SPA-1001 Provisioning Woes: VMWI & CID

[jdlewis]

Greetings,

I wanted to share a small problem I had and my steps to resolve it, hopefully this will help if you're new to BroadVoice.

I recently purchased a GE 21018 expandable telephone set and later set it up on my new BroadVoice line. I discovered after plugging it in, it would display "MSG WAITING OFF" indefinitely. Furthermore, after receiving calls, I noticed that the Caller ID time and date were set to GMT. Frustrated, I called BroadVoice and learned I'm not the only customer who is facing this problem.

I have a Sipura SPA-1001 provided and provisioned by BroadVoice. When I called, they said they couldn't help me with the Voice Message Waiting Indicator (VMWI) problem, but they'd reprovision the device to fetch my time zone. I waited, unplugged the device and plugged it back in, but nothing happened -- the Caller ID (CID) time problem still lingered.

Having never used a Sipura product, I was obviously unfamiliar with its method of programming. I quickly discovered that the device had an integrated web interface and that led to yet another call to BroadVoice Technical Support.

After repetitive attempts to explain my problems over again, I finally spoke with a very polite gentleman who honestly stated he was not very familiar with the product. He did tell me that against normal practices, he would provide me with an administrative password and encouraged me to see what I could find to remedy my problem. I was pleased that he didn't leave me completely in the dark and I now had something to work with.

I logged in (with advanced mode) to find that the VMWI refresh interval (under the 'Regional' tab) was set to thirty seconds. My telephone seemed to clear the display every sixty seconds. Since I didn't really need to know whether I had a voice message every thirty seconds, I simply set the value to 3600 seconds, or one hour. I also adjusted my time zone which cleared up my CID problem.

However, despite my efforts, I had left my 'profile rule' in place (under the 'Provisioning' tab) and the router reprovisioned itself with BroadVoice defaults, putting me right back where I was before. To that end, I had to remove the URL out of the field and avoid fetching a configuration from the system.

I've been fortunate, however, since encountering this problem, I would suggest that each of you order your own device so that you may have control of it. I will try to post BroadVoice's specific default settings for the SPA-1001 (probably applicable to other Sipura devices?) so that you may make your own adjustments accordingly.

Regards,

John

[mberlant]

John,

Rather than wiping out BV's provisioning URL you should have just set provisioning to No. That way you could reprovision yourself and make your couple of changes again without needing to look up (or ask for) that URL to be read to you.

While you are in the SPA's management screens did you find the Primary and Secondary NTP Server settings on the System page or the Time Zone setting on the Regional Page? These two bits go hand in hand to keep your SPA's real time clock synchronized with the outside world. One thing about it, though - it won't adjust to Daylight Savings Time come April. So, if you live in one of the 46 1/5 states that has DST in the Summer you'll have to make that change yourself.

[jdlewis]

mberlant:

No, I did not see provisioning feature until now. So obvious, yet so hidden. Anyhow, I did see the time servers previously and they are set. I did have to set the regional time zone before and that remedied my problem.

Thank you for your reply.

Regards,

John

[cayman]

Originally Posted by mberlant

While you are in the SPA's management screens did you find the Primary and Secondary NTP Server settings on the System page or the Time Zone setting on the Regional Page? These two bits go hand in hand to keep your SPA's real time clock synchronized with the outside world.

After ensuring that my 2100 (not BV provisioned) was correctly setup for zone and NTP server, I noticed on my BV account that I could change my "time zone" using the BV web portal which I corrected. However even after changing it to Pacific and loggin off/on again to make it sure it took, I saw that my profile configuration as accessed thru "Call Manager" still showed East Coast time (and my voice mail appeared to still be running on East Coast time).

I called BV support and after some discussion of details, support was able to change the other timezone. I suggested it as a "bug" but I doubt it got reported as such. Support assumed that there was only one time setting, and didn't find the other one until I insisted about the Call Manager settings.

If you're having time troubles with BV, you might just check those two settings for your own account.

Cheers,
- Don