Page all phones/identities in office

[bpb]

I'm a bit confused as to how to go about enabling paging on our office setup.

Here's what we want: pick up the phone and be able to speak a message that will play on all phones (or groups of 16, if that's the limit) like they do in stores.  "Assistance needed in hardware section."  You know, like that.

Here's what we've got:

Netvanta 7100 firmware R10.9.3.E.  UC Server (ECS) version 5.4.2.8205.  Polycom VVX 410 phones.  About 64 users.

We're all on the same network/IP/subnet/PRI/what have you.  No complex multi-office location setups or anything like that.  Just one big phone pool, so to speak.

My confusion comes from these documents: TN117 - NetVanta ECS and BAS Feature Codes These codes don't seem to work, although perhaps they would be different for our setup.

Configuring Handset Paging Groups in the NetVanta 7000 Series

Would the above document apply to our setup, since we have the UC Server?  The UC Server has "Paging Groups", but they don't seem to be explained in detail.  I could be overlooking something.  I probably am.

Also, the "Configuring Mass Notifications for NetVanta BCS" document is easy enough to follow until step 2 on page 5.  "In the Paging Groups menu, select the check box next to the extension to which you would like to add members..."  There aren't any extensions listed in the Netvanta 7100; they're all in the UC Server interface.

Finally, I suspect this has to be set up through the UC Server interface, because I followed this document's instructions to enable paging on the Polycom phones, ADTRAN/Polycom Group Paging Configuration Guide but it did not work.  I was able to manually enable the "Paging" feature on the phone, by going into the Admin Settings menu, etc.  But, I don't see where those groups match with the groups in the UC Server.

I'm sure I'm just missing out on the correct documentation.  If someone could point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated!

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Brian, paging on UC is only supported when phones are actually registered to the UC server and it is functioning as your PBX. In your setup, the 7100 is your PBX and UC is present for some auxiliary functions, so paging would have to be set up on the 7100.

Paging groups can be configured on the 7100, but they're limited to 16 users each. Your options if you wanted to page everyone would be to connect an external paging system to the port on the back of the 7100 or to try implementing this:

Configuring Mass Notifications for NetVanta BCS

Essentially, that guide goes through creating multiple paging groups on the 7100 and creating an auto-attendant service on UC that records a message, then calls each paging group in sequence to play the message.

Thanks

Jay

[bpb]

Cool, I can handle that.  The extensions not being present (or immediately listed where I was looking) was what was throwing me off.  We started out with just the 7100, so I was pretty good with just that, but I missed out on some of the things the UC Server "took over" from the 7100.

Thanks a ton for the answer!

[bpb]

One follow up question, however:

Enabling "Paging" on the Polycom VVX 410 phones: ADTRAN/Polycom Group Paging Configuration Guide

I did this:

1.  Browse to the IP address of your NetVanta 7000 series GUI http://<ip address>/admin, for example:

http://10.10.10.1/admin

2.  Navigate to the Voice > IP Phone Globals > Global Files page.

3.  On the Polycom customer-sip.cfg tab paste in <ptt ptt.pageMode.enable="1" ptt.pageMode.codec="G.711Mu"/> inside the <localcfg> tags.

4. Click Save.

But, when I rebooted my phone it did not show the "Paging" option.  I then went into my phone's admin options and manually enabled paging, and it did show up upon rebooting.

So...am I doing it right?  Should I be enabling paging like this?  Will I have to enable paging manually on each phone?  (Which I actually could do...)

[Anonymous]

Brian, you don't need to enable that in every phone. If you're using the aforementioned guide in conjunction with UC, the phone doesn't even really know that it's paging anything, it's just making a phone call. Thanks

Jay