Desk phones

There are two ways to use a physical SIP phone with Smileline:

The registration settings below apply to both. The handset option — for a person or shared — is described under Desk handsets; the rest of this page is about desk phone lines.

A desk phone line moves one of your numbers off Smileline's call handling and onto a physical SIP handset. Calls go straight from the carrier to the phone on your desk, with Smileline completely out of the path — so the phone keeps ringing even if Smileline, or your internet-connected computers, are down.

That independence has a hard trade: Smileline can no longer see the number's calls at all.

Turn a number into a desk phone line

You need the owner role, and the number can't be your outbound caller ID (pick a different caller ID first on Settings → Phone numbers).

Set up by link

Yealink, Poly, Grandstream and Fanvil phones can download their settings themselves, so nobody has to type a SIP password on a keypad. The card's Show setup link gives each phone line a short link such as https://api-eu.smileline.io/p/48291365720418273645.

The download also sets everything in the settings every phone needs — the registrar for your country, encryption, keep-alive, keypad tones, codec order and network priority — so there's nothing else to change on the phone.

Setup links work for practices in the UK and the US, like desk phones themselves. Every download is recorded in the activity log with the phone's model, so a phone you don't recognise stands out. The link works for as long as the line is live: it stops when the handset is removed, when a desk phone line's password is reset, and when a desk phone line stops being live on its way back to Smileline. Reveal it again for the new link.

The settings every phone needs

Whatever the brand, the registration values are the same:

Desk handsets encrypt their call audio (SRTP), so the phone must require it. A handset added before Smileline turned encryption on keeps unencrypted audio: leave encryption off on that phone, or remove it and add it again to switch encryption on. Desk phone lines don't encrypt audio. The setup link always sets the right value for the phone it belongs to.

On a desk phone line you can register more than one handset with the same credentials — they all ring together. A desk handset's credentials belong to one phone: its registration status is per phone. The line carries up to two concurrent calls.

The desk-phone card checks with the carrier each time it opens whether a handset is actually registered: Handset registered means it will ring; No handset is registered or last registration failed usually means a mistyped password or server. Unknown means the carrier has not confirmed a state yet.

What happens to calls until the phone registers depends on the option:

• Desk phone line — calls fall to the backup number, if you've set one (see If the handset goes offline).
• Desk handset — the card shows Not registered and the phone doesn't ring. Calls follow the number's call routing: on a number with no routing saved, they move on to the practice's other devices, then voicemail.

Calls on the line count towards the practice's fair-use calling like every other Voice call: Smileline reads the line's call records from the carrier once a day to count them.

Network checklist

Most desk-phone problems — one-way audio, calls that drop, a phone that keeps losing its registration — come from the network, not the phone. Check these with whoever looks after your router or firewall:

• SIP ALG off. Many routers rewrite SIP traffic "to help", which breaks calls. Turn it off (it may be called SIP helper, SIP fixup or SIP passthrough).
• Outbound TLS on port 5061 allowed, for the phone's registration and call setup.
• UDP ports 16384–32768 open in both directions, for the call audio.
• QoS marks honoured. The phones mark audio 46 and signalling 26 (DSCP). Make sure your router and switches keep and prioritise them, especially on a busy connection.
• Wired Ethernet where you can. Wi-Fi and powerline adapters add the delays and dropouts that make calls break up.

Receiving and making calls

The line starts inbound-only: the handset receives calls immediately, but can't dial out. UK and US law require emergency numbers (999/112/911) to work from any line that can place calls, so outbound activates only after you register the handset's physical address — click Register emergency address… on the number's card. Once the carrier confirms it, the panel shows Two-way and the handset can dial out (domestic numbers only).

Numbers that stay on Smileline (the softphone, desktop app and extension) register per location instead — see Emergency calling.

If the handset goes offline

Set a Backup number on the same card. If your handsets are unplugged or lose registration, the carrier forwards callers there instead — the same safety net Smileline-handled numbers get.

Set up your phone

Moving back to Smileline

Click Move back to Smileline on the number's card. The handset stops ringing, the line's credentials stop working, and Smileline answers the number again — its routing starts unconfigured, like a newly bought number, so set it up on the same page.

The move is carried out at the carrier in the background. If it keeps failing there, Smileline stops retrying after a bounded run of attempts and parks the move in Review queue rather than failing silently — the row names the error. Click Move back to Smileline again to retry it.