Bria Softphone Contacts

Import global contacts into the Bria Softphone client using an XML source URL.

Usecase

Bria Softphone client does not facilitate the option to centrally import a contact list for all users. This Python script fixes that shortcoming.

Parameter

BriaImportContacts.exe [url]
Example: BriaImportContacts.exe https://example.com/folder/contacts.xml

How it works

The Python script will read the contents of an XML file from a URL (parameter) and import it into the contact list of the local Bria user. The contacts file is an SQL Lite file which we can freely interact with. Before importing the XML file records the program will delete old imported records. Updates in the XML file will therefor get reflected after running this tool again. A good usecase is to run this program at startup of your endpoints.

The script also changes two settings in the user.config XML file:

• ContactPanelShowGroups is set to False
• ContactPanelSortByPresence is set to False
• LoginRememberDetails is set to True

You can comment this out, or add your own centralized settings.

The script creates a log file that you can use to debug any potential issues at %temp%\briaimportlog.txt.

XML format

The script uses a slightly modified version of the CiscoIPPhoneDirectory XML format. Check the example in the project folder.

Limitations

• Only tested on Windows 11.
• User needs to at least log into the Bria client once for the correct folders and files to be created which this script can modify.
• All contacts added by this script are readonly by design. They can not be changed, but can be deleted by the end-user. Running the script again will restore the deleted contact.
• This script is only ever tested on a single Bria environment. Use at your own risk! If for some reason the contacts database does get corrupted, deleting contacts.db and restarting the Bria client will create a new database.