Endpoint Manager doing nothing for me

Yesterday I purchased the Endpoint Manager module thinking that it would make my life easier managing the fleet of Poly VVX350 devices I just deployed. Specifically, so that I can easily deploy configuration changes to all of them, front of mind being a couple lines of XML that are needed to make Paging work, but also so that as users come and go I can more easily provision and deprovision phones.

No part of this is providing any function benefit for me and I’m getting pretty frustrated with it.

  • Phones that were manually programmed to talk to the PBX show up in “Network Scan” but not new phones that I’ve connected to the network
  • I added a brand for Polycom devices, and a template for polycom_vvx350, and within I set basic details like wallpaper image and destination address, and provisioning server (both our IP for the PBX itself)
  • I’ve used Extension Mapping to connect all my extensions to the MAC and IP of the device it’s assigned to, but none of them actually do anything, it just says they haven’t been rebuilt
  • I’ve been trying to set up a new device from scratch and it just does nothing, I’ve created and assigned it in Endpoint Manager but it will not provision. I even went into the phone and manually set the provisioning server, nothing. I saw on a video they said to use FTP to provision a VXX410, but the only option I have is HTTP, but it isn’t working. And if I have to manually access these phones to set the provisioning server, that really defeats the purpose of this module for me, since I was trying to eliminate having to log into them to provision each one.
  • In firmware management the most up to date firmware available for the Polycom brand is 1.07… these phones are all on 6.4.6.xxxx. And I don’t see anywhere that I can upload modern firmware manually, so this whole section is useless?
  • In global settings the admin password is required to be 6 characters, but all my devices are set to 3 characters. Is this so that the PBX can access the phone to provision it, or this is what it’s supposed to change the admin password TO?

I believe “Basefile Settings” is where I need to add the lines of XML to fix Paging, but I am a long way from there if I can’t even get these to talk to the phones.

At this point I’ve spent several hours banging my head against the wall on this. This was supposed to make my life easier, not give me a case of buyer’s remorse. Is there some modern documentation of making this work with Poly phones somewhere? I’ve found a few links to a wiki that are now broken, and the handful of videos I’ve found that are in the proximity of what I’m looking for are 5+ years old and for older versions of FreePBX (I’m on 16).

I hope this doesn’t come across overly negative. I’m just frustrated and looking for solutions.

I can’t speak specifically about Poly phones but generally speaking you set up a DHCP option on the network so that the phones see it and reach out to the PBX to pull their provisioning. If you don’t have the ability to do that and would have to adjust each phone by hand then I agree that EPM is a significantly lesser value for you.

Says it is not tested or certified in the documentation:
EPM-Supported Devices - PBX GUI - Sangoma Documentation (atlassian.net)

For the firmware: You need to extract all the .sip.ld files and put them into /tftpboot/polycom/1 folder (overwrite what is there) if you are set up using the first firmware slot for Polycom - then when you provision the phones, they will pull the correct files and provision to a firmware where this actually works.

Although its not where I think he landed @GSnover has spent some time in the Poly/EPM space and might be able to help you.

Interesting. The VVX350 is listed within Endpoint Manager as an assignable device. I have a conference room device, a Trio 8800, that isn’t there - but the VVX350 is.

Good to know I can upload current firmware

Thanks.

Okay, I’ve successfully gotten the phone to connect and provision now. In the phone’s provisioning server settings, I set the type to HTTP and I had to had the port (:84) to the end of the server address. Now it’s pulling the config down as expected. Progress!

Next question: is it possible to set the user’s name (for caller ID purposes) with endpoint manager? I figured out the line labels (within the template settings, set to extension-name), but when I call or am called to my test phone here it only shows the number. For pretty much all my users that’s going to be a worse experience than seeing the name of the person calling.

edit: nevermind - that setting sets it for both