Conferencing

Control Unit

DSP

Conference Capability

Small Office Edition

Supports up to 24 conference parties with a maximum of 6 parties in any particular conference.

IP403

Support multiple conferences totaling up to 64 parties. For example:

•	20 x 3-way conferences plus 1 x 4-way conference.

•	1 x 10-way conference (10 parties) plus 11 x 3-way conferences (33 parties) and free capacity for 20 more conference parties to join new or existing conferences.

IP406 V1

IP406 V2

IP500

128

For IP Office 5.0+, the IP500 capacity has been increased to 128. However the maximum of 64 parties still applies to each individual conference. The system capacity is reduced by the number of embedded voicemail channels is use.

IP412

128

The IP412 supports two 64 party conference banks. When a new conference is started, the bank with the most free capacity is used for that conference. However once a conference is started on one conference bank, that conference cannot use any free capacity from the other conference bank.

•	DSP The DSP column in the table above indicates systems that automatically apply silence suppression to quiet parties in conferences involving 10 or more parties.

•	Other Use of Conference Resources System features such as call intrusion, call recording and silent monitoring all use conference resources for their operation. On the IP500, each embedded voicemail call in progress also reduces the conference capacity.

•	Automatically Ending Conferences The behavior for the IP Office automatically ending a conference varies as follows:

•	For pre-4.0 IP Office systems, if a conference has just two parties, and one party leaves, the conference call is ended. This may affect conferences that are just beginning but currently only contain the first two parties to join.

•	For IP Office 4.0, a conference remains active until the last extension or trunk with reliable disconnect leaves. Connections to voicemail or a trunk without reliable disconnect (for example an analog loop-start trunk) will not hold a conference open.

•	For IP Office 5.0, the Drop External Only Impromptu Conference setting controls whether a conference is automatically ended when the last internal party exits the conference.

•	Analog Trunk Restriction In conferences that include external calls, only a maximum of two analog trunk calls are supported. This limit is not enforced by the IP Office software.

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Recording Conferences
If call recording is supported, conference calls can be recorded just like normal calls. Note however that recording is automatically stopped when a new party joins the conference and must be restarted manually. This is to stop parties being added to a conference after any "advice of recording" message has been played.

•	IP Office Conferencing Center If IP Office Conferencing Center is installed, 5 resources are reserved for use by the system. The maximum number of callers in any one conference and the total number of people on conference calls is reduced by 5.

•	IP Trunks and Extensions Conferencing is performed by services on the IP Office's non-IP interface. Therefore a voice compression channel is required for each IP trunk or extension involved in the conference.

•	Call Routing A short code routing calls into a conference can be used as an Incoming Call Route destination.

•	Conference Tones The IP Office provides conference tones. These will be either played when a party enters/leaves the conference or as a regularly repeated tone. This is controlled by the Conferencing Tone (System \| Telephony \| Tones & Music) option.