Hi everybody,

I am an IPT engineer all of my experience in networking, and I am planning to learn something about programming IPT Apps.
I read Cisco Press: Developing Cisco IP Phone Services. But it very old book and it is not covering everything. I read many things on Cisco site and I am now confused, I really appreciate if someone can guide me how I should start? And what I should use?

For the time being I do not need to write programs for CUCCX, Presence or something like this. I need to start with simple apps for IP Phones. But it is good if someone can give me a general description about Unified Communications Apps.
 
Is there any training from Cisco?

start by downloading the IPPhone Services SDK and have a look at the examples and docs

At a high level:
 
- Provide a web server with CGI capabilities, or some other instance able to receive/reply to HTTP messaging (e.g. Tomcat)
- Create a web page/URL, which receives an HTTP request (from an IP phone), and provides the appropriate XML response - see the supported XML objects and their capabilities
- Configure UC manager by adding a new IP Phone Service, with URL pointing to your web service
 
 

True, the IP Phone Services SDK is primarily concerned with developing a UI for the phone display.  If the application the user interacts with needs to make UC manager configuration changes - say changing the phone's Calling Search Space to restrict it to 911/operator calls only - then the web server hosting the XML phoen app would need to use other APIs during its operation.
 
For specifically changing phone calling search space, this can be done via the AXL API:
 
http://developer.cisco.com/web/axl/docs
 
where you would submit an <updatePhone> request with the phone's device name and the calling search space name to change to.  The app could then send an <CiscoIPPhoneText> XML object to the phone saying 'phone locked', providing a softkey to start a UI for unlocking, etc.

In the realm of voice/video/collaboration, any of the APIs in this area might be of interest:
 
http://developer.cisco.com/web/cdc/tech/ucvoice

No particular fixed order, really, but if you get familiarity with those resources you should have a pretty complete understanding of what's possible and how to accomplish it.

Java Midlet API allows developer to create small java applications - including custom UI/animation/etc. -  that run on Cisco phones.  Currently only the 7925/26 wireless mobile phones support Midlets.
 
CUAE was an application development environment and application server/host which provided a nice GUI for developing apps using many of the APIs available for UCM in a unified framework.  Unfortunately it was complex and most developers preferred to continue writing directly to the APIs themselves, and CUAE is now end-of-life.

The Midlets are supported on the 9900 series phones as well. They are supported on the 7941/42/45/61/62/65s as well, but the performance is not really up to par (judging from Cisco Unity Connection's VisualVoicemail midlet.)

To avoid any confusion, while other models (such as those mentioned above) can support Cisco provided midlets (like Visual Voicemail), 3rd party midlet development is only supported on the 7925/26 phones.

Cisco has developed some Midlets that can be obtained from Cisco and installed/run on the phones (e.g. Visual Voicemail.)  However, midlets developed by 3rd parties can only be installed on 7925/26.  3rd party midlets on other phones are not supported due to resource constraints and security/stability architecture of the JVMs on the desk phones.

Just the phones themselves and an instance of UC Manager to connect them to - both of which can be obtained at significant discounts by CDN partners:
 
http://developer.cisco.com/web/partner/devresources
 
All other resources are freely available.