I’m currently trying to learn about FreePBX for a future deployment I need to do.
Networking and Linux administration is not new to me, but PBXs are.
I want to implement a centrally managed phonebook.
The entries shall be separated into folders/sections (e.g. employees, internal phones, municipality administration…) and be easily searchable by name.
The phonebook should be available on 5 phones.
Which phones would be suitable for that?
I’ve got a couple OpenStage 40 phones for testing, but could not find any reference for the remote xml phonebook.
Otherwise It seems Snom and Yealink seems to have good available.
(btw. I’m in central Europe)
I’d like to get some used phones for testing. The options are just overwhelming.
Which method for the central phonebook would be the best suitable?
It seems a lot of people distribute it as xml file, LDAP seems to be another option.
It really depends on how you want to store your contacts. If you’re already storing your contacts on LDAP, this is probably your way to go. You could also use the Contact Manager and write a short PHP script that loops through all your contacts and displays them as an XML file.
We don’t have anything stored in LDAP yet.
xml phonebooks seem the most common variant.
I’d like to separate the contacts into folders and optionally add further info about the person (e.g. assistant, department lead).
So far it seems the xml variants are fairly basic and don’t support that.
Do you need only one central list of contacts or one separate list for each phone? Have you already figured out the format of the XML file? In the end it matters what you phones support. XML or LDAP shouldn’t be much of a difference.
We need a central contact list which shall be accessible on 5 phones.
Seems the OpenStage 40 only support LDAP, not XML.
But I also got another SNOM D765 which supports both. I’ll test a bit with that one.
I wanted to sort the contacts into groups (employees, municipality adminstration…). That’s one thing I’m currently stuck at.
Edit:
I tried it with a SNOM D765.
It seems that I can kinda sort according to the “Organisation”. But not really in a way that I’d like
I’d want to be able to structure the phonebook in separate sections/groups like colleagues, companies, emergency services.
So the person operating should be able to open the phonebook, open a specific group and then go through the group select the contact to call or search for the name.
