Cisco SPA/SA Phone | Multicast Paging with Cisco SPA/SAxxx phones

The SA303 and SA5xx IP phones in SIP mode, provide a great feature called Group Paging (Multicast paging).  You may need to be running recent firmware in order to access this feature.

This means that anyone using a SPA5xx IP phone can page all other SPA5xx IP phones on the LAN by dialing *96, then the 'target number' 800.

This works regardless of what you are using for call control. [Asterisk or other 3rd party call control] - the CloudPBX platform is not involved at all.

Combine this with a speed dial and you can press only one button to page a group.

Configure a speed dial by pressing an unused line key on a SPA5xx IP phone for 3 seconds. Provide a name and number for the speed dial button and you are done.

Multicast paging is one-way. This means that the person who dials 800 can speak but others cannot reply.

Up to 5 groups can be configured but the phone only takes part in the first two defined paging groups.

Modify group paging behavior as follows:

1. Enable paging: SPA5xx web-ui > Phone tab > Supplementary Services > Paging Serv: yes [factory default is yes]
2. Accept pages: SPA5xx web-ui > User tab > Supplementary Services > Auto Answer Page: yes [factory default is yes]
3. Configure page groups: SPA5xx web-ui > Phone tab > Multiple Paging Group Parameters > Group Paging Script: 
   factory default is: pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;

Here's how to add 801 called Sales in a zero-touch deployment. This allows you to dial 800 to page all phones, 801 for Sales:

<Group_Paging_Script ua="na">

pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;

pggrp=224.168.168.168:34561;name=Sales;num=801;listen=yes;

</Group_Paging_Script> 

Use the following if you want to edit using the web-ui:
pggrp=224.168.168.168:34560;name=All;num=800;listen=yes;pggrp=224.168.168.168:34561;name=Sales;num=801;listen=yes;

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