Provision 2nd line on Fanvil x3s, x5 phones

[Andriy]

Dear community

I have two 3CX instances (both PRO license). I have a phone with 2 lines. The first is provisioned for 1st instance. How can i provision 2nd line to be connected to 2nd instance? Do i just follow the same process and 3cx will automatically detect that 1st line is in use already and provision 2nd line?
Or do i need to keep something else in mind and follow a different process?

I would like to be able to make internal calls to My first instance and my second instance extensions without creating a bridge.

1st instance > My Fanvil phone line #1
2nd instance > My Fanvil phone line #2

thank you

 

[cobaltit]

You don't, that's what bridging is for. There's zero reason to induce the kind of headache you are asking for when you have bridging available.

 

[Andriy]

OK, with bridging i can solve this if I have 2 instances of 3cx

What if I have one instance of 3CX and one more SIP account from another provider not connected to 3cx (for example a 3rd party PBX)

What is the reason of having 2 lines on a phone anyway if you can not use the second one?

 

[leejor]

At this point, you would have to add the additional keys manually (on a set that allows each key to use a different SIP server). Of course, if the set re-provisions, this will probably all disappear, unless you create a custom template. If it is a one-off, then it may not be a headache, otherwise it may not be worth the effort.

 

[cobaltit]

OK, with bridging i can solve this if I have 2 instances of 3cx

What if I have one instance of 3CX and one more SIP account from another provider not connected to 3cx (for example a 3rd party PBX)

So in this case you would make another bridge or possibly a trunk to the other PBX.

What is the reason of having 2 lines on a phone anyway if you can not use the second one?

Not sure why are you are asking on the 3CX forum why Fanvil (or any manufacturer) put multiple SIP account capability on their phones. You'd want to ask them. And no one said you can't. You absolutely can web into the phone and do anything you want. It's just not supported in 3CX and never will be. Why would 3CX want to provision an entirely different set of PBX information into the phone? Where would it get said information? You need to think about this from a business standpoint and not a hobbyist standpoint. 3CX is a PBX, and no PBX that came before it (Nortel, Avaya,etc) had this capability. If you did need to interact with another PBX you setup some sort of trunk which is what bridging accomplishes.

 

[Andriy]

leejor, thank you for you reply. I have tried that and it is working fine.

cobaltit, Thank you for your reply. I am asking here, because I am a 3CX user and I want to know if anyone using 3CX has done the same and what results they had. I appreciate your opinion and I will do my best to do things 3CX way, but if you already kindly take time to respond would appreciate more explanation in this matter. For example, there are many phones that have 4, 6 and 8 lines. And there must be a reason for that, i suppose. This is not only for Fanvil, but for every SIP phone out there.
I understand, you might be frustrated with "stupid" questions by beginners - so sorry if I hurt your feelings.

Thank you all

 

[cobaltit]

Just to clarify, many phones come with the ability to support multiple SIP accounts. This is because the manufacturer does not have a single platform in mind but rather is making an 'open' device that can be used in many difference configurations. For example, for a single user at home it would be possible to setup many SIP accounts with different providers to allow for free or cheap calls around the world. But the moment you take this same device an pair it with a PBX, it is now configured and provisioned to work specifically with that PBX. And as such, there is no business case for doing what you want to do. If you want to talk to another PBX, it's assumed more than one or likely all PBX users will want to talk to another PBX so you connect at the trunk level. And if you have multiple SIP trunking providers for whatever reason then you would register them to the PBX because again, you are part of a larger entity and this makes it available to all PBX users. 3CX has designed the provisioning process to be seamless and in many cases touchless. Since 3CX would have no way of knowing this extra configuration information you want provisioned in the phone nor to standardize it, the only way to get 3CX to provision this information would be to make a custom template and then input this information into the template and then use 3CX to push that out. But unless you would use the same account information for multiple phones (which would be atypical) then using a template would be pointless as you have unique information per endpoint so making new template for each endpoint would be an administrative headache. Since this is a fringe case 3CX isn't going to assign development resources to accomplish this. So you are left with manual provisioning of the phone for those cases where you want a second account. Now that being said generally 3CX doesn't touch any phone specific settings that don't conflict with what it provisions. So if you add a second account manually, that should persist unless you factory reset the phone.

 

[Andriy]

Thank you very much for your detailed explanation. I now understand why 2nd line (as well as 3rd and 4th..) are left out with PBX setup.

The only business setup i can think off is using different DIDs when calling out.

For example, if I am a manager in charge of different departments - i might want to call someone with 1st DID and someone else with 2nd DID configured on second line.

Or this should also be achieved via PBX means? if so, could you please give me a hint - how is this done.

Again, thank you for your time!

 

[leejor]

Many systems have allowed additional extensions to be assigned (easily) to the other line keys on a set. I seem to recall seeing this feature requested in the ideas forum before. This would not be considered the same as assigning a line key to a different server/PBX/provider.

 

[cobaltit]

@Andriy

There we go. It's always better to start with the goal so we can figure out how to do it the 3CX way. As @leejor mentions the typical way to do this would be to provision multiple extensions with different caller-id's attached to them but 3CX does not currently support that. So the only native 3CX way to this is with a IP phone outbound rules and steering digits paired with trunks. So you dial '9' to go out with one caller-id and then '8' for another, etc. With the soft phone you can provision multiple extensions and switch between them. Otherwise @voiptoys has an add-in that will let you select caller-id on the fly.

 

[Andriy]

Thank you all for your input.