The secret to making office moves painfree – 3 easy ways to move a phone

With traditional phone systems, moves were sometimes complex affairs requiring at the very least re-patching or even new cabling. With the Avaya IP office system being a Voice over IP based system it becomes very simple. VOIP systems integrate into your existing structured cabling so you can run your phones and computers over the same network. All you need is a CAT 5 or CAT 6 data outlet to plug your handset into. You can provide power to the handset using a power adapter or patch it into a Power over Ethernet switch in the Comms room. If you don’t have any spare data outlets you can run it over the same connection as your PC by plugging your phone into the port and then connecting an Ethernet cable from your phone to your PC. As long as the switch port is providing power it will work just fine.

Move the phone

So if someone in your organisation is moving to a new location all you need is a data outlet. If someone is moving to a location where there is already a handset you could move their handset with them and they keep the same extension number and all the same settings but this is not really necessary. There are two much simpler ways of moving them to a new handset.

Login to the phone

If the user has a login code assigned to them they can go to the new handset and login. Your system administrator needs to assign the login code and this is configured under Users > Telephony tab > Supervisor settings. Just enter a numerical code into the box called Login Code. Make sure you OK the change and save the configuration. You won’t need to reboot the system to apply this change....a merge is all that’s required.

Then all the user needs to do is go to the new handset and press the “Features” button. Scroll down and select Phone User > Login. They enter their extension number and passcode that the system administrator assigned and the phone takes on their settings.

Change the base extension

Alternatively the system administrator can change the base extension of users in the system administrator application. This connects as user to an extension. Every physical phone on the system must have an extension number but not every user. In most circumstances you  probably assigned a user to an extension. It is possible to change the default extension a user is logged onto by going to the list of users. Click on the user and make sure you are on the User tab. Enter the new number in the Extension box. You will need to reboot the system to apply this change so this might be something that you want to schedule for out of hours.


These are three ways moving an IP phone on an IP Office 500 system can be done very easily. Hope your moves go smoothly.