Does anyone know about Ext 800 with Cisco SPA50x phones?

[efounco]

For some reason, when I dial extensions 800 on our Cisco SPA50x phones, it doesn't actually dial but instead initiates a company wide intercom (i.e. like *9 + <ext>) across all of the Cisco SPA50x phones in our company. We are using firmware revision 7.8.9c currently, but it also works with 7.4.8a and 7.4.9a. I'm trying to figure out if this is an undocumented feature of 3CX or something to do with the phones. I discovered it by accident while trying to assign extensions 800 to an IVR. Anyways, the feature works AWESOME! The audio initiates instantly, has little or no delay and doesn't interrupt a telephone call if you have multi-call capabilities turned on in 3CX.

 

[eagle2]

Depends on the dial plan in your Cisco phone or what 800 is doing as an extension in your 3CX, normally 800 will be a ring group or DR. Please your phone / 3CX settings. Nothing to do with firmware, etc.

Regards

 

[efounco]

I'm not 100% positive, but the feature appears to be built into the phones and not a function of 3CX. I'm using the default 3CX dial plan, and I don't have extension 800 configured.

Give it a try yourself. Connect 2 SPA50x phones to a 3CX server (using firmware 7.4.8a or higher). Then, dial 800# on one of the phones. An intercom like communication will establish between ALL of the SPA50x phones on the subnet regardless if you have extension 800 configured or not.

I'm assuming this is preparatory and how Cisco manages intercom communication on their UC500 systems. Regardless, it works very well and doesn't tie up a line like paging groups...

 

[eagle2]

I can't reproduce this. Please make a dump of dial plan setting in your SPA phone.
Alternatively, use a dial plan like:

([1-8]xx|9,xx.|0xx.)

meaning 3-digit extension numbers starting with 1-8, '9' as access code for external numbers, numbers starting with '0' and longer than 3 digits.

Regards

 

[SY]

I'm not 100% positive, but the feature appears to be built into the phones and not a function of 3CX. I'm using the default 3CX dial plan, and I don't have extension 800 configured.

Give it a try yourself. Connect 2 SPA50x phones to a 3CX server (using firmware 7.4.8a or higher). Then, dial 800# on one of the phones. An intercom like communication will establish between ALL of the SPA50x phones on the subnet regardless if you have extension 800 configured or not.

I'm assuming this is preparatory and how Cisco manages intercom communication on their UC500 systems. Regardless, it works very well and doesn't tie up a line like paging groups...

Please try to configure ring group (type "paging")... Do you see interesting settings?

 

[efounco]

My dial plan is: [x*]., but that's irrelevant. I control calls using outbound rules in 3CX, not the dial plan. This dial plan is set by the default 3CX provisioning template.

TY, All Ring/Paging groups work fine; nothing is out of the ordinary. I have 3 of them configured from extension 500 - 503. Currently, I have nothing configured for extension 800. If I dial extension 800 using one of my SNOM or Grandstream phones, it reports back as an invalid extension. However, if I dial extension 800 using one of my Cisco SPA50x phones, it will page ALL the Cisco SPA50x phones that I have on the network (30 of them). The LCD on the SPA50x reads "To:All".

Just for testing purposes, I created a mailbox on extension 800 and dialed into it using a SNOM M9. It worked fine. When I did the same using a SPA50x phone, it paged all the phones on the network again.

This leads me to believe that it's a "feature" of the phone and not 3CX.

 

[SY]

My dial plan is: [x*]., but that's irrelevant. I control calls using outbound rules in 3CX, not the dial plan. This dial plan is set by the default 3CX provisioning template.

TY, All Ring/Paging groups work fine; nothing is out of the ordinary. I have 3 of them configured from extension 500 - 503. Currently, I have nothing configured for extension 800. If I dial extension 800 using one of my SNOM or Grandstream phones, it reports back as an invalid extension. However, if I dial extension 800 using one of my Cisco SPA50x phones, it will page ALL the Cisco SPA50x phones that I have on the network (30 of them). The LCD on the SPA50x reads "To:All".

Just for testing purposes, I created a mailbox on extension 800 and dialed into it using a SNOM M9. It worked fine. When I did the same using a SPA50x phone, it paged all the phones on the network again.

This leads me to believe that it's a "feature" of the phone and not 3CX.

Of course, it is the feature of the phone, and it (the phone) prohibits to dial extension 800...

 

[eagle2]

Remove Multiple Paging Group Parameters from you phone settings.
See picture.

 

[efounco]

Yep, that was the ticket, thanks! I'm going to add this value to my Cisco template and utilize the integrated feature for global paging. It works very well!