Line Key settings in "Account Settings"

[Rick Guyton]

I'd be very helpful if "Line Keys" were available in the "account settings". Often, my clients will want the same BLF keys across all their phones. I'd be very nice if I could do this via account settings instead of setting each phones line settings through the advanced provisioner. That said, this is a hell of a lot better than logging into each phone and doing it through the WebGUI.

[Karl Stallknecht]

Ditto!! Most of our clients have a very similar setup with BLF, phone admin passwords, ringtones, and custom configuration. It would be nice if we could create provisioning templates of a sort and then name them (e.g. Polycom 450 w/ two parking spots or Yealink T26P with four parking spots)

[Darren Schreiber]

In the advanced provisioner you can already assign options "account-wide". Are you saying just the BLF keys can't be done account wide?

[Karl Stallknecht]

Would this be all or nothing though account wide? I was picturing a system where we could create a template such as one for a specific model that we could then apply to the devices we wanted. Here's a use case:

Customer A has 10 phones in their sales department and 10 phones in their finance department. The finance department all needs the same 4 BLF keys and the sales department all needs the same 6 BLF keys, but the two departments should have a different set of BLF keys and not overlap. With what I am describing, using advanced provisioner we could use a dropdown for example to select that it was a "finance" phone so that it would automatically fill out all of the BLF keys for finance's BLF keys. The idea I had was creating custom provisioning templates in an account.

[Rick Guyton]

Correct, It'd be nice if BLF could be set account wide. Often, clients want all the same BLF keys across all the phones. In almost all scenarios, there are a few BLF keys that they want across all phones (Like the front desk, owner, manager, ect) then a few customizations on individual phones. Also, I just found out that on the T46G, all of the buttons are considered "BLF" buttons. So, I have to set BLF key 1 to "line" on every phone. (Pictures below so you know what I'm talking about there)

[Katie Orton]

Great, thank you for the detailed example! This is definitely helpful to us as we establish our roadmap. This is not currently a feature we support, but we will keep this in mind and keep you updated as we build out added functionality. 

[Aaron Gunn]

Hi Everyone, 
These are really great suggestions, and I can easily see how they can save time and offer convenience. Please keep submitting suggestions on how to improve usability in Advanced Provisioner here, and we will actively consider them as we improve the experience. 

[esoare]

Aaron Gunn,

In advanced provisioner, could we add Call Park to the allowable 'Line Keys' ?

The thread below explains why.

https://helpcenter.2600hz.com/2600hz/...

[Karl Stallknecht]

Wow, that was smart...I never thought of doing that!!

[Aaron Gunn]

Thanks for the input, Rick. It is clear to me this idea is a time saver for our resellers. However, we have several other improvement epics for Provisioner that are currently getting worked on. Please stay tuned for some info on that, and I will take it to my engineers to see if there are some simple ways we can address this in a future epic.

[Rick Guyton]

:) Thanks Karl. I bought jitbit's macro recorder a few years ago and have been using it extensively for random little repetitive tasks ever since.

Aaron, ya know, even an option to copy one phone's configuration over to another (less SIP creds) would be amazing, probably easier to code and possibly even more useful.

[Plau]

Hi Rick, while your suggestion does sound easier, it's not.

If the copy tool is only used for same make and model, no problem. Very easy. But for a copy tool to truly be useful, it needs to be generic.

That means adding in the ability to copy across multiple models. Various models can run different firmwares and sometimes support different features (eg. Yealink 3 series vs 4 series, Polycom SSIP vs VVX). Then there's across makes as Ciscos, Polycoms and Yealinks all handle configs differently.

I do know that for Polycoms you can import a partial config file so you can write up a common Line Key file and upload it for every phone. Yealinks have this feature for any phone running firmware 73 or above. For both brands, adding additional line keys past the hard limit simply means they don't show up.

[Karl Stallknecht]

Plau: I think what Rick is referring to would be for only a specific model. Notice what I mentioned earlier about having a template (i.e. Polycom SPIP 650 with 2 parking spots) that we could create and then apply that template with one click to multiple of those phones in provisioner. 

Right now for Polycom phones we create a config file with the parking spots and then import it in using the web UI, but this voids the entire point of using provisioner to do it all from Monster.

Darren mentioned at KazooCon that you were going to create a way to upload custom config into provisioner...this might be a partial solution to the problem Rick and I mentioned. It wouldn't be quite as good as the templates idea I mentioned, but still much easier than now. The way Darren described it would be you could go into each phone in provisioner and upload the custom config file for that specific phone. In Rick and I's use case we would create this text file and then just upload it to each phone. It would still require manually setting it one each phone, but the advantage is we wouldn't have to type and enter in let's say each of the 5 parking spots on every single phone.

[Rick Guyton]

If the copy tool is only used for same make and model, no problem. 

Sweet! Have the in the utility next week then? ;)

In all seriousness, Karl uses dirty Polycoms, I use awesome Yealinks and some crazy people out there even use Ciscos. But, we all pretty much "Make" exclusive and we all pretty much deploy the same models across our networks. For example, I deploy all T27Ps with a few T46Gs here and there for execs or receptionists. But if in a 40 phone network, I only had to configure one T27 and one T46 and then copy, copy, copy. That would save us hours of work... Hours of mind numbingly tedious work. AND it'd be 100% accurately copied across whereas when we do it manually, we eventually mess up somewhere...

[Rick Guyton]

Also, one advantage the copy utility would have over an account wide phone model template is accounts with multi locations. multi locations accounts sometimes want different park numbers or different user BLFs. For example, Tempe will have Parks 101-108 then the receptionist on their BLFs, Peoria will have 201-208 and their receptionist, Tucson 301-309, ect, ect. If you implemented the copy utility then we'd just have to setup one phone for Tempe, one for Peoria and one for Tucson then copy, copy, copy. 

[Logicwrath]

It is also worth noting that this phone provisioned from the Advanced Provisioner and does not have label length set to extended as that is not available yet.

As you can see the line keys will be cut off and he will need to manually logon and set that option if more than 4 characters are used.

[esoare]

Logicwrath,

is that only on the T46G's or is that option on the T42G's... and what page is that under?

I could not find it on a T42G.

[Logicwrath]

I think it might be a T46G only feature.  It's on the upper right side of the DSSKey page.

[Darren Schreiber]

What do you mean by "Label Set"?

[Darren Schreiber]

Since Peter Lau (provisioner guy) is finally getting through the bugs in provisioner (I think we're down to one known one), and he needs to add ATAs, I think we will do the copy phone thing but AFTER those two items. Sound good? I'll triple check with everyone to see if that is a good plan.

We're also considering a "bulk upload" tool where you can upload a list of names, extensions, MAC addresses, make/model and it adds the users and auto-sets up the account basically. I will consider allowing the name of the template to be applied to the spreadsheet you upload, and then you could upload a CSV and the phones would even be programmed based on the templates maybe? Or this is too hard and Peter will kill me? Just tossing out ideas here.

[Karl Stallknecht]

That's great, but I believe the bigger issue and the point of this thread is bulk adding the same BLF keys on many phones.

[Logicwrath]

http://prntscr.com/agz5oa

It appears this might be a T46G only setting, it has a large screen and we have to set that to extended to see entire line key name if it is longer than like 4-5 characters as the default length will cut it off.

[Logicwrath]

Yes, setting up 20-30 phones and manually entering 4 fields for each line key/BLF by hand when they are 99% the same is super inefficient.

[Rick Guyton]

I love the CSV idea and having a template name in the CSV would make onboarding a breeze. But I don't want to get feature greedy and delay that copy thing a day longer than necessary. :)

[Rick Guyton]

Here's an example with screenshots from the phones to help

http://i.imgur.com/LZCUG2l.png