You can allow your cloud PBX customers to provision corporate phone books on multiple IP phones via a self-care portal, making the necessary contacts easily accessible to employees. Customers can provision two types of corporate phone books (“phone directories”):
- Auto-generated directory – automatically created and updated phone book based on existing extensions in the cloud PBX, requiring no manual input from cloud PBX admins.
- Custom directory – a manually created corporate phone book, where any relevant numbers can be included, such as contacts of suppliers or VIP clients. Contacts can be added individually or uploaded via a .csv file.
This feature is available in the CloudPBX Self-Care Portal (accessible via the Add-on Mart), or you can implement it in your own portal using the PortaBilling API.
Say Owl Telecom, a service provider, offers cloud PBX service and uses auto-provisioning for Yealink T58W IP phones. ABC Company, a customer of Owl Telecom, has two departments – Sales and Customer service – and wants to set up corporate phone books for their employees’ IP phones:
- For Sales managers: A phone book with colleagues’ extensions.
- For Customer service agents: Two phone books – one with the extensions of all colleagues and another with contacts of suppliers.
Adam, the cloud PBX admin at ABC Company, logs into the CloudPBX Self-Care Portal and creates two device phone books: “All extensions” (auto-generated) and “Customer service contacts,” where he uploads a .csv file containing external contacts (first name, last name, mobile number, other number).
Next, Adam links the phone books to the device profiles "Sales" and "Customer service", which include custom settings for auto-provisioning:
- For the "Sales" profile, he enables the "All extensions" phone book.
- For the "Customer service" profile, he enables both "All extensions" and "Customer service contacts" phone books.
Now, it works similarly to the self-provisioning of programmable phone keys by customers: when an IP phone with the corresponding device profile is assigned to an extension, the IP phone connected to the internet automatically downloads the phone books from the remote server. As a result, employees can easily find and call the necessary contacts from their phone’s web interface. Customer service agents can switch between their two phone books.
- Cloud PBX customers can easily maintain corporate phone books across their employees’ IP phones.
- Service providers can offer a more competitive cloud PBX service.
Limitations
- Currently, self-provisioning of phone books is available only for the following IP phone models:
- Yealink: SIP-T33G, SIP-T43U, SIP-T46U, SIP-T53, SIP-T53W, SIP-T54W, SIP-T58W
- Polycom: VVX 250, VVX 300, VVX 301, VVX 310, VVX 311, VVX 350, VVX 400, VVX 401, VVX 410, VVX 411, VVX 450, VVX 500, VVX 501
To enable the auto-provisioning of phone books for these phone models, subscribe to the corresponding Add-on Mart module (e.g., Yealink T58W module) and the free Yealink/Polycom directory module via the Add-on Mart management portal. Contact our Sales team if you need this feature for other phone models.
- The maximum number of phone books and records per phone book for Yealink depends on the phone model (e.g., Yealink T33G supports a single phone book with up to 1000 records).
- One phone book is supported for Polycom phone models with up to 500 records.
How it works
In the PortaBilling API, phone books are referred to as “phone directories,” and we will use this term in the following explanation. When a customer creates a directory and marks it as “ready for provisioning” (this is required only for custom directories), the system automatically generates the directory. Then, when the customer creates a device profile, assigns specific directories, and associates the profile with an IP phone, the system generates a configuration file for that IP phone. This file includes the URLs where the directories can be downloaded. The IP phone then periodically retrieves these directories (according to its settings) from the TFTP or HTTP server.
Auto-generated directories change automatically whenever the extension information changes. The system checks for updates in extension information every hour and regenerates the directories if any changes are detected.
When an admin changes contacts in a custom directory, the directory becomes a "draft," and admin should explicitly mark the directory as “ready for provisioning”. This prompts the system to regenerate the directory, ensuring the IP phone retrieves the latest version.
