Configuring an Analog Phone to Work On an Allworx 48x Phone System

For those of you who have an Allworx phone system, you might run into a situation where you want to add an analog phone or fax machine to your phone system. The reasons to hook up an analog phone to an Allworx phone system are numerous, including adding an analog Polycom SoundStation 2 conference phone, or backup phone in case a Power over Ethernet switch should fail.

Where to begin…

When setting up an analog phone with the Allworx 48x, the good news is that the switch is plug and play to get dial tone. Simply plug your analog phone into one of the system’s FXS ports using an RJ-11 cable (standard four pin analog phone line). The FXS ports are marked as “inside extensions” on the phone system.

Login to configure analog phone

To configure the phone for incoming phone calls, you’ll need to login to your Allworx phone system’s admin portal. The default IP address for an Allworx phone system is 192.168.2.254:8080. The default password is admin.

Allworx Phone System:

Default IP Address = 192.168.2.254:8080

Default Password = admin

Once logged in, you’ll want to navigate to Phone System > Handsets (see figure 1). When in the correct menu, you’ll see your list of available analog handsets at the top of the page. The ports run incrementally from left to right, and are also labeled on the system itself for your convenience.  Select the handset that you wish to configure by clicking modify under actions.

Analog Handsets
Figure 1 (Home > Phone System > Handsets)

Once in the modify handset page you’ll be able to assign an owner to the phone, an internal caller ID name as well as an external name when placing calls outside of your system and over the PSTN (see figure 2). You can assign an owner to the phone as well as configure the internal caller ID number.

Modify Handet
Figure 2 (Home > Phone System > Handsets > Modify Handset)

Additional  features are available such as auto off-hook dialing for use as a door phone, auto answer DTMF string for an intercom system, and caller ID display for showing caller ID on the analog phone’s display.

Enabling DID Blocks on an Allworx Phone System

The Allworx phone system has the ability to configure DID blocks, or Direct Inward Dial blocks, of phone numbers for modification and control. The Allworx 6x, 24x, and 48x can support blocks of numbers handed out for your Telco provider. To add your DID block to your phone system, you’ll need to log in to your Allworx phone system and navigate to Phone System > Outside Lines. Here you’ll see Direct Inward Dial Blocks as an option. Select ‘add new DID Block’ to set up the phone numbers your phone system will use.

Outside Lines

 

New DID Block

Select the starting phone number that is a part of your DID block, and then add how many phone numbers are a part of the block. You can also select a routing plan if you have one created, or create a new routing plan now.

 

Editing the DID Routing Plan:

Once your DID block has been created, you’ll want to edit your DID routing plan. To do so, you’ll need to navigate to Phone System > Outside Lines if you’re not already there and select the routing plan you wish to edit. If you just created your first routing plan, you’ll want to modify Routing Plan 1.

From the Routing Plan information tab, you can see the default description of the plan, the default extension the lines will ring, and the default DNIS that the line can show instead of the incoming caller ID.

To edit each DID to ring a specific extension, you’ll need to add the phone numbers to the phone number to extension mapping. Select ‘Add number to table’ to modify which incoming number dialed will be directed to what extension. This is done with a simple drop-down.  A DNIS name can be entered here as well to be used as a caller ID substitution.

Phone Number to Extension Mapping

Edit all the phone numbers in the block you want directed to specific extensions. When you are finished you’ll now have all of your DID numbers set up and pointing to the correct phone extension, automated attendant, or voicemail.

Disabling or Changing the DHCP Server On Your Allworx Phone System

By default, the Allworx phone system ships with a DHCP server enabled. The Allworx phone system can be configured to disable DHCP if you have another router handing out IP addresses.

To disable the DHCP server, you’ll need to:

  1. Log into your phone system’s admin panel
  2. Navigate to Servers > DHCP Server

Here you’ll see your active leases as well as known hosts on your currently active DHCP server.

  1. Click the modify key under ‘Action’

Disable or Change DHCP Server

This is where you’ll be able to disable your DHCP server.

Additionally, you can specify the dynamic address range of addresses your Allworx system gives out to lease. Your DHCP address reservations can also be configured and managed from this page.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to restart your system after updating these settings in order for your changes to take affect!

Adding Custom Music On Hold Prompts To An Allworx Phone System

Allworx On Hold Music

 

The Allworx 6x, 24x, and 48x phone systems all support using music on hold for calls in queues or while waiting for extensions. In addition to the supplied music on hold prompt, Allworx allows for the creation of custom music on hold prompts. To create custom music on hold prompts, you’ll need an FTP transfer program.

Access your Allworx’s FTP server by navigating to ftp://192.168.2.254/prompts (IP may change depending on configuration). You’ll need to login to the phone system (the default password is admin). Once logged in, you can transfer files over to the prompts folder. In order for the system to recognize your file as a music on hold file, you need to follow a specific naming convention: moh_#_X.snd where # is a number between 1-30 and x is a character string that helps describe the music on hold source. An example would be moh_1_sales.snd.

The hard part about creating custom MOH music is that it must be saved in the .snd format and be recorded in raw u-law, mono, 8 bits per sample, 8 kHz sample rate audio. This is in order for the Allworx to play the sound back over the telephone network. You might have trouble creating this audio yourself, but you can find examples to use online.

Once you’ve transferred the .snd files over to the proper address, log into the admin port at 192.168.2.254:8080. Proceed to Phone System > Music on Hold in the navigation menu and scroll to the bottom. You’ll want to select load custom recordings to put the prompt you created into use by the system. Once you’ve done this you can begin using your music on hold prompts for things such as call queues, hold, and ring groups!