NO JOY Polycom VVX Phones - BLF Call Parking Not Working

[Jake]

A customer of mine wanted options for their new desk phones. Normally, I just show them a Yealink phone and they go with my recommendation. However, I brought an old Polycom 301 and a Yealink. The guys liked the Yealink but all the women thought the Polycom sounded better. They sound the same to me

Now, I'm regretting this as I bought new Polycom VVX 410s and it is a pain to get Call Park to work. I found out that I need to have a line button to park the call and then separate line buttons to pick up each slot. This does work but the BLF on the lines with the slots works for a while, day or so, then stops working. The Yealinks work like a charm, one button "valet" parking and BLF works fine.

They are all VVX 410 loaded with the newest firmware 5.5.0.20556. I'm running a newly loaded PIAF, Intel Celeron NUC, CentOS 7, Asterisk 13.9

I'll admit I'm not as well versed in Polycom phones and I've search their forums. Others have had this problem on Polycom's forum but I wondered if anyone here has experience.

 

[MacNix]

I would agree that the VVXs sound very good.. but the programming side of them....SUCKS! i've wasted hours trying to program them, whereas Grandstream and Yeahlinks seem to come preconfigured to just work!

i'm very interested in *HOW* you get the VVX410's to show BLF state (ie., green light/red light) when a followed extension is on. I'm hoping to not have to create an endpoint management process, just to get BLFs to light properly...

 

[rjaiswal]

At my accontant's office, I setup some old 501s that I had lying around. I was able to configure BLF, by using the address book and their "Buddy List". I remember, I had to add the the extensions manually to the internal address book and the use the Buddy List to assign them to the extra line keys.

 

[Jake]

I didn't have any grief with BLF for extensions that the phone follows. Just go to Utilities -> Line Key Configuration -> Add Line Key Function. Select Static BLF, then put the name of the extension as the label, address is extension number and the type is Normal.

The problem I am having is the Park indicator. I did read about using "Buddy List" but haven't tried it yet.

 

[rjaiswal]

Just re-read your first message... I would try the buddy list and see what happens. do you lose blf hints for other extensions? or just for the parking slots?

 

[MacNix]

A customer of mine wanted options for their new desk phones. Normally, I just show them a Yealink phone and they go with my recommendation. However, I brought an old Polycom 301 and a Yealink. The guys liked the Yealink but all the women thought the Polycom sounded better. They sound the same to me

Now, I'm regretting this as I bought new Polycom VVX 410s and it is a pain to get Call Park to work. I found out that I need to have a line button to park the call and then separate line buttons to pick up each slot. This does work but the BLF on the lines with the slots works for a while, day or so, then stops working. The Yealinks work like a charm, one button "valet" parking and BLF works fine.

They are all VVX 410 loaded with the newest firmware 5.5.0.20556. I'm running a newly loaded PIAF, Intel Celeron NUC, CentOS 7, Asterisk 13.9

I'll admit I'm not as well versed in Polycom phones and I've search their forums. Others have had this problem on Polycom's forum but I wondered if anyone here has experience.

I have generally stayed away from Polycomm's (other than the Kirk system,which I have had in our main office with 30+ extensions, and it's worked flawlessly for 7-8years and is by far the best wireless SIP system I've ever experienced).. Got sucked into some of the 4xx's with a client, and it became a nightmare - BLF's seem to be spotty, transfers stink, etc..

I finally convinced them to go to Grandstreams, which worked out of the box, cost 1/3 the price, and had more features. Yeah the quality of build is slightly lower, but it's a tool, not a show piece..