CME 9.5: Disable Whisper Page

[Ellen Kennedy]

Is there a way to disable whisper page?

I have multicast paging setup for both SCCP and SIP phones. The client complained about not being able to hear the person she was talking to on her SIP phone when an overhead page was made.  So I researched this and all I can find is the behavoir of a busy SIP phone when a page is made, but I cannot find any place that talks about turning this off. 

Paging Group Support for Cisco Unified SIP IP Phones

Paging provides a one-way voice path from the paging phone to the paged  phone. The paged phone automatically answers the page in speakerphone  mode with Mute activated.  The paged phone receives a page when it is idle or busy. When it is busy  with a connected call, the user of the paged phone can hear both the  active conversation and whisper paging.

Does anyone have any information on this?

Thanks,

EK

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Ellen,

For SIP phones that are part of the paging group the "whisper" is on by default

and cannot be disabled You can see from the steps below that there is no option

to turn this off;

SIP: Configuring Paging Group Support

To configure paging group support for Cisco Unified SIP IP phones, perform the following steps.

Prerequisites

Cisco Unified CME 9.0 or a later version.

Restrictions

•Paging Group is supported in Cisco Unified CME but not in Cisco Unified SRST.

•Paging is not supported on Cisco Unified 3905 SIP IP phones.

•Cisco Unified SCCP IP phones do not support whisper paging. Only idle IP phones can receive paging requests.

SUMMARY STEPS

1. enable

2. configure terminal

3. ephone-dn dn-tag

4. number number

5. paging [ip multicast-address port udp-port-number]

6. Repeat Step 3 to Step 5 to add more Cisco Unified SCCP IP phones to the paging group. Skip Step 7 for each IP phone except for the last one.

7. paging group paging-dn-tag, paging-dn-tag

8. exit

9. voice register dn dn-tag

10. number number

11. exit

12. Repeat Step 9 to Step 11 to associate more telephone or extension numbers with Cisco Unified SIP IP phones.

13. voice register pool pool-tag

14. id mac address

15. type phone-type

16. number tag dn dn-tag

17. paging-dn paging-dn-tag

18. Repeat Step 13 to Step 17 to register additional Cisco Unified SIP IP phones to ephone-dn paging  directory numbers. Exit from voice register pool configuration mode  after each additional phone is registered. After the last phone is  added, go directly to Step 19.

19. end

If this is completely annoying to the client you could provide a SCCP phone or

firmware image if supported on the model she is using

Cheers!

Rob

"Your life is worth much more than gold." 

- Bob Marley

[Ellen Kennedy]

Yeah, problem is they wanted everyone to have camera phones and the two receptionists needed side cars, so I had to go with the 9951 phones and the CKEMs so I only have two SIP phones in the environment, but the whisper page feature drives them bananas!

Thanks for you reply!

[Rob Huffman]

Hi Ellen,

You are most welcome my friend

Have you thought about pulling the Reception phones out of the paging

group? If they need to make pages themselves you could offer a cheapo

second phone model to support only this function......it's sucks to have two sets

on one desk but maybe better than angry users.

Cheers!

Rob

[Vijay Kumar Yadav]

Is there any command now to disable whisper paging for SIP phones?

Thanks,

VJ

[Marcus Burks]

Alot of my users have been asking for this. I hope Cisco adds this one day soon but it doesn't look likely.