Zoom Phone appliance "companion mode"

[vgonzalez]

I see in the later release, 5.9 that the zoom phone appliance that you can now switch the meeting, to and from the zoom phone appliances, but was the zoom companion featured added?

Looking for the ability to join a meeting on a windows desktop and have the phone appliance join for audio only.

[nancyc]

Hi Vgonzalez,

In order to join your Zoom meeting from a mobile device or phone appliance, your account needs an audio conferencing plan add on:  audio-plan   This enables joining from the computer for video and screen share and the phone for audio only.   It sounds like the feature you are mentioning is the ability to transfer your current Zoom meeting to your Zoom phone client (an app located on your mobile device) in case you need to leave your desk and cannot leave the meeting.  

If this helps, please consider marking as solution accepted in order to help other Community members.

Thank you, 

[vgonzalez]

So we can join meeting, from the zoom phone appliance, and the user that is assigned to the phone has both a full zoom license and a zoom phone license. The issue is joining the zoom meetings on the windows desktop PC and having the join join the meeting for audio only. Similar to the zoom phone companion mode that can be used on the Poly VVX phones and others as well.

[nancyc]

Sorry for the misunderstanding.  Companion mode is available when the settings are changed in the phone admin portal.  Have you tried this yet?  Desk-phone-companion-mode 

[nancyc]

Also, the phone needs to be compatible: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/360029698771 

[vgonzalez]

I was wondering with the 5.9+ release if there was an undocumented way to do this, as the user guide below does not go over some of the new features introduced in 5.9. If not supported, any eta on when a release will support this feature?

Zoom Phone Appliance user guide – Zoom Support

[FORE-Craig]

Hi! I have attempted to use this between our Mac/PC desktop clients and our Yealink VP59 Zoom Phone Appliances (which are supposedly supported for companion mode). The line key set with Zoom Meeting never shows up on the Zoom Phone Appliances in Speed Dial list as indicated in the article. We can however switch from a full video/audio meeting in process between the two, but this is not new. 

[vgonzalez]

Yeah same experience with the companion. We were always able to join or elevate to a meeting on the zoom phone, but in 5.9, released in december,  they added the feature to switch a zoom meeting you have in progress to the zoom phone appliance. There still doesnt seem to be a way to have the phone just join for audio, but only to switch it from your desktop to the phone. I had checked the user guide for the Zoom phone appliance earlier in the week and the documentation has not been updated to cover the new features released in 5.9

[FORE-Craig]

We are anxiously awaiting the enhancement announced at Zoomtopia to able to split Call Handling at the User-level for the desktop app and Zoom Phone appliance apps (both currently listed as one generic Zoom app), and to be able to click-to-dial from the the computer desktop (web sites, emails, address book, etc) and have the desk phone Zoom Phone Appliance dial the number and initiate the call. 

With your Poly VVX ZPA are you able to have your Google Contacts/Google Workspace show up on the phone? We were under the impression that this would be a standard feature with the ZPA, and were very disappointed to not have it work on our Yealink VP59 ZPA.

Craig

[vgonzalez]

Our Admins/teammembers working on Zoom didnt attend Zoomtopia as we were all busy putting out fires unfortunately. But we heat that the appliance will be the be all end all and looks to be extremely competent in the market compared to others, but handing out one of these phones and not being able to use it for audio in a zoom meeting will frustrate our users and make them feel like taking a step back from using Skype for Business with the polcyom cx300 usb desk phone. This is the only must have feature we are waiting on to deploy out.

On my Poly ZPA, in the contacts, all I see is external contacts, no "cloud contacts". We use exchange online, but should work functionally the same as Gsuite integration for calendar/contacts.

[FORE-Craig]

Thank you for your reply. It is interesting to share with someone else who uses the Zoom Phone Appliances. 

I can understand how losing the previous functionality would be disappointing for your users.

You can watch the recordings of the Zoomtopia sessions still, free of charge, just by registering on the site for it: https://zoomtopia.com/?form=vod

You might find it interesting!

Craig

[vgonzalez]

A new setting was found, not sure when it was added, it is in account settings/meeting (basic)

Allow users to transfer meetings between devices

This is enabled by default and lets you transfer meeting to your phone and zoom phone appliance. It seems to work for all meetings that are active, not just ones that are on your calendar.

When this setting is disabled, zoom phone appliance, as well as your cellphone show a join for the meeting, but only if it is in your calendar. 

Is there anyway for the join button to show for any meeting that is in progress, like the transfer option? The transfer is great, but most of the time you still want the meeting on your primary device, and just want to join the zoom phone appliance in just for audio.

Thanks!