[fiber0pti]

I'm trying to figure out the functionalty the soft keys on a Polycom phone can provide. I'm thinking about purchasing 12 500 phones and I currently have 6 lines. Since there are only three line appearances on the 500 how can a user pickup the other lines? What happens if the first three lines are in use and the a call comes in, will the phone ring and what line will it show it's coming from? Is there a way through the soft keys to have all 6 lines available?

Another question is about the soft keys and extensions. Can the soft keys be programmed to list all 12 phones and dial any of those 12 extensions? How is this accomplished? Page up/page down buttons?

Any other information about the soft keys would be nice.

Any information is appreciated. Polycom was anything but helpful when trying to get these questions answered.

Thanks!

[ManyCom]

There is no way to have more than three lines on a 500/501 phone, period. If you want six, you need a 600/601. The softkeys are not programmable in the manner you want (or any other manner, other than adding/removing functions via the feature.* options).

To have a key directly call another phone (called a speed dial in Polycom-speak), you need to have a free line key. This means you have 0-2 speed dial slots on a 500/501 depending on the number of lines configured, 0-5 slots on a 600, and 0-47 slots on a 601.

[alagalah]

Gee, I wonder what the following does....

reg.1.lineKeys="1" reg.1.callsPerLineKey="5"

...and on an IP301 no less.

The Admin Guide goes into more detail on the limits per phone.

[Iota]

ManyCom is correct; however if your concern is to be able to answer all 6 lines, this isn't a problem

Basically, don't think of the softkeys as 'lines' as in lines from the PSTN, think of them as lines as in extensions. Let's say your phone is Extension 1000. In your extensions.conf, in your PSTN context, for all 6 'lines' from the PSTN, you could dial Extension 1000 or a chain of extensions if necessary. Additionally, I believe the 500 supports 4 calls per appearance, meaning if 1 soft button is labeled Extensino 1000, That button/extension can handle 4 calls by placing them on hold ans picking up another incoming call. If knowing which line the call is coming in on is important, you can modify the callerID Name to be 'Line1' + ${CALLERID} so that it is easier to differentiate.

alagalah's comment allows you restrict the number of simultaneous calls per key. The IP600 can handle 6 calls per key, I believe the 500 is 4 calls.

Given the above, the only limintation of doing what I mentioned (redirecting all the lines to the same extensions/key) is that you can't choose which 'line' you want to dialout on, but that's usually not important in most cases.

Hope this helps.

-I