Set up desk phones for your office

Desk phones from Yealink, Poly, Fanvil and Snom set themselves up with Freesbe’s phone system: you add each phone once, plug it in, and it signs in as its person with the keys you chose. Here’s how Northwind Traders sets up phones for its sales team and its front desk. You need to be an admin, or have the Phone admin role, and the phone system needs to be on.

1. Add the phones

1. Open the Admin Center, then Phone → Desk phones, and click Add a phone.
2. Type the MAC address from the sticker under the phone (it looks like 80:5E:C0:3A:12:7F). Freesbe recognises the brand and lists only its models: choose the Model.
3. Choose A person and pick who it’s for, or A shared phone with a name like “Front desk” and its own extension.
4. Click Add phone. The phone’s page opens, ready for its keys.

Plug the phone in within the hour. If it takes longer, open the phone’s Status and setup tab and click Give it another hour.

2. Give it busy lamps and keys

On the Keys tab, key 1 is the person’s own line. Click Add a key for each of the others:

• Colleague keys light up while that person is on a call and flash when their phone rings. Press one to pick up the ringing call, or to call them.
• Park spot keys let anyone park a call on spot 1 to 9 and pick it up from another phone.
• Speed dial, Call queue sign-in, Voicemail and Do not disturb do what they say.

Setting up a second phone for the same team? Click Copy from… and pick a phone that’s already done: its keys are copied over, and you only change what’s different. Click Save keys.

3. Get the phone online

How a phone finds its settings depends on its brand:

Brand	What to do
Yealink	Nothing: plug it in. Freesbe links the phone through Yealink’s cloud when you add it.
Poly	Use your office network (option 66) or type the settings address on the phone.
Fanvil	Use your office network (option 66) or type the settings address on the phone.
Snom	Use your office network (option 66) or type the settings address on the phone.

The settings address is on every phone’s Status and setup tab. To use your office network, give it to whoever runs your network and ask them to set it as DHCP option 66: every phone you plug in after that finds Freesbe on its own. To type it on a phone instead, open the phone’s web page (its address is in the phone’s network menu) and enter it under Auto provisioning, then restart the phone.

If a phone says “Needs you”

A phone that was used with another phone provider may still be linked to them. Ask them to release it (they’ll want its MAC address), or use your office network or type the settings address instead. Then click Send settings now. If a phone still won’t come online, see My phone won’t register.

Moving a phone to someone else

Open the phone, go to Status and setup, and choose the new person under Belongs to. The phone signs in as them with a new password; its keys stay, so change any that pointed at them.