Wasn’t sure where to post this so if I’m in the wrong place, let me know.
FreePBX 14.0.2.14
Asterisk 13.20.0
Cisco SPA303 Software ver 7.6.2c
Initially, I could not get Call Pickup to work at all. I ended up enabling and disabling the option in Feature Codes and that seemed to set things right. I can use a Soft Phone to pickup my two SPA303 extensions.
The issue is that every time I try to pickup with *8 from the SPA303, I get back “Forbidden” on the display. If I try **ext I get “Invalid Number” on the display. When I watch the Asterisk CLI line, there is no activity.
So I’m thinking this has something to do with the Dial Plan on the SPA303. I’ve tried several times to input a dial plan value that should cover this but no luck. One would think adding the following would work but it doesn’t.
When there is nothing to pick up, Asterisk does send a 403 Forbidden for *8, so confirm that you have Call Groups and Pickup Groups set for all extensions. For a small system, you can set both to 1 for every extension.
I don’t know why your modified dial plan won’t pass either *8 or **123 to Asterisk. You could try sip debug to see whether the phone sends an INVITE on the failed attempt.
Well Sterart1, you are a genius. And I’m an idiot. I had to delete and re-add an extension and forgot to add the Call and Pickup Group to that phone. I went back and double-checked everything and found the issue after reading your post. So yeah, it’s working… Kinda? Directed Call pickup still isn’t working for the SPA but *8 is.
By default, the SPAs dial plan doesn’t allow directed call pickup, because the required dialling string is not present in the dial plan. You need to add the corresponding string to match your extensions number length, for example if your extensions are all 3 digits long, you need to add **xxx to the SPA dial plan.
arielgrin, you nailed it. Now it’s working. I’ve added it to my SPA303 Configuration Dirrections, along with all the other things I’ve needed to do. Amazingly, I’ve even gotten BLF to work the way it’s suppose too with all of these additions plus others I’ve found on my own.
Quick Question: You’ve answered several so far and I thank you. Is there a list or Wiki or website about what needs to be set on the SPA3xx/SPA5xx/Cisco phones in general for FreePBX? I’m sure I’m going to run into more problems but I like these phones and I’m getting good prices on them. I spend hours looking for the answer before coming here but I hate being the noob and always running for help.
Again, thanks to both Stewart1 and arielgrin. I went to bed and dreamed about this all night! What a nightmare…
Glad you got it working. To be honest, I managed to get them working by searching on Google. I made a list of the parameters and changes needes to make it work correctly, which by the way are not a lot, just the one about the dialplan and the correct string to use the line buttons as BLF. Other paramater that might need adjustment, depending on FreePBX config is the codec priority list. More often than not, even if all the codecs are selected in both places but the order is not the same, you end up with codec mismatch issues.
So far that has not been an issue but I’ll keep it in mind.
And you are right, it’s not bad getting it configured. Once you know what needs to be changed!
The easiest so far has been the SPA112 which I am using for Fax. Credentials and done! I’m not willing to try the FreePBX Fax module yet and I’ve read people who know more than I say to find other options.
