Managing Phones As Administrator
Overview
This will cover the basics in managing and configuring your Phones from the BG Admin Portal.
From the BG Admin Portal you can manage your Phones, click on Phones on the left hand side. From here you will see all your phones.
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INFO: You will need to contact your Service Provider to add phones or remove phones from this list. This is done using the MAC addresses of the devices. |
In this example this Business Group has 3 phones. The Polycom VVX 411 and Yealink T46S have been assigned to subscribers. The Snom D785 is not assigned to a subscriber. The portal allows you to provision any phone in this list to any of your subscribers without the need for contacting your Service Provider. To jump to the Provisioning section click here.
Phone configuration is managed by using Phone Profiles. You have two types of Phone Profiles:
- Business Group Profiles
- Subscriber Phone Profiles
Business Groups Profiles are optional, but are ideal to manage and make changes to devices across the entire Business Group without changing each individual phone profile. You would create one profile for each make and model of device. With Business Groups Profiles you can lock certain settings down to stop individuals making changes to their phone profile.
An example of using Business Group Profile would to enable Hot Desking. This would allow for all phone in your Business Group to use Hot Desking while only need to create one Business Group profile per a device model.
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INFO: Any change made to Business Groups Profiles will goto all phones that use that profile |
Subscriber Phone Profiles these are created per a subscriber when that subscriber first registers on a new device. These profiles will contain the the individual settings like speed dials, monitored extensions etc.
See the Business Group Profiles page and Subscriber Phone Profile for further information.
Business Group Profiles
Phone profiles are split into 2 sections Business Group Profiles and Subscriber Phone Profiles.
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INFO: Adding, modifying and removing of Business Group Profiles can only be done from the BG Admin Portal. |
Business Group Profiles
These are optional, but are ideal to manage and make changes to devices across the entire Business Group without changing each Subscriber phone profile. You would create one profile for each make and model of device.
An example of this would to enable Hot Desking. This would allow for all phones in your Business Group to use Hot Desking while only needing to create one Business Group Profile per a device model.
Lets say you have 15 phones in total 5 Polycom VVX 411, 5 Yealink T46S and 5 Snom D785 to enable Hot Desking this would only need 3 Business Group Profiles to be created.
You can create and manage your Business Group Profiles by going to Phones within the BG Admin Portal and clicking on manage your phone profiles. If you have not already created a Business Groups Profile beforehand you will see the following screen. Click on Create new profile.
Select the make and model of the phone you would like to add.
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INFO: You must always select the exact model of your phone. Selecting a Yealink T42S phone profile WILL NOT work with a Yealink T46S phone. |
This will now create the default profile, this is same as the subscriber phone profile as if a subscriber had just registered that device.
Now we can make the changes that will effect all Yealink T46S devices within your Business Group. Click on Edit
This will offer all the functionality and Soft Keys that are available for that device that you would see in the web interface of the phone. While this page does look overwhelming most settings you would not need to be changed. You will be able to search for various settings by using the Search in the right corner, depending on phone model you may be able to click on the soft keys on the phone picture, this will then take you directly to the Soft Key Settings.
Depending on phone model the options will differ.
An example of using Business Group Profiles would be to set a Speed Dial for the Office Manager for a company, once this has been saved all users that are using the Yealink T46S would have this key set.
In this example we will use Soft Key 10 as the Speed Dial to the Office Manager
Once the changes have been saved, you must now reboot all the phones that are using this profile. Is this case it would all the Yealink T46S devices.
After the phone(s) have rebooted Soft Key 10 will be a Speed Dial with the label Office Manager.
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INFO: If any of the subscriber have already has assigned Soft Key 10 to another function this will be overwritten when applying the Business Group Profile however they can change this back from the End Users CommPortal. Unless it has been locked. |
To lock a setting so the end user/subscriber cannot change it click on the Padlock icon and change Writable by to Admin and click Apply. Then click on Save changes in the lower right corner.
When the subscriber logs into their CommPortal to manage the device and they will see Soft Key 10 grey out and will be unable to change it.
You can also make a setting unreadable to a subscriber, by hiding it from their view, to do this click on the Pad lock icon and change Writable By to Admin and Readable By to Admin then click Apply. Then click on Save changes in the lower right corner.
You can see from the screen shot below that Soft Key 10 is no longer visible.
If you have made a mistake in configuring a profile and the phones are not working as expected after been rebooted, you revert all changes by using the Reset all to defaults option.
Click on Reset to Confirm. Then click on Save changes in the lower right corner. You must now reboot all devices using this profile.
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INFO: This will NOT reset the configuration changes the subscriber has made to his subscriber phone profile for example if the subscriber has added several speed dials then these will still remain after rebooting the device as they have been set on the Subscriber Phone Profile unless they have been over written by the Business Group Profile |
Subscriber Phone Profiles
From the BG Admin Portal you can also make changes to Subscriber Phone Profiles directly.
From the Bg Admin portal click on Phones on the subscribers phone you would like to modify click on Actions then Configure Phone.
Click on the Subscriber Phone Profile you would like to edit.
If you have created a Business Group Profile for this model of phone then you will see these changes on this subscribers phone profile. This page is exactly the same as editing the Business Group Profile however any changes made here will only effect this Subscribers Phone Profile after the changes have been saved and the phone has been rebooted.
You can also reset the Subscribers Phone Profile from here as well. Reseting the Subscriber Phone Profile from here will use the Business Group Profile as it defaults. This is useful if the subscriber is having issues after they have made changes to their Phone Profile.
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INFO: If no Business Group Profile is setup for this device than it will restore the original defaults as when it was first provisioned. |
Provisioning Phones
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INFO: If you are missing phones from this list then you will need to contact your Service Provider with MAC addresses of the devices you would like to be added. You will also need to contact your Service Provider to remove a device from this list. |
Depending on your order and configuration you may have already provisioned all your phones to subscribers you may also have requested phone to be added but not provisioned to a subscriber. You can see from this example that the Snom D785 has not been assigned to a subscriber.
In this example we are going to to assign the Snom D785 to the subscriber 01132991001. Tick the check box next to phone that you would like to assign, then enter the subscribers phone number and click on Assign to Line.
Now we need to set the authentication so the device in question can contact the provisioning server and download the correct configuration for that subscriber. You can either set an Authenticate until time or just click on Allow authentication for an hour from now. Then click OK
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INFO: We strongly advise against leaving authentication open for more than a couple of hours as this could leave your phones open to attacks from the outside world. |
Next you need to reboot the device for the new configuration to be download. Depending on the firmware on your device is may reboot several times before the configuration has completed and the user is registered. Once the user is registered the phone is ready to be used.
When completed successfully the question mark box next the phone will also change to a picture of that phone.
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INFO: If the phone fails to download the configuration you may need to speak to your Service Provider to discuss how the phone is been adopted. You may also have to manually configure the phone with the correct provisioning URL. |
Also from this page you remove a subscriber from a phone or change the description, click on Actions and then Change phone
On the Change Phone screen you will be to change the description or remove the phone from that subscriber.
To remove a phone from a subscriber untick the Assigned to Line box and then click Apply.
You will now need to reboot the phone to fully remove that subscriber. Once the phone has been removed it is ready to be assigned to another subscriber.
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INFO: Any changes to the Subscriber Phone Profile for that device will be saved. If you assign the subscriber back to that device they automatically use their existing Subscriber Phone Profile. |