An admin at one of the sites I help support asked me the other day if there is a way to have a Polycom handset automatically answer a call. I was initially confused as to what he meant. I thought maybe he meant forwarding the call to an AutoAttendant or another extension. (There is a language barrier here too so something may have gotten lost in translation.)
Because seriously: What is the point to have a handset auto answer a call? The person calling the phone will just talk to no one?
Well that is exactly the point. Essentially, this is a “budget” paging function which is what the admin at the remote site wanted to know.
I did some digging and the Polycom VVX phones support this feature natively. I won’t go into the details on how to set this up as you can read this document for the full details. (Skip to page 21)
I have successfully tested this on the VVX 310 and the VVX 500. You call the number assigned to the handset, the phone answers, and any rubbish you say comes out of the speaker on the phone.
If you are interested in a proper paging solution with groups and fancy features using the VVX phones, then check out this article on Anthony Caragol’s Lync/Skype Blog
