I’ve seen quite a few posts regarding this module, but I am hoping someone can point me to the cause of my issue.
I’m aware you have to fill up the 12 line slots before the entries will “spill over” to the expansion module - I populated the phone with a full 12 line keys and since it uses the first line key for “itself” it automatically booted the last entry to the module (picture)
However, none of the programmed keys from Endpoint Manager will show up.
In the web interface on the phone, I can add a number of line keys and it will fully populate the expansion module and “push” the initial 12 entires to the end. I take that as a confirmation that the module and phone are working properly (picture)
I’ve gone through some of the older tickets, and it seems that the expansion module has a button in Endpoint Manager that is missing from mine called exp1 (picture) - also I’m unclear if I’m even looking at the right view - I’m looking at mine from the autoset, where I set the keys for the phone. (picture)
Also, is there any chance having the web interface enabled interferes with the expansion module populating correctly? I’ve tried just about everything I can find in the GUI.
thanks for the response - that’s exactly what how I configured it, but it seems that the phone doesn’t recognize the expansion module configuration from Endpoint Manager - or that the module is connected - entries on the phone do spill over to the expansion module but entries on the Template FOR the expansion module are ignored even though it is associated with the phone - and the Exp1 fields in the screenshot I posted above do not appear.
Not many responses to previous posts but my past experience with Polycom and Expansion modules and FreePBX has been positive. I’d sure like to get this resolved for our School Receptionist so she can stop referring to a printout to transfer calls.
OK I tried this - now the phone displays “300” (which is its extension) 12 times on the 411 screen and the Expansion module is completely blank. I’m giving up and going to purchase a different phone for the front desk. Thanks for the help but either the expansion module is broken (doubtful) or Endpoint manager isn’t working with the hardware.
I was able to get it to work with the web interface. The upside - it works! The downside, we can’t provision a replacement phone without retyping all of the line info - it would be nice if EPM would handle it.
Quick question though - I’d like to have all of the BLFs on the expansion module, and none on the phone screen. I’ve seen posts about blank BLFs but the web interface insists on an address which then displays in the line key position
I have plenty of vvx411s with lines and parks only on the phone, then having only BLFs / Extensions on the Expansion Car. You must have something wrong in Endpoint Manager.
It’s also possible to export the phone config and use a text editor to modify it into a form that will be acceptable to provision via TFTP. For some unknown reason Polycom decided to not -exactly- match the export file format to the tftp file format, they added in some additional tags in the export file that seem to mess up a tftp provisioning file.
I think that the fancy stuff has to be defined in a tftp file. For example with my Soundpoint IP 335 the phone can use LDAP to query a directory server if you define a directory button on one of the soft buttons. But there is nowhere to enter this into the phone’s webinterface nor does the webinterface show the LDAP info that the phone is using.
The reality is that when you get familiar with and conversant with a text editor, and TFTP server, you can create templates and “manually” provision a phone with far more control and precision and as fast as using EPM.
Because I’m a cheapskate, (LOL) I learned phone provisioning with my test phones using the Unix vi text editor, and tftpd on Linux, I never bought EPM. And because I picked up my test phones basically…anywhere I could get them…3/4 of them aren’t supported in EPM anyway. So the fact is that for me, I find EPM, and the other GUI-based phone provisioning interfaces - harder to use - than ASCII templates and vi at the command line.
With “commercial” installations the installers tend to settle on just a few models of phones and use those on every extension position. Setting up the first phone is the hard part, but once you get that dialed in, it’s simplicity to create a template, and then make a copy of that to provision another phone for a new extension.
Even the Cisco UCM - which has the same sort of GUI web approach for their phones - has a copy function, and when my sysadmin provisions a phone all he does is go into the UCM’s interface, makes a copy then edits it. Same exact thing as a manual config.
