App Service	A virtual Azure environment to run the Unified Contacts application backend, providing a UI to configure different application specific settings like CNAME, SSL certificate and App Settings.
App Service Plan	A virtual set of compute resources and configurations for the "App Service". Here you can configure the pricing tier and resource scaling.
Key Vault	Resource to securely store secrets and certificates. Unified Contacts leverages Key Vault to store API client secrets.
Storage account	Storage platform that stores the binaries of the Unified Contacts backend application.
SQL database	Relational database used by Unified Contacts to store persistent information such as custom settings and pinned favorites.
SQL server	A virtual set of compute resources and configurations for the "SQL database".

Configuration Steps

Step 1: Deploy Unified Contacts Pro Base Services

This is a mandatory step.

To start with the deployment, follow our setup instructions:

pageDeployment

Step 2: Custom Domain

This is an optional step.

To configure a custom domain for the Unified Contacts backend, follow this guide:

pageCustom Domain

Step 3: Perform Post-Deployment Steps (Permission Assignments)

This is a mandatory step.

To properly link all components of Unified Contacts Pro, several permissions need to be assigned. Please follow these steps to establish the relevant connections:

1. Navigate to the Unified Contacts backend website. For that, navigate to the Unified Contacts App Service, select "Overview" and click "Browse".

2. Copy the content of the black box to your clipboard and paste it into a text editor.

   
3. Now you need to replace the AppServiceAzureUrl with the correct URL from your Unified Contacts App Service. Therefore

   1. Navigate to the Unified Contacts App Service "Overview" blade.

   2. Copy the URL from your browser and replace the AppServiceAzureUrl argument value in the text editor with this URL.

      
4. Copy all commands from the text editor, open the Azure Cloud Shell (Power Shell) on Azure Portal and paste the commands.

5. During the script execution, you will be prompted for the SQL server administration account. Please provide the credentials you specified during the deployment in the ARM template.

   
6. If you have previously configured a Custom domain on the Unified Contacts App Service, the script will prompt you for the correct App Service URL. Please select the custom domain.

7. Towards the end of the script, you will be asked to grant the permissions (read-only) required for the Unified Contacts front- and backend to function properly. Please consent to those permissions by

   1. Either copying both links to your browser and acknowledging the grants manually with a suitable admin account,

   2. Or by selecting to the Automatic Permission Grant. In this case, please complete the Device Login by opening the website https://microsoft.com/devicelogin, pasting the one-time code displayed in the Azure Cloud Shell, and following all steps.

   
8. Once the script has completed successfully, restart the Unified Contacts App Service.

9. To verify the successful deployment, navigate to the Unified Contacts App Service, select "Overview" and click "Browse". The health indicators on the left side should all indicate "Healthy".

   

It may initially take up to 5 minutes until the Unified Contacts backend portal is loaded.

Step 4: Configure Access to the Unified Contacts Backend

This is an optional step.

By default, any account from the tenant can access the Unified Contacts Backend. To configure access for certain accounts only, please refer to below article.

pageBackend Permissions

Step 5: Add Unified Contacts Pro to your Organization's App Store

This is a mandatory step.

1. Open the Unified Contacts backend website. Therefore, navigate to the Unified Contacts App Service, select "Overview" and click "Browse".

2. In case you have never deployed Unified Contacts Pro before, the website will inform you that you first need to upload the Unified Contacts Manifest. This will make the Unified Contacts Pro Teams App available in your organization's AppStore.

   
3. Acknowledge the dialogue, navigate to the "Teams Manifest" tab, adapt the manifest to your preferences, click "Save" and then "Upload". If you have configured a custom domain, remeber to override the "Api Domain" in the manifest. Uploading the manifest might take a few moments. Please note: You can even change the display name of the app that will appear under the icon in the end-users' Teams client.

4. The Unified Contacts Pro Teams app is now available in Teams Admin Center and you may distribute it as per your requirements.

   

Step 6: Import Contacts from 3rd Party Sources and CRM Systems

This is an optional step.

You may import contacts from 3rd party contact sources or CRM systems by leveraging the UC Database

pageUC Database

or SharePoint Online Lists:

pageSharePoint Online Lists