[asterisk-users] How many lines do you use.

[Robert Lister]

On Wed, 2009-11-25 at 08:46 -0500, David Gibbons wrote:
> I use two ‘lines’ though ‘Line appearances’ would be a better term,
> though still confusing in my book.

> One line for incoming, one line that auto-answers for paging. 

> Cisco really has so many line appearances on their phones to enable
> BLF using SIP over TCP.

Cisco 7960 does not do BLF (at least not on the SIP firmware) but the
7961 might. It's a shame they haven't added such features, but there we
go.)

If you enable two line keys with the same user/pass then the phone will
automatically put a second call/call waiting onto the second line key
(assuming you have call waiting enabled.)

But personally I preferred the way it presented the second call before,
on a single line, and found the way it displays it with two lines a bit
confusing. (I can't remember exactly why now, something like it would
flash the second line icon but not show you the call information until
that key was pressed, or you scrolled to it.) I could see users not
getting on with this, so I didn't configure it like that.

The rest can be used for speed dials, but these were of limited use to
me since for some reason, although the line keys can be provisioned
remotely over TFTP, the speed dials cannot. It's okay for personal use
though.

Personally moved off my 7960 in favour of the SNOM 370 as this supports
far more features than the Cisco SIP image, which is only really a piece
of migration fluff to enable Cisco to migrate customers away from
competitors SIP systems onto Call Manager with the dual-boot/application
loader.

The SNOM perhaps doesn't look as fancy as the Cisco handset, but it wins
hands-down on SIP features. (the remote provisioning system was a little
complicated to set up, but once set up it's okay.)

It's a shame since the Cisco is a very capable (and expensive) handset,
just let down by no development in the software other than small bug
fixes for many years.