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Digium’s Switchvox is already easy to configure but if you want the greatest in telephone system simplicity, try out the Switchvox phone configuration tool. It auto-discovers and provisions Polycom telephones making adding a phone a quick, painless process. Switchvox SMB includes 10 provisioning tokens; you can purchase additional tokens for additional phones. This post and associated screen shots refer to Switchvox Version 3.5.

To check how many Phone Configuration Tokens you are registered to your system, log into your Switchvox server as an administrator and go to Machine Admin > Updates.

You will see information about your server including the quantity of Phone Configuration Tokens you have available and the number that have been used.

Switchvox discovers the Polycom telephones on your local area network (LAN) and displays them in the web interface if you are logged in as an admin. Go to System Setup > Phone Setup to see the phones on your network. Note that the server can only see phones on your LAN not remote telephones or potentially complicated LANs (like over multiple subnetworks).

Select the phones that you want to configure. The next screen relates a specific telephone with a specific extension that you have already configured. Fill in or select the extension that you want to assign to this phone. The name and email fields will be populated automatically when you select an existing extension.

Once the telephone is configured Switchvox will reboot the phone and automatically configure it for your PBX! You can view configured phones by going to System Setup > Phone Setup and then click on Configured Phones. A configured phone will look like this:

Switchvox will provision your phone with one line key active. For example, if you have an IP 600, 601, 650, or 670 you will have six line keys to the left of the screen. These keys can be used for your extension or as a buddy key (like a speed dial button plus user status such as busy or idle). It is helpful to have multiple buttons programmed as your extension so that you can accept and place multiple calls and easily move between them by pressing the Hold key, and then pressing a line button to activate another call.

If you want to override the default configuration of one line key for your phone you must log into the phones user interface. (To get the IP address that you’ll need to log in, hit the following buttons on your phone: Menu > Status > Network > TCP/IP Parameters) Open a web browser and enter your telephone’s IP address.  The default user name is “Polycom” and the default password is “456″. To change your phone’s line appearances click “Lines” at the top of the page, in the Line 1 table change Num Line Keys to the quantity of buttons that you want to use as your extension, scroll down and click the Submit button. Your phone will reboot.

Following is a Polycom IP 601 with the Num Line Keys set to 4. The first four line buttons default to your extension number. All four buttons can be used to place an outbound call using extension 464. The first inbound call will ring to the top button. If you receive a second call it will ring to the second button and so forth until you use all four buttons.

10 digit local dialing
Some regions of the United States require or allow dialing local telephone numbers using 10 digits. Phoenix, AZ is a typical example. We have three primary local area codes (480, 602, 623) and users must dial numbers not in their own area code by dialing ten digits. Most users are accustomed to ten-digit dialing and typical Switchvox administrators like to configure Switchvox to make their users happy. Configure ten-digit dialing under System Setup > Outgoing Calls.

Following is a simple 10 digit outgoing call rule (users in this example dial 9 for outbound call):

Your user’s telephones must also anticipate ten-digit dialing. Go to System Setup, Phone Setup, click Show Advanced Options. Check the Use 10 digit local dialing and then Save Advanced Options. You can also use the Custom Digit Map field for more advanced Polycom digit map settings. Contact Chromis for assistance with Polycom digit maps.