Configuring CX600 LPE for Office365 (E4)

4/9/2013

The Polycom CX600 is a Lync Phone Edition (LPE) device that is optimzed for Lync2010 and Lync2013 environments. As briefly mentioned in the KB Article for the January2013 CU for LPE devices, this new firmware update actually allows the phones to support Lync Online and Office365. This article descibes how to configure the CX600 for use in Office365 Plan E4 in a lab environment. For Lync On-Premise scenarios, fellow MVP Jeff Schertz has written excellent blogs on how to configure these phones for Lync available here.

Since the phones require users to be enabled for Enterprise Voice, only Office365 Plan E4 or Lync Online Plan 3 can be used with the Lync Phones as only these plans include the Enterprise Voice" feature equivalent in Lync On-Premise, which is refered to as "Lync-to-Phone" in Lync Online. In US and Canada, the "Lync-to-Phone" PSTN connectivity is provided by service provider JahJah and this service is not currently available anywhere else in the world. For Office365 users outside US and Canada, PSTN connectivity can still be achieved by deploying an On-Premise Lync environment with PSTN connection via a qualified gateway while still using Lync and Exchange Online in the cloud. These are refered to as Hybrid Lync Server deployments. Details on how to configure phones for these hybrid scenarios will be covered in a future article. In this article we will not configure any PSTN connectivity.

For UM to work on the phone, Exchange Online Plan 2 is also required as that includes the UM features that allows the phone to gather call logs and retrieve/playback voice mails. Since Office365 Plan E3 includes Exchange Online Plan 2 but only Lync Online Plan 2, the CX600 phones cannot be used for E3 and attempting to login on the phone using a E3 account results in the error as shown on the right:

Getting Started: Configuring Exchange Online for UM

To allow the CX600 phones to retrieve VoiceMail and Call Logs, the Exchange Online service must be configured for Unified Messaging UM). To get started, navigate to the Exchange Admin Center and select Unified Messaging on the left tab. Then Click on the "+" button to add a new UM Dial Plan as shown below:

On the new UM Dial Plan window, we enter a desriptive name for the dial plan followed by the Extension length which would be the number of digits in the full E.164 number excluding the "+". For eg if the country code is 65 followed by another 8 digits, then extension length would be 10 digits. Next select the "SIP URI" Dial plan type and select the desired audio language. Sample screen shot is shown below:

After saving the dial plan, we need to select the dial plan and click "Edit" to configure additional parameters. Note that a default Mailbox Policy has already been created and can be modified if additional settings such as UM features and PIN policies need to be changed from the default. For this lab we will use the default settings so we just click the "Configure" button to continue as shown below:

In the Dial Plan window, we can configure dial codes, dial rules and other settings. For this lab, we just want to add an Outlook Voice Access (OVA) number so just click on that in the left tab. Then enter the desired Subscriber Access number in E.164 format in both the routing number and OVA number boxes as shown below:

Next, we also want to add a UM Auto Attendant so back on the Dial Plan page, scroll down to the UM Auto Attendant section and click "+":

In the new UM auto attendant window, we provide a name and select the checkbox to enable the attendant. Then enter the desired Access number in E.164 format:

Configuring Lync Online

The user's E.164 tel uri phone number is part of the users contact information and must be edited in the Office 365 user properties and NOT from the Lync Online admin center. The required field is "Office Phone" as shown below:

Next navigate to the Lync admin center and click on "Lync-to-phone" on the left tab and click on "access numbers. Then click the "+" button to add a new access number:

First we create an Outlook Voice Access number in Lync. Enter the same E.164 number used earlier in Exchange for OVA and the desired SIP address. Ensure that the Type is "Outlook Voice Access":

Repeat the same steps to create an Auto Attendant number. The end result should look like the picture below:

Enable the user for UM

Finally, we return to the Exchange admin center and enable the user for UM. Select the recipient and click on "Enable" under Unified Messaging as shown below:

In the "Enable UM Mailbox" window, click on "browse" and select the UM DialPlan Default Policy which was automatically created earlier and then click "Next":

Enter the user's E.164 tel uri defined earlier but without the "+" sign. Then choose to either automatically generate a PIN or manually enter it:

Sign-in on the Phone

Although the CX600 supports both USB tethering and PIN AUTH for signing into Lync, in order to get the UM features working USB tethering must be used. This simply involves signing into Lync Online from a Lync client and then connecting the CX600 to the PC using the USB cable provided. Note that the phone still needs it's own LAN connection via it's RJ45 jack and it must be able to obtain an IP address and other network settings from a DHCP server. A popup window will appear prompting for re-entering of the user credentials and once done, the phone will login to Lync and will be able to start providing calls functionality along with Calendaring, UM Voice Mail and Call Logs. Below are some screen shots of the phone signed into Office365 in my lab: