Polycom Buddies and the hint Extension

Asterisk Asterisk Support
1

I’ve been tearing my hear out trying to get hints to work with Polycom phones all day. I’m trying to get the buddy function to work so that an appearance can be aware of another appearances status, ie if they are busy or not, and light the light next to the button.

All the docs for the hint priority are pretty basic… most people don’t really seem to understand what it is they are really doing.

It seems that when you create an entry in the -directory.xml file, and set 1 and extension that the Polycom phone on boot should send a SUBSCRIBE message to Asterisk so that Asterisk can send it back a NOTIFY when the status of a buddy changes.

Just exactly how to do you set this on the phone? My polycom’s are not sending a SUBSCRIBE message to Asterisk… in fact I can’t even find where to set the location to send SUBSCRIBE messages to in the phone1.cfg or sip.cfg config files. The Polycom admin guide is grossly inadequate.

On the other hand, when an extension receives a new voicemail, Asterisk doesn’t need to have received a previous SUBSCRIBE message to send a NOTIFY when there’s new voicemail. Maybe the status of a buddy is the same?

In any case, this is driving me nuts. Has anyone gotten this to work with Polycom phones?

Thanks,
Douglas.

2

This is not a helpful reply.

I just wanted to state that I have also NOT gotten this to work.

3

[quote=“swbuza”]This is not a helpful reply.

I just wanted to state that I have also NOT gotten this to work.[/quote]This too is not helpful, but I have futzed with this and have had no luck either.

Not that I expect you to rush right out and get them, but the snom 320/360s are very nice phones with easy to configure line presences. I highly recommend them.

4

FWIW (dunno if this will help but figured i’d try)
asterisk doesnt need or want a subscribe for voicemail. it knows to send that to the phone based on mailbox= in sip.conf.
You may need to set subscribecontext= in sip.conf too to make it work, but if the phone isnt sending a subscribe to asterisk that’s your first problem.

Can’t help with polycom phones though, I try to stay away from companies that refuse to acknowledge who is actually paying them (i dislike their firmware availability policies).

5

I have this sort of working with the Polycom IP601.

-directory.xml on my TFTP boot server (note for TFTP to work with the Polycom IP601, you have to use the phone’s built-in LCD interface to set the boot server type to TFTP. I use my DHCP server to supply the tftp-server-address option):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> Smith Fred 3454 1 3 0 0 1 0 Jones Andrew 3424 4 3 0 0 1 0 ... etc

In sip.conf:

[reception]
type=friend
context=handsets
callerid=Reception <3400>
mailbox=3400@default
host=dynamic
defaultip=x.x.x.x
secret=x
qualify=1000
subscribecontext=inbound
callgroup=1
pickupgroup=1

Note the subscribecontext=inbound line.

In extensions.conf:

[inbound]
; Default extension is Reception
exten => s,1,Macro(reception)

; Reception is also 3400
exten => 3400,1,Macro(reception)

; Handsets
exten => 3454,hint,SIP/3454
exten => 3454,1,Macro(stdexten,3454,SIP/3454)

exten => 3424,hint,SIP/3424
exten => 3424,1,Macro(stdexten,3424,SIP/3424)

…etc…

Now the reason I qualified this with sort of above is because not all the lamps on the Polycom that i’ve set up as directory entries for these extensions actually register busy state properly. Of my 9 directory entries, only six register properly. The other 3 it’s as though I haven’t turned on buddy watch.

I also note in the CLI that I regularly get Internal Server Error 500 messages form the Polycom phone. Two issues could be related but I haven’t finished debugging yet.

When I have more, I will post. Anyone with any ideas, please let me know!

6

I’m going to play around with this as I’ve had requests for the same - I’ll keep you posted here.

Two comments:
#1 “regularly get Internal Server Error 500 messages”

Disable the web server in sip.conf:

I don’t think it’s that useful to my installations and has actually been a source of issues for overly zealous end-users.

#2"Can’t help with polycom phones though, I try to stay away from companies that refuse to acknowledge who is actually paying them (i dislike their firmware availability policies)"

Where did you buy your phones? You should only buy from someone willing to support you. They are nice phones, and a good reseller will be happy to share knowledge, provide updates, etc., much better than you’ll get from most via factory phone support, etc. It’s part of what I do for a living. There’s no mystery unless you bought from a faceless store.

7

OK, I’ve spoken to my Polycom distributor. No particular help there since he had no experience of Asterisk (not surprising). He did suggest using Ethereal to find out what’s going back and forth between the Polycom and Asterisk. I’ll do this and post what I find here.

I note that when I try

CLI> show hints

The buddies I’ve set up in the -directory.xml file are not all being watched. Or perhaps I should say, the extensions for which I have hints are not being subscribed to by the Polycom 601. Perhaps there’s a limit on the actual number of active subscriptions at any one time?

Anyway, will post more after Ethereal investigation.

8

Re the Internal Server Error, the full CLI message from the Polycom is:

– Incoming call: Got SIP response 500 “Internal Server Error” back from x.x.x.x

So it’s a response from the SIP client on the phone, not the HTTP server.

9

try turning up the log level on the phone. It’s in sip.conf:


<change log.level.change.so="4"
log.level.change.app1="4"
log.level.change.sip=“4”
(etc.)

Try turning them up to “7”, but just the ones you need. You’ll see just about every move the phone makes.

I haven’t had a chance to try but would like to see this work myself.

10

Do you know if the SoundPoint IP400 supports SIP ?

11

ip601 supports 48 buddy watch now, new firmware upgrade. used to be 6

12

Have you enabled the presence feature in your sip.cfg file?

feature.1.name=“presence” feature.1.enabled=“1”

13

I would hope that after almost a year they’ve got it figured it. If not, they’ve probably gone insane by now, I know I would have :smile:

I’m pretty sure Doug, the original poster, got it solved.