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richard-simpson avatar image
richard-simpson asked richard-simpson commented

Polycom VVX 250 persistent headset volume problem with Plantronics Blackwire 3200 series

US account, RC case number:11046551,

Software version of Polycom VVX 250 phones: 5.8.2.4732

Plantronics Blackwire 3215, 3220, and 3225 headsets connected directly to the phone via USB.


After spending 3 hours on the phone with RingCentral support, (who tried as hard as they could and had engineers from Polycom/Plantronics headset and phone division on the line) we eventually failed in our goal of having our Plantronics Blackwire 3000 series headsets volume persist between phone calls on any of our phones.


After reading information on other posts it looked like the problem may have been a configuration setting with the headset parameter


<Volume voice.volume.persist.headset="1"/>


If 0, the headset receive volume will automatically reset to a nominal level after each call.

Above is the default

If 1, the volume for each call will be the same as the previous call.


This exactly defines our problem and on other RC community pages changing this parameter to "1" solved the problem for other Polycom VVX phones 400, 500, and 600 series phones.


To try and view/change these settings, you find the IP address of the phone and https://<IP of phone>

From there you can log in as a user with no password but for admin, you have to get the password from RingCentral. When RC provisions the phone they change the default "456" password to something else and apparently it is different per phone and it's not a simple 3 digit code. The RC rep was good enough to give me the admin password for one of the phones, and when I downloaded the config file, I was disappointed to see that all of the voice.volume.persist parameters were already set to "1". So that was basically the end of it. I even tried setting it back to "0" myself and uploading the config. But rebooting the phone looks like it just pulls the config from RC again and overwrites any changes. So RC central command seems to be the best place to make these changes anyway and they already have.


But the story goes on and the case is still open. The firmware on the phones (5.8.2) is a version supported by RC. Polycom has point versions all the way up to 6.3. The unsuspecting Polycom rep wanted us to upgrade the firmware with no guarantee that it would solve the problem. But the RC rep was quick to shut him down and set my expectations that upgrading the firmware would remove any RC features. So I get that RC has a supported firmware they like to use. But I hope that one day RC may issue a new firmware for the VVX 250 and that it may address the headset persistent problem.


Another longshot is the Polycom rep gave me a link to the VVX 250 5.8.0 Administrator Guide

https://documents.polycom.com/bundle/ucs-ag-5-8/page/r-ucs-ag-headset-and-speakerphone-parameters.html

And on this particular page is a parameter

site.cfg

voice.volume.persist.usbHeadset

0 (default) The USB headset volume does not persist between calls and is reset each new call.

1 - The USB headset volume at the end of a call persists between calls.

This "USB" parameter doesn't exist in our current VVX 250 config but the 5.8.0 Administrator guide shows that it's an option. A "site" option, which sounds like something that RC could provision for me (and all VVX 250 users) and not something that I could change on the phone.

So I'm hoping a friendly RingCentral engineer will stumble upon this post with an "I can fix it" attitude and drop that parameter into our config to see if that changes something or chooses a 6.x firmware release to test the persistent headset volume and if so rollout it out to the entire RC community so all of us VVX 250 users can rejoice!



hardware
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Chris Rosa avatar image
Chris Rosa answered
You can just add that parameter to the Export_all.cfg. 

However...if you reboot the phone, the setting is lost (just like background images, web GUI passwords, etc.).

We worked with professional services to create custom provisioning configs for our VVX250s and 450s for a long time, and they wanted to bill us for the project. Kind of unbelievable. Particularly for the blank admin password that's currently being set by the default provisioning.
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richard-simpson avatar image
richard-simpson answered richard-simpson commented
Thank you @Chris Rosa. I tried adding the voice.volume.persist.usbHeadset="1" to the Export_all.cfg and it worked! I also backed it out of the Export_all.cfg file and tried adding it to the Export_config.cfg files and it works there too!

Now the problem is I have to find the admin passwords for all of the phones, as the one I have only works for my phone. I thought I heard the agent say that there was a method for determining the admin password based on the serial number or some other unique identifier, But It's not obvious and I haven't been able to figure it out yet.

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Chris Rosa avatar image Chris Rosa commented ·
That's awesome!

Re: the password, if the phone has been provisioned by RC, the user is "admin" and the password is blank. No joke.

You can set a new one via the web console, however if you reboot the phone (or it looses power, etc), you'll loose the new password...and will need to reapply the config. So we've been storing a backup of the export_all.cfg file per user. 
1 Like 1 ·
richard-simpson avatar image richard-simpson commented ·
Unfortunately, the blank admin password does not work for our phones provisioned by RingCentral.

For the user login, you are correct, the password is blank, and that works for every phone I've tried. For the admin login the password is not blank. Providing my Serail number to RC support, they gave the password for one of my phones and the password was in the format: admn<11 digits>pwd. Trying that password on other phones fails. So it seems like each phone has a unique admin password. They were refurbished phones, maybe that has something to do with it.
1 Like 1 ·
Chris Rosa avatar image Chris Rosa commented ·
Interesting...ours were bought new, but not from RC. So perhaps that has something to do with it. Either way, the default admin password should be configurable in the RC Office UI.
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richard-simpson avatar image richard-simpson commented ·
I'm not sure what the RC Office UI is, but support was able to email me a list of all the passwords for our phones. 

So the process is:
  • Export the default selected "Export_All.cfg" file
  • Scroll down to line 83 and press return after voice.volume.persist.headset="1" 
  • add the parameter voice.volume.persist.usbHeadset="1" (just to keep them grouped nicely together)
  • save
  • import
Problem fixed and the phone doesn't even restart or reboot.

I spoke with RC support again to see if they could add this to our account config so it would be permanent and survive a reboot, but after some back and forth they suggested asking our account manager to put a request into level 2 support which I plan on doing this afternoon. 

Then I noticed an email from RingCentral today stating:

Hardware models updates

  • Poly Firmware: The VVX model phones will receive upgraded 6.2.0.4023 firmware on July 15. This provides bug fixes, security updates, and enhancements. Release notes will be posted as the date approaches.
Our phones are currently on 5.8.2.4732. It's possible this firmware upgrade will add the missing voice.volume.persist.usbHeadset="1" parameter. 

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