HELP Aastra 57i Distinctive ringing

[mark-hc]

I have PIAF deployed in my home.
I've made an IVR press 1 for me, 2 for wife
I have two aastra 57i and one polycom 550.
I would like the ringing sound of the phones to change depending on the IVR menu selection.

Does anyone have an elegant way of doing this?

 

[kenn10]

Send the IVR selection to a ring group where you can set the "Alert Info". For the Aastra phones, use nothing for a single ring, use (include the braces) <Bellcore-dr2> for a double ring and <Bellcore-dr3> for a triple ring.

So "Press 1 for Him" could go to ring group 201 and "Press 2 for Her" could go to ring group 202. Put the appropriate extensions to ring in each ring group.

 

[mark-hc]

Than you Kenn10. Seems like that will change the time in between rings.
Is there a way to have the phones play a different tone? Say, "Low tone" for Him and "High tone" for Her

 

[gregc]

Just the cadence of the ring is adjustable.

 

[drmurdoch]

Just the cadence of the ring is adjustable.

That's disappointing.
In the era of downloadable ring tones, I'd say that's a pretty big flaw.

 

[mark-hc]

It's shouldn't be hard to implement. Just need to come up with a bounty I guess.

 

[FredP]

I don't know if a bounty would do it. I've never seen a ring tone file (a la Cisco).

Why not use the old line 1, line 2 routine? Have Him come in on line 1 phone 1 with a preset ringing treatment, and Her come in on line 2 phone 1 with a different ringing treatment?

 

[parker]

Just the cadence of the ring is adjustable.

I'm sure that's true for cisco phones, but I also had read that they were thus considered crippled in that respect. The directive to command the phone to ring in a different way is set by the SIP "alert-info" header. A random post about polycom's:

Polycom phones (and perhaps others) can use the SIP Alert-Info value to specify the sound of the ring a call will generate. Sipxchange should allow specification of an Alert-Info value based on a call's source (and possibly other attributes). This would allow, for example, the sipx administrator to specify that all calls coming through a particular gateway have one ring type, while all internal station-to-station calls have another ring type.

Here's a description of Polycom's current Alert-Info functionality (from Polycom Tech Support):

Choices for existing rings are: Default, Visual_Only, Auto_Answer, Ring_Answer, Internal, External, Emergency, and
Custom_1 through Custom_4. To enable those ringers in Alert-Info then the header has to specify the name, for example
Alert-Info: <Ring_Answer>.

The Alert-Info field may also contain a URL where a specific ring tone may be found and in this case the phone should
retrieve that ring tone and play it back. This can be a small wave file sitting on a server. In this case the header should l
look like

Alert-Info:<http://www.jwilkinson.com/example/sounds/BlackSabbath/Paranoid>

The brackets surrounding the name of the ring tone need to be included in the header for proper syntax.
​

This implies that the some polycoms (the ones referred to in the post, at least) aren't limited to their alert-info ring pattern only selecting one of the few bellcore cadences. I tested this on a polycom 320, and it does work.

For the Original Poster: even without alert-info, most phones are at least customizable so that the default ring pattern is, indeed, an arbitrary sound clip. So, if one phone is the "him" phone, and the other is the "her" phone, you could probably set each phone to play a different sound clip. On the other hand, if both phones are shared by both "him" and "her", the alert-info is the way to go.

 

[mark-hc]

Interesting bit of information Parker. I have the latest 3.2.0 firmware installed for my Polycom IP550.

The problem I think I might run into here is that I have a mixture of phones around the home.

I have a Polycom IP550 in the Office and Aastra 57i's everywhere else.

Since both phones user interfaces function slightly different I think I will run into problems due to the differences in phones.

On the Polycom, there are four buttons that represent a 'line'. There are four of them. The first and top line of the Polycom is "Home Line" and it rings with my home DID. The 2nd Line below it is "Office Line" and it rings when calls come in on my Office DID.

I'll play around with everyone's suggestions.
Keep the ideas coming

 

[FredP]

Aastra phones support Alert ringing. It uses a different table of tones than regular ringing.

 

[drmurdoch]

Aastra phones support Alert ringing. It uses a different table of tones than regular ringing.

Does FreePBX support it ?

 

[gregc]

Aastra phones support Alert ringing. It uses a different table of tones than regular ringing.

Where are you getting this information? I had spent a lot of time researching this and the only thing I came up with was being able to change the cadence with the alert_info.

From the Aastra Admin Guide:
"Priority Alerting-
Priority alerting on the IP phones is a feature that allows incoming calls to trigger pre-defined ringing or call waiting alert tones. You can enable or disable priority alerting on the IP phone for the Asterisk, Broadworks, and Sylantro servers using the configuration files and the Aastra Web UI. Configuration of priority alerting is on a global-basis only.

Asterisk/Broadworks Servers -
The ring tone keywords that can display in the "Alert-Info" header for an Asterisk and Broadworks server are:
When the ring tone keywords appear in an "Alert-Info" header from an Asterisk or Broadworks server, the IP phone maps the keywords to the default ring tone patterns.
Asterisk/Broadworks Server
Ring Tone Keywords
Bellcore-dr2
Bellcore-dr3
Bellcore-dr4
Bellcore-dr5

Ring Tone Patterns -
A System Administrator can configure the ring tone adences if required, using the configuration files. The following table identifies the different Bellcore ring tone patterns and cadences.

As you can see... no tone variation. It is all in the Aastra Admin Guide.