IP Office Time Change – How to change the time on an Avaya IP Office system

Fall backwards ....Spring forwards.

If you come into the office and find that all the phones are displaying the wrong time you will need to know how to change the time on the IP Office system. There are a couple of easy ways to do this.

Log on to the System Administrator console and select the system on the left hand list. Make sure you have the System tab also selected and you will see a box called Time Settings. Just above this is a drop down list box called Time Setting Config Source. This tells the system where you want it to get the time from.

If you want to quickly get the system and all handsets displaying the right time the quickest way to do this is to set this drop down box to Voicemail Pro / Manager.

In the Time Server Address box enter the IP address of the PC you are running System Administrator on and OK the change. Go to File > Save configuration. This change is one that can be merged and within minutes you should start to see all handsets reflect the new time.

What’s the downside to this configuration?

The problem with this method of setting the time on the system is that it assumes that the time on your PC is correct. And even if you have your PC configured to pick up it’s time from an accurate time source you are not going to be running the System Administrator console all the time for the system to synch to.

The best method is to point the Time Setting Config Source to an SNTP Server. SNTP Stands for Simple Network Time Protocol and it is a method of synchronizing the clocks of computer systems over packet switched data networks. If you have an SNTP Server on your local network that has an accurate time source point it at that. Alternatively you would need to configure your firewall to allow the Avaya IP Office system to get access to an external SNTP server. I’m used to running this on a Microsoft Windows network and so have the Primary Domain Controller configured to get it’s time from and accurate external time source so simply point the IP Office system at the PDC emulator and it’s time should be accurate and will be the same as all other devices on the network.

To change the time on the system to point at an SNTP server change the Time Setting Config Source to point at the SNTP option in the drop down box. Put in the Time Server Address and just check the other settings....they should be fairly self-explanatory. And that’s it....you hopefully won’t need to touch this setting again.