Zoom VOIP Intercom

[FASAFETY]

I am the safety director at a small high school.  Last year our IT dept. switched our phone system from a traditional hard wired system to a ZOOM Voip system.  One of the features we lost was the ability to use our phone system as an emergency mass alert system.  With the previous system we were able to dial a number, speak into the phone and that message would be relayed to all phone extensions in the school.   What I am looking to find out is if this can be done on the ZOOM Voip system and if so how.

Thanks for any advise,

Walt Grzyb

Dir. of Safety, Fryeburg Academy 

[CarlaA]

Hi @FASAFETY , welcome to the Zoom community! We are very excited to see your first contribution 😀 Our experts will get back to you with a response, but in the meantime, we encourage fellow community members to also share their knowledge on this topic!

Carla,
Zoom Community Team

[BrentG-ZP]

Do you use desk phones (example: polycom)? If so, which manufacturer?

[FASAFETY]

Yes, every classroom and office has a Poly IP desk phone.

[Eliot]

you may be referring to some form of paging. 

poly  vvx desk phones support group paging.  please see:

Group Paging (poly.com)

Group Paging Parameters (poly.com) 

yealink also supports group paging

Yealink Support

[FASAFETY]

Thank you.  Yes we do have Poly desk phones and the Group Paging sounds like what I'm looking for.   I'll share this with our IT director.

[enielsen]

Yep, you can handle it at the desk phone level. In our case, we set it up in the phone's template in the Zoom portal. Also setup the line keys on phones to be able to make the "broadcast" call.

[FAJGrondin]

Could you please provide me some details on how to setup/create this template for Broadcasting..  And also how to setup the Line Key.. Thanks.. 

[Eliot]

here is a quick youtube video.

Polycom VVX Paging - YouTube

you can enable paging using the phone's web interface or physically go to the poly vvx desk phone to enable group paging.  you can temporarily enable the phone's web interface and remotely access the VVX xxx Configuration Utility using the phone's ip address.  there, you can use settings - group paging to set up the phone for group paging.  a phone can be a member of 23 paging groups plus a priority group and an emergency group.  once you save the config, a soft key with Paging will appear.  you can disable the phone's web interface after setting up group paging.

please see attached screen shots,

[enielsen]

For your initial testing, it is convenient to just setup via the phone's web interface, then pull the relevant pieces out of the config file to make a template.  In fact, if just have a couple of phones, might be the easiest way especially if you don't normally work with polycom config files....

[FAJGrondin]

1. Thanks for the quick response...

2. Thanks for the video, that was great.. I was able to get it setup on my phone....  silly questions, I am guessing this has to be enabled on all devices to work?

[Eliot]

your guess is correct.

[enielsen]

This is why (if one has more than a handful of phones), it would be easier to setup a phone template in zoom enabling the intercom features rather than doing 100 phones manually!

[FAJGrondin]

Do you have any documentation on how to setup this template..  Thanks 🙂

[Eliot]

i have never set up a template but here is the link to zoom's support article.

Configuring desk phone provision templates – Zoom Support

[enielsen]

Basically, on a phone you have working with the intercom, export the phone config files to your computer.

Then look for the lines that enable the intercom features.

Put those lines in a Zoom phone template

Assign that template to the phones you want to have the intercom feature.

[enielsen]

We use Yealink phones, so I don't have an example to give you for Polycom...... 

[Eliot]

followed enielson instructions and they work.

1.  enable one phone for paging.

2.  look at phone config file for parameters starting with 'ptt.'.  the only one i found was 

ptt.pageMode.enable="1"

3.  goto phone system management->company information->account settings->desk phone sectiom->provision template click manage

4.  select add to create a template.  see my poly vvx 250 group paging template screen shot.  

5.  assign your provisioning template to your poly vvx 250 phones.   phone system management->phones & devices->select the phone you want to assign to the template to->near the bottom, find provision template and click bind.  select your target template and click bind.  immediately, paging is added to your selected phone.

please see attached screen shots.

[FASAFETY]

Thanks to everyone for your guidance regarding this matter.  FAJGrondin was able to get all of our desk phones  on an emergency group broadcast group.  We drilled yesterday and it worked exactly as we hoped.  As the safety director, I am very happy and relieved to have this functionality back.