18. Add station -part 6- analog phones and TTI

Analog stations

They are a little bit more tricky then VoIP Station.  The biggest difference between a VoIP phone and an analog one is the fact that the analog phone actually connects into a physical port and you have to specify that one.

Now, your Avaya CM it's a server but all the circuits terminate in a board and boards go into cabinets. The cabinets have names and also in the back you will find some numbers  that specify the position of the card that you will plug in there. So assuming that you have a cabinet called 01A (i won't go over how Avaya got this number when they implement it) and you plug in a card in slot number 8, then the position for that card will be 01A08. Here is how a G650 might look. Please note the port number (red) on the back.

Now, an analog phone has to reach one of these cards that are analog cards as well. One example bellow (TN763).

You see that you have a connector on the back of the card. That connector goeso to a BIX using a 25 pair cable. Each port on the BIX will have a unique indicator in the format [CABINETNAME][CARDPOSITION][PortWithinTheCard]. Something like 01A0820. This number specifies that we have connected an analog phone on the 20th port of the 8th card of cabinet 01a. This is what we will program into the system.

Don't know what a BIX is ? Don't worry, here is a image of one. A bix is they way "older phones" connected to the PBX. they would be cables running into these guys like this

where each cable is a port. Each 25 pair goes from the bix to the Avaya cm card in our case.

So, back to the programming. To program one analog station you will have to define a station type of 2500 and also define the port. How do you find the port ? Well you would know what BIX in your environment goes where (as in goes to what card on avaya), find an empty port on it, connect the analog phone to that port and then note down the port number where you connected.

So now, if you want to move an analog phone you will have to update the port number to reflect the new connection in the system. However, this is the "manual" way to add an Avaya analog phone. There is also another way to do it.

TTI = Terminal Translation Initialization (that's a mouthfull, right? 🙂 ) - part of Avaya's Administration without hardware (aka, no need to touch the system to do a change).

Well, what TTI does is to listen for a specific code under a specific analog line and then "detect" the port it came unto. So, if you don't want to trace the wires, just make sure that all the "analog" stations on the floor are connected into the one or more bix that goes into an analog card on your cabinet. As soon as you have that connection made, your station will have dialtone (even thought there is nothing on the system defined for it). There is no extension associated with that analog phone yet, just a dialtone. Just like with an IP phone you will have to "login" with your extension and the TTI password.  Once you do that, the system will detect the port where the TTI password and extension came through and change that's station port to whatever port it detected the tones. That is if the station is in "port auto-detect" mode and you have TTI enabled.

For the station to be in the "port auto-detect mode - (avaya calls this AWOH administration without hardware)" it's easy. When you define the station in the port section put a X rather then tracing the cables and putting the correct port  in there. Next make sure you have TTI enabled. You can check that into system-parameter features (page 3). Note down the TTI Security Code. You will need it to "register" an analog station. Even thought you can define station passwords into the system for analog stations, all analog stations will use only one code. THIS ONE! By default the code is 12345 but you can change it if you wish (change system-parameters features).

Next, you will need to get the TTI codes for registering and unregistering an analog phone. Check feature-access-code page 4 for TTI Merge and Separate. Merge will make the system associate an extension with the port where the code is coming from while unmerge will dissociate an extension from the port. In my case the codes are *08 and #08.

So,  to put everything together now. If i wish to add a new analog station with extension 1234 i would do these steps (assuming that all analog ports in the system are connected to a bix that goes into an analog card).

1. Add station 1234. Define the type as 2500 and the port X.  Assign the right COS, COR, Coverage path and station name.
2. Go and connect the phone into the port and make sure i have dial tone.
3. Dial from the phone *08, wait for 1 second, dial 12345 (TTI code), wait 1 second, dial 1234 (extension number).

If i wish to move the phone from one location to another i would follow these steps.

1. Go to the station and dial #08, dial 12345 (TTI Code), dial 1234 (extension).
2. Unplug the phone from the port
3. Move the phone to the new port and make sure i have dialtone
4. Dial *08, dial 12345, dial 1234

Make sure you make a small pause between the commands, like dial *08 then wait a bit, dial 12345 wait a bit and so forth. Don't rush and dial *08123451234. 🙂 The sequence should be *08,12345,1234.

That's it.  Questions. Use the form bellow.