Sharing "lines" between phones

Hello all! Full disclosure, I’m recently new to Freepbx as well as VoIP, but I’m learning a lot quickly and have a good foundation of networking (to some extent) and computers in general. A quick setup description of my setup before I get to my question. I’m using Freepbx (ver ) and 2 Avaya 9608 phones as a test platform before I implement the setup permanently (the final configuration will have more phones). I was able to convert them from H.323 to SIP and correctly provision the phones using the 46xxsettings.txt and 96x1upgrade.txt files and they can successfully talk to Freepbx just fine. I was able to research and fix most of the issues (including getting a custom screensaver) I had using various searches and articles, but I’m stumped on this one. On to my question. How do I configure the phones so that when I pickup a “line” on one phone it shows it in use on another phone? I’m not even sure what that is called, so I wasn’t able to search for it. I know these phones are older and are somewhat limited on their functionality when converted to SIP, so if this isn’t possible, I can live with it, but it would be nice to see which “lines” are in use on other phones. My current configuration has SET PHNNUMOFSA 4 which displays 4 “lines” on the right side of softkeys on each phone. I would like to have it where if I pushed the first line on one phone it would display that line was in use on the other phone. Currently each phone operates independently of each other. Thanks in advance for you help and I’m glad to be a part of this community!

What you’re referring to is SLA (shared line appearances) or a key system and it’s not supported in FreePBX. It’s a legacy concept from the days when PBXs were connected to a finite number of analog lines.

Ahhhh, very good. So, if I wanted to get one call from the first phone to another phone, am I correct in assuming it has to be transferred using the function key on the phone?

Yes, a direct transfer works when you know where the call needs to go, otherwise you use park. You can put a caller temporarily in a parking lot, and then have someone retrieve it from the parking lot once they’re aware it’s there.

I got you. In this application there will only be a small number of phones used (5 or less) and all users would know that a call would be coming to them from someone else. Thanks so much for the help!

Learn parking and how to use it. It seems redundant at first when compared to transferring calls directly but it’s much better (IMO) in actual practical use.

+1 for parking. Not exactly the same as SLA, but less of a learning curve if you have some older users who are stuck on the way key systems work

Awesome, I’ll definitely take a look. Thanks again!

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