Office 365 Phone System Deployment
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Anyone here has any experience with "Office 365 Phone System" deployment where you make / receive calls via your Office365 tenant / office account.
We are starting a trial of it here in Aus where it is exclusive to Telstra our largest telco and currently the only one providing it.
I can't seem to find much useful info on this. Specifically PowerShell stuff that allow one to manage / automate a lot of it which I'm told is not accessible via the GUI.
We are going to use Yealink T46S (what we currently use with FreePBX). I am after ways to autoprovision Yealink handsets settings like how the FreePBX solution is.
A related question. Not being a yealink reseller. How does one get themselves onto the yealink RPS system to add / remove devices from RPS, as we have a couple hundreds of handsets to manage if this goes ahead. We need to be able to somehow auto provision all the template settings when the Yealink first boot up after a factory reset.
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
Not being a yealink reseller. How does one get themselves onto the yealink RPS system to add / remove devices from RPS,
AFAIK, you can't. It's a reseller only option.
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We need to be able to somehow auto provision all the template settings when the Yealink first boot up after a factory reset.
I don't think that you can do that. That's not a normal phone function.
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
I can't seem to find much useful info on this.
Probably because it is horrible
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@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We need to be able to somehow auto provision all the template settings when the Yealink first boot up after a factory reset.
I don't think that you can do that. That's not a normal phone function.
Hmm so how do I push out setting to those yealink phones that remote.
BTW this trial was from higher up who was sold a certain package. From my experience so far with this solution it not very usable compare to our current FreePBX solution. However is does have the nice UC integration our exec people will like the flashy stuff. For example workshop PA or cordless support is non existence or an after though.
I'm told to do everything via powershell when I can't find much on it.
I'm keeping an open mind on this from a learning angle for self interest.
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@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
Not being a yealink reseller. How does one get themselves onto the yealink RPS system to add / remove devices from RPS,
AFAIK, you can't. It's a reseller only option.
Pretty much correct. I got a trial account because I didn’t stop pestering. I also used leads from people here.
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@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
I can't seem to find much useful info on this.
Probably because it is horrible
It absolutely is.
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@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We need to be able to somehow auto provision all the template settings when the Yealink first boot up after a factory reset.
I don't think that you can do that. That's not a normal phone function.
It has been for years. But it requires the RPS.
Without that all you can do is DHCP boot options. Which is obviously local/controlled only.
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@JaredBusch said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
Without that all you can do is DHCP boot options. Which is obviously local/controlled only.
Ahh. Not what I wanted to hear :frowning_face:
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
Hmm so how do I push out setting to those yealink phones that remote.
The license for the Yealink RPS is pretty damn cheap. The issue that we are having are regarding O365 SfB as a solution and everything involved with it.
I won't go down the details but it's a bit of a bear to get to do what we need it to do. A traditional PBX would've been better and much cheaper in comparison over any period of time.
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@JaredBusch said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We need to be able to somehow auto provision all the template settings when the Yealink first boot up after a factory reset.
I don't think that you can do that. That's not a normal phone function.
It has been for years. But it requires the RPS.
Without that all you can do is DHCP boot options. Which is obviously local/controlled only.
Yes, that I knew. But he already knew RPS wasn't available and was responding to "need to do it without RPS". Without RPS, it's not an option unless the phones are local.
I know a provider that makes every home office "local" to deal with this. They provide a router and phone for every house to get around that.
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@DustinB3403 said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
I won't go down the details but it's a bit of a bear to get to do what we need it to do. A traditional PBX would've been better and much cheaper in comparison over any period of time.
That is my current view. I would not have bother to even evaluate it with all the current issue I'm seeing. The user experience is no where near a FreePBX solution for our use case.
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We have hundreds of sites that are remote and being able to just factory reset and it pickups the settings again (regardless of where it is) to a know state is he way to go (with our current solution). Other then the some what fixed cost monthly per user of the S4B (which is actually not fixed if you look at the details).
It will be fun times ahead with the S4B solution... It was sold as part of some other bigger stuff / package so I have to play along due to not being the decision maker.
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We have hundreds of sites that are remote and being able to just factory reset and it pickups the settings again (regardless of where it is) to a know state is he way to go (with our current solution). Other then the some what fixed cost monthly per user of the S4B (which is actually not fixed if you look at the details).
Yeah, that's why the company in question that I dealt with sent out routers with every phone, for exactly that reason.
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@DustinB3403 said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
I won't go down the details but it's a bit of a bear to get to do what we need it to do. A traditional PBX would've been better and much cheaper in comparison over any period of time.
That is my current view. I would not have bother to even evaluate it with all the current issue I'm seeing. The user experience is no where near a FreePBX solution for our use case.
It's a Microsoft product, I would not expect them to even be considering making it on par with FreePBX, that's not their style. It'll improve, but they will never attempt to be a market leader. That's not the kind of customer that they go for.
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@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We have hundreds of sites that are remote and being able to just factory reset and it pickups the settings again (regardless of where it is) to a know state is he way to go (with our current solution). Other then the some what fixed cost monthly per user of the S4B (which is actually not fixed if you look at the details).
It will be fun times ahead with the S4B solution... It was sold as part of some other bigger stuff / package so I have to play along due to not being the decision maker.
You don’t need to worry about that with SfB. The user logs in and it puts their stuff on it.
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@JaredBusch said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We have hundreds of sites that are remote and being able to just factory reset and it pickups the settings again (regardless of where it is) to a know state is he way to go (with our current solution). Other then the some what fixed cost monthly per user of the S4B (which is actually not fixed if you look at the details).
It will be fun times ahead with the S4B solution... It was sold as part of some other bigger stuff / package so I have to play along due to not being the decision maker.
You don’t need to worry about that with SfB. The user logs in and it puts their stuff on it.
Users logging into phones can be confusing for them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@JaredBusch said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
@360col said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
We have hundreds of sites that are remote and being able to just factory reset and it pickups the settings again (regardless of where it is) to a know state is he way to go (with our current solution). Other then the some what fixed cost monthly per user of the S4B (which is actually not fixed if you look at the details).
It will be fun times ahead with the S4B solution... It was sold as part of some other bigger stuff / package so I have to play along due to not being the decision maker.
You don’t need to worry about that with SfB. The user logs in and it puts their stuff on it.
Users logging into phones can be confusing for them.
SfB should be set up with a PIN. It is really that easy. Even a lawyer can do it.
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@JaredBusch said in Office 365 Phone System Deployment:
SfB should be set up with a PIN. It is really that easy. Even a lawyer can do it.
Now THAT'S easy!
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I assume that that is all handled by the SfB specific firmware?
