Cisco 7821, 7841, 8841, 6851 Templates

[ross.downie1]

I have been advised by support to ask on the community forum if anyone has had any experience or has built / modified an existing Cisco template to allow the Cisco 3PCC Multi platform phones to connect / auto provision to 3cx without having to log into each phone.

We are currently able to have the following models 7821, 7841, 8841, 6851 auto provision to where we need them to point too but thats about it. Without a template the phones dont pull down the required provisioning information etc.

We can manually program the telephones to connect and interact and work on a basic level but would like to see them have some more functionality like BLF etc.

Any help / advice is very much appreciated.

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi Ross,

It's nice that you got the phones to have basic calls, but we would recommend to replace them with fully supported phones like the ones in this list if you want full functionality. https://www.3cx.com/sip-phones/

There are no further plans to support any of the above phones you mentioned.

 

[ross.downie1]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

Why would there not be future plans to include them?

 

[JohnS_3CX]

Hi Ross,

No reason in particular, but we already have a good amount of phones from various manufacturers that are:

- already working
- compatible
- supported by the manufacturer for firmware updates
- at good price points for the majority of our customers

 

[FridayIT]

I have been advised by support to ask on the community forum if anyone has had any experience or has built / modified an existing Cisco template to allow the Cisco 3PCC Multi platform phones to connect / auto provision to 3cx without having to log into each phone.

We are currently able to have the following models 7821, 7841, 8841, 6851 auto provision to where we need them to point too but thats about it. Without a template the phones dont pull down the required provisioning information etc.

We can manually program the telephones to connect and interact and work on a basic level but would like to see them have some more functionality like BLF etc.

Any help / advice is very much appreciated.

I played around a bit with some older cisco phones trying to get them to work in 3CX. while I was able to somewhat get them to work, it was never ideal. (we got to roughly the same point of functionality as you did)

Cisco has some... interesting... protocols and behaviour There are also 2 "versions" of each model, one that is more "open" and one that is locked down to registering to a cisco phone system. Great phones if you are using a cisco phone system, otherwise they can be "fun"

I highly recommend migrating to "vendor neutral" hardware such as Yealink (we use them) or Fanvil. Not only is the software more "open" for these devices. they are supported by a large variety of vendors so you avoid being "locked in" to one phone system.

 

[ross.downie1]

I played around a bit with some older cisco phones trying to get them to work in 3CX. while I was able to somewhat get them to work, it was never ideal. (we got to roughly the same point of functionality as you did)

Cisco has some... interesting... protocols and behaviour There are also 2 "versions" of each model, one that is more "open" and one that is locked down to registering to a cisco phone system. Great phones if you are using a cisco phone system, otherwise they can be "fun"

I highly recommend migrating to "vendor neutral" hardware such as Yealink (we use them) or Fanvil. Not only is the software more "open" for these devices. they are supported by a large variety of vendors so you avoid being "locked in" to one phone system.

Hi and thank you for commenting, i know what you mean by "some... interesting... protocols and behaviour"

Our preferred phones are the Yealink T42s / T46s but i was just looking for a template to see if we could repurpose some of the handsets. The Cisco ones were connected to another VOIP platform and seemed a waste to not be able to utilise them.

We have had enquiries to supply Cisco handsets which was also the other reason too but have always supplied Yealink as when starting out and using the 3CX these worked best for us with the other thinks we have in place.

 

[ross.downie1]

Hi Ross,

No reason in particular, but we already have a good amount of phones from various manufacturers that are:

- already working
- compatible
- supported by the manufacturer for firmware updates
- at good price points for the majority of our customers

Hi thanks for the update.

Yeah I understand that and agree, we use Yealink phones as our main handsets and have set up a full provisioning platform to support this, the same platform we have also can redirect other phones including Cisco 3PCC Models. We have had some enquiries (mainly medical practices) recently and they have enquired about the supply of Cisco and as we cant supply them to a VOIP platform then they go elsewhere.

I just though Cisco being as large as they are 3CX would support the handsets. Hopefully in the future releases it will come.