Hot Desking

Since TL did not comment on this, I figured I would deliver the bad news that I do not think that this is a feature of Thirdlane despite most PBXs having this option for years.

You would need to change the configuration in the phone each time AFAIK.

The best option with thirdlane is probably using the provision device feature on the Thirdlane web interface to update the phone registration each time a new user sits at the desk.

So we would have to have an Admin switch the provisioning file and have them reboot the phone?
we would not want an end user having access to all of the provisioning files

That is the only way I know of. Using SIP notify and a compatible phone, some phone models will reboot automatically when the provisioning file is updated on the thirdlane server.

I should clarify that that is the only way I know of where you are using / leveraging the available features of Thirdlane. Since Thirdlane just manages Asterisk, you can create your own custom dialplans in Asterisk to handle hotdesking.

You can also bypass the Thirdlane provisioning system and create hand written phone templates for Polycom phones that can use Polycom's user login functionality to simulate something very close to hotdesking.

The last thing that is possible with Thirdlane, but probably not the most ideal solution is that you can use the Thirdlane call center functionality to simulate hot desking.

Basically, create a queue, assign dynamic members to the queue. Create the user "extensions" as "feature codes" to call the queue and set the queue strategy as ringall. This is the closest you can probably come within the framework of Thirdlane. The downside is that since it is using a queue there is the possibility of user error resulting in multiple extensions being in the same queue. Also, there is no way to handle direct dials and caller ids with this method. Dialing extension to extension is going to use the caller id of the "defined extension" of the phone, so this is not really hotdesking, but I figured I would include it for completeness in my response.

this might work "You can also bypass the Thirdlane provisioning system and create hand written phone templates for Polycom phones that can use Polycom's user login functionality to simulate something very close to hotdesking."
they have vvx401 phones, have you tried it before?

You can use agents who can login into phones allocated to the "phone pool" for hot desking.

trinicom,

I have done it before, but for a slightly different purpose, so it isn't the exact use case. If you contact us on our website, I can continue the discussion via email with you to try to help point you in the right direction and share the previous config files we used. www.lightwavenetworks.com

I believe the solution Alex was proposing was what I previously mentioned with using agents and queues, but as I mentioned previously, the experience is not even close to true hotdesking.

Will they retain their voicemail and DID information?

With the Polycom solution that we have put in place yes. The way Alex is trying to tell you to do it, they don't have voicemails or DIDs because they are really queues and not extensions.

We use highly customized polycom templates for our customers where this is a feature of the Polycom templates that we created. That is why it is best to take this offline as you will need a little primer on how to use them and potentially how to make them coexist with the Thirdlane templates.

Ok cool will get with you next week! have a great weekend!