Set up desk phones

This feature is available with the Voice Standard and Premier subscriptions. Learn more

Set up desk phones to use with Google Voice in your organization. That way, your users can make and receive calls over the internet, instead of over dedicated telephone lines.

Before you begin

Provide power to the phone through a separate power adapter or a Power over Ethernet (PoE) cable.
Connect the phone to the internet through a wired connection or Wi-Fi.
Each user that you want to assign a phone to must have a Voice license and number.
Find the Media Access Control (MAC) address of the phone. It's printed on the back of the phone or shown in the settings panel on the phone.

What is a MAC address?

The MAC address uniquely identifies every networked device, such as a desk phone. The MAC address is globally unique, unlike a serial number assigned by the manufacturer.

Note: For Polycom™ VVX OBi Edition phones, Google Voice supports using the serial number as the MAC address. The only number on the back of a VVX phone is the serial number.

Add desk phones for Voice

Add phones individually

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle VoiceService Management.
On the left, click Desk phones to see a list of the desk phones in your organization.
At the top, click Add a desk phone.
At MAC address, enter the MAC address of the phone.
(Optional) To assign a user to the phone, at User's email address, enter the email address for the user that you want to assign the phone to. You can wait and assign a user later.
Click Save.
In the confirmation window, click Close.

Add multiple phones at once

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle VoiceService Management.
On the left, click Desk phones to see a list of the desk phones in your organization.
At the top, click Batch add desk phones.
Choose an option:
- Start New List—Voice creates a spreadsheet named "New user desk phones on date."
- Use Existing—A window opens showing your existing spreadsheets.
  1. Click the name of the spreadsheet that you want to use. To use a spreadsheet that isn't listed, at the top, click Upload.
  2. Click Select.
Click the name of the spreadsheet.
The file opens in Google Sheets in a new tab of your browser.
In the spreadsheet, fill in the 4 columns with each phone's information for each phone that you want to add.
After you complete the spreadsheet, return to the Admin console and click Continue.
Voice verifies each MAC address and email address.
(Optional) Fix any errors in the spreadsheet and click Resubmit. Learn about verification errors below.
Review the information for each user and click Add Phones.

After you add the phones

To view the status, at the top, click Tasks .
When Voice finishes adding the phones, you get an email notification.
Depending on the number of phones you add, it can take up to 24 hours to add all phones.

Guidelines for entering information

You can enter information only in the columns available in the downloaded file. You can't add new columns.
When you enter email addresses, use the format username@yourdomain.com.
When you enter MAC addresses, use the 12-hex digits format.
For example, ABCD-1234-5678.

Verification errors

If you have trouble uploading a list, find the error message below for details. After you correct all errors, submit the list again.

Error	Description	Solution
Device has already been assigned	Phone is assigned to another user.	Unassign phone from the user.
Email doesn’t match a user	Email address doesn’t belong to a user in your organization.	Enter a valid email address.
Email format is incorrect	Email address isn’t in the correct format.	Change email address to the correct format.
MAC address must be 12 hex digits	MAC address isn’t in the correct format.	Make sure MAC address is in the 12-hex digits format.
The phone model is required	Row is missing the phone model.	Add phone model to the affected row.

After you add a phone, it might restart several times and take a while before it's ready. When done, the background screen image changes to show the Voice logo. In the Admin console, the desk phone page shows the phone and the Voice number of the assigned user.

Video: Add a desk phone

Get started: Google Voice desk phones

Assign a different user to a phone

You can change the Voice number assigned to a phone. If the phone already has an assigned number, you first need to unassign it.

Sign in to your Google Admin console.
Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).
From the Admin console Home page, go to AppsG SuiteGoogle VoiceService Management.
On the left, click Desk phones to see a list of the desk phones in your organization.
Click the desk phone that you want to reassign, and then click Unassign.
At the prompt, click Unassign.

Voice removes the previous user from the phone, including their contacts, saved voice messages, settings, and other data.
From the desk phone homepage, point to the desk phone that you want to update and click Edit .
At Desk phone name, enter a name for the desk phone.
At User's email address, enter the email address for the user that you want to assign the phone to.
Click Next.

Supported desk phone models

You can use these models of desk phones with Google Voice:

Polycom VVX 150 OBi Edition
Polycom VVX 250 OBi Edition
Polycom VVX 350 OBi Edition
Polycom VVX 450 OBi Edition

If you don't have one of these models, or aren't sure, learn how to identify your model and convert to the OBi Edition Software at Polycom support.

Device and service restrictions

ObiTalk^® devices only work with the consumer version of Voice. If you’re not sure what kind of account you’re using Voice with, go to About Google Voice account types.
Google Voice for G Suite does not support Obihai^® phones used with the unmanaged version of Google Voice. You can't connect those phones to your work or school account.
When you set up a phone to use Google Voice, it can't use any other service provider. Any existing lines and numbers on the device are removed.

Desk phone status

The desk phone homepage shows the status of each phone.

Indicator	Status	Description
	Online	Phone can make and receive calls (if it has an assigned phone number). It can also get configuration updates.
	Limited Service	Phone can make and receive calls, but can't get configuration updates because it can't connect to the provisioning service.
	Not in Service	Phone can't make or receive calls because it can't connect to Google Voice.
	Offline	Phone can't make or receive calls because it can't connect to Google Voice and can't get configuration updates.

Offline devices might have lost power or network connectivity. Devices without full service might be unable to connect to required services. For details, see Polycom requirements.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?