Provisioning a Polycom SoundPoint IP 320, 321, 330, 331, 335, 450, 550, 560, 650, 670 and SoundStation IP 5000, 6000, 7000 with 3CX Phone System

This guide has been tested with Bootrom 4.3.0 and SIP firmware 3.3.1 (Combined). Be aware that different firmware revisions may have different web interface formats and functionality.

This FAQ is based on a new phone or one that has been reset to factory defaults. It is recommended to reset the phone to factory defaults before upgrading to the latest firmware.

Important: Firmware 3.3.1 includes changes in the Polycom provisioning system. Before provisioning phones with the latest 3CX template, do the following:

  1. Go to the 3CX Phone System Provisioning folder and delete all previous polycom configuration files. The configuration file structure has changed and the phones will not provision correctly if older files are kept there.
  2. Delete sip.cfg and 000000000000.cfg files if present. These are obsolete in firmware 3.3.1.

The easiest way to set up a phone for use with 3CX Phone System is to use the built-in provisioning functionality within 3CX Phone System. This will allow the phone to configure itself by retrieving a 3CX -generated phone configuration file. To fully take advantage of this, you can configure your DHCP Server to also deliver to the phone the location from where it can retrieve its configuration file – the result will be completely automated phone configuration. For configuring DHCP reservation using Option 66 click here.

This is a 3-step process:

  1. Enable provisioning for an extension to create the phone's configuration files.
  2. Tell the phone where to get its configuration files from.
  3. Optionally configure advanced options such as Time Zone from the Phone Provisioning node.

Enabling Provisioning for an Extension

  1. Select the extension you want to provision and go to the "Phone Provisioning" tab.


  2. In the "MAC Address" field, enter the phone's 12-character MAC Address. This information is normally printed on the back of the phone.
  3. In the "Model" field, select the model number of the phone you want to provision.
  4. At the moment the display language for Polycom phones cannot be changed, therefore the default English internal language will be applied.
  5. If your 3CX Phone System machine has multiple network interfaces, select the interface IP Address through which the phone will be connecting to the 3CX Phone System machine using the "Select Interface" drop down. You can skip this step if you have only one network card in your 3CX Phone System machine.
  6. If you have the Polycom Backlit Expansion Module attached to a SoundPoint IP 650, or a Polycom Colour Expansion Module attached to a SoundPoint IP 670 (a.k.a. sidecar units), you can set the BLF fields to monitor the status of other extensions. BLF can not be set on Polycom IP 3XX models. On the IP 4X0, 5X0 and 6X0 without sidecar, only a limited number of blf's can be added depending on how many keys are available on the phone.  
  7. Click on the "OK" button at the bottom of the page to create the configuration files. These will be created in the provisioning folder in 3CX Phone System.

Getting the Phone to Retrieve its Configuration Files

Now the phones must be told to download the configuration files from the central server. This has to be done using a DHCP reservation and setting Option 66. It is not possible to specify the provisioning path manually for Polycom phones. For more information on how to configure option 66 for Polycom phones, check this guide on How to auto-provision IP phones with DHCP 'option 66'.

Note: When Option 66 is set up, Polycom phones will expect to retrieve all necessary files from the string specified in 'option 66'. For example if the Option 66 sting is configured to 'http://10.172.0.15:5000/provisioning', the phone will go to the provisioning folder and before requesting configuration files, it will check if there are any available firmware updates - 'bootrom.ld' and 'sip.ld'. Therefore it is important that when you download the firmware for Polycom, both the Bootrom and the sip firmware are extracted and placed in the provisioning folder. See Advanced configuration options section below for more information.

Advanced Configuration Options (Time Zone, DST, Firmwares, Phone Display Language)

You can configure Time Zone, DST and other options from the Phone provisioning node. From here you can also edit the provisioning templates and include custom configuration options into the templates. For more information:

For more information on configuring IP Phones, visit our Support blog.  

SIP Phone Configuration Guides (Preferred)

SIP Phone Configuration Guides (Supported)

SIP Phone Configuration Guides (Tested)