Intercom and Patterns

[Matthew Martin]

Hello All,

CUCM: 10.5(2)

One of our remote branch offices asked me to see if I could configure an intercom system for them.

After reading through some of the guides online, like the one below, I have a couple of questions.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/t5/collaboration-voice-and-video/how-to-configure-paging-and-intercom-features-in-cisco/ta-p/3131071

Does the intercom feature only work by adding a separate line/Intercom DN to the IP Phone? I was wondering if there was a way to use the intercom feature without needing to take up a line on the phone..?

For example, is there a way for just one office location (*which has its own Device Pool, CSSs and Partitions) to be able to use the CUCM Intercom feature by doing something like: dialing *96 from one IP Phone in that office and that person would then be broadcasted over intercom to the other phones in that Device Pool?

These offices have 7941G IP Phones and mostly all of them are using both lines with Directory numbers (*one internal DN and one Agent Line).

Is anything like this possible? The example I read in the link above didn't mention anything about the Intercom Translation Patterns, so I wasn't sure if maybe using that, instead of the Intercom Directory Numbers would achieve what I described..?

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in Advance,

Matt

[Brandon Buffin · Accepted solution]

You can use basic paging to accomplish this. In later versions of CUCM, Cisco includes the Informacast server which allows you to page a group of up to 50 phones with the basic version. See the following link.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/unified-communications/paging-server/117059-configure-informacast-00.html

Brandon

[Matthew Martin]

Hey Brandon and Chris, thanks for the replies!

Ok, that makes sense then... I'll look into the 3rd party software.

Thanks for the explanations, much appreciated!

-Matt

[Chris Deren]

Brandon is correct, sounds like you are in need of paging and not intercom. Intercom is one to one connection typically used by manager/assistant kind of a setup and as you point out in CUCM does require dedicated line with seperate dial plan configuraton.

Paging allows for one to many "paging" setup to either Cisco IP phones/overhead speakers/both.