how well do polycom phones work? A lot of my customers prefer these. Is there a guide in how to setup freepbx with with the polycom phones?
I did purchase Sysadmin pro and endpoint
I have personal experience deploying Aastra and older Polycom phones for small installations. As Mitel owns both brands now, I’m not sure where the new phones will be heading. Mitel’s support model has left a lot to be desired. With current models, if you are going to do fixed station provisioning, I would use Aastra as the web GUI of the phone is reasonably straight forward and responsive, Polycom’s, not so much. For the Polycoms, I decided to only provision with TFTP on my local network. I think the sound quality on the Polycom’s are a little better than the Aastra but they are close. This can vary a bit model to model within a brand so best to ask around or test it out yourself. I do have issues with Polycom’s with live overhead paging as the mic is sensitive and tends to feedback quickly if not properly placed. Many phones may have the same issue in this scenario.
I’ve not tired using any of the provisioning integration options with FreePBX.
Maybe try to buy a used model off ebay and experiment with it before making your decision. This might help prevent making the costly mistake of getting a model that doesn’t perform as you like. If you don’t like it you can always turn around and re-sell it.
which models would you recommend?
I’m only familiar with Grandstream, Yealink, and Sangoma. I can say that the Sangoma and Yealink are the easiest to setup out of the box. Create your template in Endpoint Manager, Map your extensions, set Option 66 on your DHCP server to point to your FreePBX IP, fire up the phones and your good to go. Also check out RestApps. You can login/logout instead of using extension mapping, have visual voicemail, visual parking etc.
I do not have an internal server but DHCP comes from my router. Can I just set these static?
Sure. Just log into the phone gui and set the tftp server to what ever IP your FreePBX is using.
I only install Polycom. They are simple enough to setup and haven’t really given me any issues that weren’t my fault. We are starting to look at the VVX line of phones in certain cases.
I haven’t purchased sysadmin, but have End Point Manager. EPM works well and has a few nice features. You WILL need to familiarize yourself with Polycom’s config files if you want to do any further configuration beyond what’s available in EPM.
As far was how will they work? Very well. We buy them refurb and so far ZERO issues wth failure. They are built though and work well.
which models do you get?
We typically install SP 335, but mainly because they are inexpensive and are 2 liners for cubicle type employees.
For the receptionists, we are transitioning to Polycom VVX 410. They have the same “OS” as the Soundpoint so not much “relearning” required.
do you have a guide or tip to follow on setting these up? how do you get the config files, etc?
Way back when, I hand built the config files, then moved to the OSS Endpoint provisioning, and now am moving to the Commercial EPM. No config coding required.
For the most part, you can take a default config file and change the username, password and Extension and PBX server IP. Put it on a provisioning server and poof it’s done… or almost.
Usually you can access the web based phone GUI and update the above parameters.
If you feel a little “daring”, setup on phone with all the bell and whistles you want then export the config, change the extension, username, password, and upload it to the next phone. It should work just fine.
If you have many phones, I suggest some provisioning system, it’s a lot easier and if you need to make a change to the phones, it can be done from the PBX instead of going to each phone to change it,
As for a guide, don’t really have one. Sorry.
Just to add my thoughts on this.
We recently changed and internally use Grandstream GXV3240 phones.
We are relatively small, we only have 10 phones. But most of the functions work fine.
We have no problems at all with calls, both audio and video calls just work.
We have one or two very specific configuration issues, but the Grandstream helpdesk is on to them.
I guess the only real issue we have that is unsolved is that you can’t change the SSL certificate for the administrative web interface of the phones - we prefer to use our own certificates.
We do really like all the configuration options through a central config file, through ssh, through the web interface, with webservices, …)
Christian
is freePBX too good to be true lol? Why would any small business even run a cisco, shortel, etc? My guess is they need someone to support it. This is where I come in 
I use polycom 335 for most desks and vvx400 for receptionist. Setup through commercial EPM w/o problem.
Did use a more current firmware for the VVX400, updated it through the phone web page rather than EPM. The 335 use the firmware from EPM
Did the used eBay purchase. Pretty inexpensive.
I have always used aAstra since I started with trixbox many many years ago. Long before FreePBX and any endpoint manager. I have tried many others over the years and was never happy with the ease of configuration as they have always used a pair of simple flat text files on the tftp server. I tried the endpoint in FreePBX when I moved to it and was not impressed so I went back to individual config files as I could make them do more stuff on the phone and customize each phones behavior as I wished (granted I do have a lot of experience with them). Now that Mitel bought them out I don’t know where the line will go as I have not bought any of the Mitel version. I use mostly the 57i series and a number with sidecars.
Yes, FreePBX is too good to be true, but it is a reality and I personally am very happy with and thankful for the team caring for the FreePBX distribution.
I just replaced my home analog proprietary system with FreePBX plus Grandstream GXP 2130 phones. I’ve been happy. I started looking at Endpoint Manager but realized I didn’t need it. Grandstream provides an XML generator tool that works well enough for provisioning. It takes a little manual editing of a config file and setting up a directory on the web server. But you already have a web server with FreePBX. You need to run the tool on linux.
You can get the 2130s for as little as $65 a piece in multi-packs on Amazon.
The EPM and REST apps are free with the Sangoma phones. Why would you ever want to provision another phone by hand again?
Besides, buying the Sangoma phones supports the project.