Cisco Enterprise Phones are NOT Officaly Supported on CaptainChris Community PBX.

Which are basically all Cisco phones, expect for Linksys/SPA models, and 3PCC models.

Cisco phones are the most common phones for enthusiasts to want to have. While they are really nice phones, unless you are using a Cisco PBX, they are some of the hardest phones to use and set up. For starters, most older Cisco phones use SCCP by default, which we do not support for security reasons.

You will need to manually update your firmware to SIP, which requires knowledge, a computer, the firmware files, and we can’t do that from our end. Most of the time, your extension will need to be legacy SIP. This means you can’t have any other phones on the extension, and we prefer people have as few extensions as possible. It is also a slight security risk for us.

We cannot support every single Cisco phone. While we might be able to get a 7975 to work, forget about a 7940 and 7960. Those phones are the hardest to set up, and if something is done wrong, they can be bricked, which we don’t want to be responsible for. Additionally, you will need to create and write your XML config files, as these phones do not have a web interface.

While we have the ability to auto-generate XML files and provision the phones to our server, we have had little success rates, which can only be done for a slight handful of phones. We do not have the time to manually write and maintain XML configs for each user. Even after this, there will still be issues, and not everything will work as expected.

You can use Cisco phones; however, we will not provide any support. You will need to host the TFTP server, create your XML config files, and hope it works. If someone claims they received support from us, it is because we are friends with them.

• Cisco SPA Series: Known to work great with third-party VoIP systems, can be provisioned, and are supported.
• 3PCC Cisco Phones: Models like the 8841-3PCC are supported, though not provisionable. Enterprise versions can be converted to 3PCC with a $60 license.

Both series come in IP phone and ATA forms and can be programmed through their web interface.

If you are not a fan of either series, you can look into other brands like Poly, Yealink, Grandstream, Snom, and Sangoma/Digium. You may find a phone you like better.

If you really want to use a Cisco enterprise phone on the PBX, the easiest way is to run a CME or CUCM server. You can trunk your extension into it and connect your phone to that. While it is not directly on the PBX, it works.