Hot Desking

Description

Hot desking allows you to use any physical phone, and point your extension to it. This is usually used in places like temporary offices where more than one person shares a desk.

Hot desking is cross tenant capable. This means that an extension on one tenant, and use a phone from another tenant. This is accomplished by creating a unique number for each 'hot desker' that needs it.

XML Handler

First you need to configure FusionPBX to deliver extensions and dialplan from the database. This is done on a system level, not per tenant. If you need this feature you are advised to have a server dedicated to this purpose for those clients that require it. Go here to enable database dialplan delivery.

Extensions

First, configure your extensions on the system as normal.

Dialplan

You need to enable the dialplan entries (per tenant) for hot desk login, and hot desk logout.

• Dialplan->Dialplan Manager
  • edit and enable (set true) the following:
    • hot-desk-login
    • hot-desk-logout

Hotdesk App

• Apps -> Hot Desking

You will need an entry for each extension that requires hot desking.

Unique ID

You will configure for each extension that requires hot desking a GLOBALLY UNIQUE ID This must be unique across all extensions and tenants on the system.

• Add the extension, and assign a Unique ID.
• NOTE: Pay particular attention to security here. Don't make these easy to blindly guess with voicemail passwords of 1234. You might have some unhappy users...

Voicemail Password

If you assign the voicemail password, it will override their current voicemail password.

Company Password

You can also forgo this and set a pin_number channel variable in the hot desk login dialplan. This will be unique per company instead of per person. If set it will be used instead of the voicemail password.

Dial String

This will be automatically set by the system. You can edit and override this in the GUI but it is not recommended.

Use

Enable

Have the user dial *072. They will be prompted for their extension number. This is the Unique ID Number. Next they will be prompted for the password. After this is done, the phone will ring with the new extension number. You can verify the forwarded address in Apps->Hot Desking.

Disable

Have the user dial *073. They will be prompted for their extension number. This is the Unique ID Number. Next they will be prompted for the password. After this is done, the forwarding rule will be disabled. You can verify the forwarded address in Apps->Hot Desking.

Outbound Calls

Caller ID for outbound calls will change, but there it is based on registration. The first registration after logging in to hot desking will allow the system to change the outbound caller id. Until this registration occurs, the caller ID and possibly gateway used will still use the actual phones registration. Conversely this is true after logout from hot desking. Calls will continue to use the hot desk credentials until the phone reregisters.

To work around this issue it is recommended that you adjust your registration time to a lower value. 30-120 seconds is recommended and dependent on your network/system configuration.