Hotdesking and Phone login

[ascentor]

Hi All,

My Company is about to move to a newly constructed office, which does not have any telephony and we are taking advantage of this to install a new IP PBX to service our telephony needs. I am trialling 3CX with a mixture of the 3CX & X-lite softphone and some Grandstream GXP-2000 hardphones.

As consultants who are away form the office for 2-3 days a week we have more employees than desks (and thereby hardphones) and i was planning on each user physically logging on to the hardphone when they are in the office to ensure calls were routed to that hardphone and any call forward to mobiles etc are cancelled. Can anyone confirm if this physical user login is achievable as I haven't yet been able to set this up using the hard and softphones I have.

Any advice gratefully received

DaveJ

 

[worksighted]

While this is not currently out there....I believe this to be possible and am working on some XML applications to accomplish this very thing....although I dont know if its possible with your particular hard phones. More to come....

 

[ascentor]

Thanks for the response I was beginning to think I was asking a very stupid question. Have you a rough idea when this new facility will be available?

 

[worksighted]

Few weeks maybe. Just something im delveoping as I saw that same need as you did. I will post back here when its ready along with config info. Im currently developing it for the Aastra 5xi series phones.

Mike

 

[ascentor]

Matt,

I take it your explaining a user profile? If so yes that would work but each phone would have to have all user profiles. There are 10 consultants and 5 desks so it wouldn't be too onerous to programme the 10 profiles into the 5 phones but a more elegant solution would be to have the ability for each user to login especially as the company grows. Is there a limit on the number of user profiles the SNOM can hold?

DaveJ

 

[Nebula]

The 360 and 320 models can support 12 identities, not sure if you can increase this with the key expansion module.

 

[moon1234]

I think what he is looking for is a Cisco like feature. You sit down at any desk, logon with your credentials at the phone and then the phone "becomes" your phone with your extension, speedials, etc. You can travel to another office in your company and logon to any hard phone and that will then be your phone with your extension.

I think this could be done, but it would require an integration between the IP PBX and the Particular Phone. This would be especially easy to do with Polycom phones and any other phone that uses an XML based configuration file.

The process as I would see it working is:

1. dial "phone capture extension" of 3CX
2. 3CX answers and records MAC address of device (For Polycom phones the config filename is based on mac address). For remote phones 3CX would need to know the current extension on the phone in order to find the config file with the proper mac address.
3. User types in voicemail username and password.
4. Phone system says "Thank You, please reboot your phone to capture it." Maybe include the menus or keys to do this.
5. 3CX finds config file for phone and updates it with config for that user.
6. Phone reboots and downloads updated config file.

This would be a very simple process. Where it would get more dicey is if you have a mix of different devices from different manufacturers. 3CX would need to provide a translation table for basic provisioning information. Since this is mostly done already in the commerical versions, I think it would be easy for 3CX to provide this feature. I think it would also be possible to extend the functionality to non-supported devices via a simple API. Most devices don't need a lot of information to be provisioned, just a way to properly format a configuration file.

 

[worksighted]

This is exactly what I am implementing for the Aastra. XML based application that authenticates the users credentials against 3CX. Im working out a few bugs and will post the application for general download.

Mike

 

[worksighted]

This will be available very, very soon. I am posting the details and beta information here....

http://3cxblog.worksighted.com

Initially this is for aastra, but I am extending to snom shortly.

Mike