Last Updated on September 3, 2012 by Graham Walsh

If you need to setup a phone in a common area such as a reception, corridor or kitchen phone on Lync, the Polycom CX500 can be an ideal phone for this purpose.  It could also be used in Hot Desking areas.

Adding a Common Area Phone

1. Open up the Lync Powershell and type in the following command: New-CsCommonAreaPhone -LineIRL tel:441234100001 -RegistrarPool “lyncfe.domain.local” -OU “OU=Accounts,DC=domain,DC=local” -Description “Polycom Common Area Phone” -DisplayName “Polycom Demo” -DisplayNumber “44 (1234) 100 001” -Verbose
2. Next we need to set a PIN for this Common Area phone user by typing the following command: Set-CsClientPin -Identity “CN=Polycom Demo,OU=Accounts,DC=domain,DC=local” -Pin 1234
3. Now browse to the Domain Controller and verify that the user has been created in AD with the details provided above.
4. Reset the phone whilst holding down * & # and once ready for sign in, type in the phone number above and the pin of 1234.  You will now be prompted for an unlock PIN, just enter 123456.

To configure the handsets for Hot-Desking

1. Open up the Lync Powershell and enter the following: New-CsClientPolicy -Identity HotdeskingPolicy -EnableHostdesking $true -HotdeskingTimeout 00:00:45
2. Now associate the client policy with the phone Polycom Demo above. Grant-CsClientPolicy -Identity “Polycom Demo” -PolicyName HotdeskingPolicy
3. Now power cycle the phone and it will sign in as the common area logon.  In the menu you should now see User Sign In.  You can now sign in with another user who has a PIN number setup on their account.
4. The hot desking phone will automatically log out the user after 45 seconds as we have defined that above in the policy.  This can be set to what ever you want.