IP Communicator Usage with Shared Line Appearances

[JOHN PARDUHN]

I have a client that wishes to use IP Communicator and an IP Phone concurrently with a shared line appearance for an employee with a visual disability. The user would need to dial the phone with IPC and then pick up the handset of the IP phone to speak to the called party. Prior to the installation of IPC, the user had no issues with this arrangement. The caller could initiate the call on the SoftPhone application and pick up the handset to speak. It does not work like this on an IP Communicator device. The only thing both phones do at the same time is ring. This is the first instance of usage like this I've encountered, so I'm not sure where to begin troubleshooting, or if I even need to troubleshoot it at all. Is this a known limitation of the product? Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you!

[mcotrone]

Well right off the top IP Phones can't split dialtone like we can off of analog ports (Which I am sure you have found out already :) )

A couple of things can be utilized though: You can enable a service parameter to enable a shared line to be able to grab the second channel of the shared line for outbound calls, but the user still can't use the active line which is not what you are looking for.

However, you can accomplish your goals with the use of Shared Lines and the Barge/Privacy Feature on CCM 4.0.

Ie. A call would be made with the IPC on shared line 1000. The IP Phone would then barge in on 1000 to take over the call.

Basically if you have shared lines that do not wish to have barge enabled (After Globally enabling it) you can select Privacy=On within the IP Phone configuration. I used to hate barge since you had to either enable it globally for all or none. At least now when you enable it globally you can block barge (privacy) on a per phone basis.

HTH,

Mike

[JOHN PARDUHN]

Thank you for the tip, Mike. I'll give it a try as soon as possible.