Office phone won't work.

June 4, 2012 9:08 AM

I need some help with my Avaya 1100 series phone, and our support guy is totally unresponsive. Anyone know anything about these things?

Our office building switched over to a VOIP phone system about 8 months ago and we all received these Avaya desk phones. Mine has never worked properly and all attempts to get some help with it have failed, so now I turn to the internet.

The phone has a dial tone and I can take incoming calls, but other than that the phone is unusable. Pressing any button on the phone registers as a zero, so I can't call out, check my voicemail, or even change the volume. Nobody else seems to have problems with their phones.

Is this something I can solve at my desk, or do I need to hammer on the building manager some more? I've tried unplugging it, but that didn't solve anything. It did magically start working again for about a month before it gave up again, but I'm not sure what triggered either the fix or the re-failure.

posted by backseatpilot to technology (10 answers total)

Have you had the actual phone replaced? A crazy problem like that could be an issue with the line, but the default diagnosis is faulty hardware.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:13 AM on June 4, 2012

Yup. The config is screwed up to the point of uselessness, or more likely, there's a hardware issue with the dial pad.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:19 AM on June 4, 2012

My old office switched to those phones and there was no end to the complaining.

The situation you describe is the way our guest offices were set up - incoming only, but a dialtone that went nowhere, unable to use keypad (could use features like "transfer" while you were on the phone, though, IIRC). In order for them to be usable, you had to log into them, with a username and password, that apparently stored your config info. This was to allow you to work in any office at any time, evidently. I wonder if your phone is set up for that kind of situation? Not that this solves the problem if you don't have log in instructions.....
posted by dpx.mfx at 9:24 AM on June 4, 2012

I know with Cisco phones, you can actually take your phone to another extension and plug it in.

If you're still having problems, its the phone, if it works fine, then it may be that your line is not configured correctly.

If your IT guy isn't fixing the problem, you need to escallate, you can't, not have a phone!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 9:41 AM on June 4, 2012

I don't have a specific solution, but I just deployed a VOIP solution at my company and it is unacceptable that you aren't getting supported. The problem could be in a configuration of the phone or configuration of the extension on the server or just plain old bad hardware. Either way I suggest being a pest if necessary to get it resolved.
posted by dgran at 11:26 AM on June 4, 2012

I've got some Avaya experience. My guess from the description is that your phone administrator hasn't assigned the right profile to the phone, OR they've got hot desking enabled but you're not logged in (so there is an "extension" there but no "user"). You can't fix the former, and you can't really fix the latter without their cooperation unless you know your hot desking PIN.

What is on the screen? (If you can take a photo of it, even better.)
posted by mendel at 4:34 PM on June 4, 2012

Oh, shoot, I confused the 1100 and the 1600-series. I don't know the stuff they acquired from Nortel, sorry. I do suspect hotdesking though.
posted by mendel at 7:39 PM on June 4, 2012

Sounds like your phone is not registered to a port.

Ask for the unregister/re-register code. Ask to get a port assigned.
posted by roboton666 at 8:32 PM on June 4, 2012

Thanks for all the ideas. Unfortunately I work on site - if I was having this problem back at our main offices it would have been resolved already, but the building manager here is responsible for everything from the phones to the leaky roof and this just isn't a high priority for him. I'll try plugging it in to someone else's line and if it still doesn't work I'll start complaining more.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:43 AM on June 5, 2012

Well, I found the problem and it's a little embarrassing.

The zero button is sticky. If it doesn't pop back out after pressing it, any other key press registers as a zero. The phone seems to work fine now that I popped it back out.
posted by backseatpilot at 4:50 AM on June 22, 2012