QUESTION BLF and "Presence" with 3CX/PIAF5

[scotru]

I recently installed PIAF5 with 3CX after having used Asterisk based PIAF in the past. Overall, I've been impressed with the ease of use and how 3CX does most of the things my users expect out of the box. However, there is one notable exception and that is how 3CX handles presence as an entirely separate function to BLF. We have Yealink phones (t46) with sidecar/extension on reception phone. My receptionist would really like to be able to see presence by looking at the sidecar. But BLF shows only when the extension is in use--not when it's DND or when presence is set to Away, etc...

Asterisk did what end users expect by using SIP "hints" for tracking presence and allowing subscriptions to the hints.

I'm looking for creative ideas for achieving this functionality on 3CX.

 

[jake372]

Same here. I was told this is not possible in 3CX but I could be wrong. Alternative is to use the CTI and add the BLF side car too it. If they put their phone in DND it shows up there--just not on actual phone.

 

[YiannisH]

In 3CX you cannot have presence on IP phones. Presence is used by the clients so to use presence you need to use the 3CX client or better still the new web client where you can control your phone from your browser
https://www.3cx.com/user-manual/web-client/

 

[jake372]

Does anyone know if this has changed? I was reading through some documentation today and saw this: https://www.3cx.com/pbx/blf-function-keys/ which leads me to believe you can configure BLF's on IP Phones to show presence? Thanks in advance.

 

[atibs1]

I have 3cx ver 16 and T48 hand sets, and blf works well.

 

[jake372]

@atibs1 what type of license do you have?

Thanks for the reply!

 

[wa4zlw]

This has been an irritant for me as well but I think I have it working of some sorts with Grandstream.

I have passed the following to GS to update the GS templates for 3CX.

"I would like to suggest the following two changes in the GS Template:

CALL FEATURES

ENABLE BLF PICKUP - P9905=1

HIDE BLF STATUS - P8374=0"

What this does is if a BLF rings, you can press that button to answer it. It also shows you BLF status, in other words you can see either the FROM number to TO number on the LCD. So far this works well. I've created a modified GS template to do this and I've manually provisioned phones to do this as well.

Leon