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Do Obi products work with Google Voice for G Suite?

Started by smaccona, March 20, 2019, 08:03:27 AM

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smaccona

Our small business has signed up with the recently-launched Google Voice for G Suite, which is a supported/commercial version of Google Voice for customers who already have G Suite (i.e. corporate GMail, calendar, Hangouts, Chat etc).

Google Support personnel have explicitly told us that OBI products do NOT work with Google Voice for G Suite, only with the consumer-level Google Voice. Can anyone confirm whether this is the case, or does anyone have OBI products working successfully with G Suite?

Many thanks!

Taoman

Quote from: smaccona on March 20, 2019, 08:03:27 AM

Google Support personnel have explicitly told us that OBI products do NOT work with Google Voice for G Suite, only with the consumer-level Google Voice. Can anyone confirm whether this is the case, or does anyone have OBI products working successfully with G Suite?

Hard to say whether they would technically "work" or not without actually trying it. My guess would be there is a different provisioning process that the current OBi products wouldn't support. But even if it worked you almost certainly wouldn't get any kind of support using an OBi device.

I'm guessing they'd want you to use one of these:

https://9to5google.com/2019/03/20/google-voice-g-suite-desktop-phones/

username

You can sign up to be notified by Google when Google Voice is available for your domain. The link mentions beta testing but that phase of it is over. You can still fill out the form.

https://googlevoicebeta.page.link/y6N7[/u]]https://googlevoicebeta.page.link/y6N7

SteveInWA

Here is how the products work/will work with Google Voice:

<By the way, Plantronics and Polycom announced a new name for their merged company:  Poly.>

The Obihai-heritage products, OBi 200, 202, 1000 and 2000 series, will continue to work with the consumer version of Google Voice.  They will not work with Google Voice for G Suite.

The Polycom-heritage products, such as the VVX 150, 250, 350 and 450 will work with Google Voice for G Suite.  They will not work with the consumer version of Google Voice.

smaccona

@SteveInWA and @Taoman this is great information - I was not aware of the announcement about the VVX x50 phones.

The Polycom website lists two editions for the VVX x50 phones: the "UCS Edition" and the "OBI Edition", but when I look to purchase online all the resellers just call it "Polycom VVX 250 Business IP Phone" and don't differentiate between the two editions. Do either of you know if the hardware on these is identical, and it's just the firmware/software that is different?

SteveInWA

#5
You'll need the VVX "OBi Edition", but there is no difference in the actual hardware; it's just a different firmware load.  What the G Suite support meant was what I also said:  the former Obihai-heritage hardware won't work with Google Voice for G Suite; only the former Polycom VVX series hardware will work.  So, when you describe the phones, use the term "Poly VVX x50 IP phone, OBi Edition".  You'll have to ask your chosen reseller to find out how to purchase the correct version.

I don't yet have the procedure for using the Poly phones with Google Voice for G Suite, since this is brand new.  Perhaps the G Suite folks can advise you as to how the phones are added to your console.  The device's MAC address needs to be added to authorize the device, along with a Google Voice license for each user.  The actual hardware provisioning is accomplished automatically, using the TR-069 standard.  The OBiTALK web portal is not used at all.

Let me know if you can't get this sorted out with the G Suite folks; I have some contacts that may help if necessary.

smaccona

@SteveInWA - thanks, I purchased the correct OBi Edition, but G Suite Support has said they don't support any hardware other than mobile devices at this time, and won't until GA is announced. So I've been unable to find out the provisioning procedure. If you have any pointers, that would be great!

SteveInWA

Well, there's nothing you can do, but wait, because the provisioning procedure is secure and automated.  It shouldn't be much longer. 

smaccona

@SteveInWA: a new section named "Desk Phones" became available in the G Suite Google Voice settings late yesterday evening. The interface is very straightforward: you enter the phone's MAC address and the user's email address, and it associates the phone with the user's Google Voice license.

I attempted to add my VVX using its MAC address, but received a message that it was "Unable to claim desk phone". Google Support were not able to help yet, as the service has not entered GA. I have the test phone networked using the Obihai WiFi USB adapter (it's supported) since it's not near an ethernet port, and it was the MAC address of the adapter I had used. The phone's ethernet port has a Polycom-assigned MAC address, which is in a different address space than the Obihai ones. It occurred to me that Google was probably filtering on supported desk phones via their MAC addresses, so I entered the ethernet port's MAC instead in the G Suite portal and even though that's not how the phone was connected to the network, it rebooted and to my surprise was online within a minute, and showed as online in the G Suite portal.

So it seems to work well and the process is very streamlined. Thanks again to all for your guidance on this.

SteveInWA

Great!  Good work on getting the phone set up.  I'm glad to hear that the provisioning procedure is working so well.  I'm pretty jazzed about this, as it's the culmination of a very large amount of work by Google and Poly to develop a better way to provision business phones for Google Voice.  In case that statement leads to speculation, no, there are no plans to use this method for the consumer OBi products AFAIK.

smaccona

@SteveInWA: I've since acquired and provisioned 3 more phones without a hitch - very seamless. My one worry is that the only thing you seem to need to know in order to claim one of the desk phones is the phone's MAC address, so you could potentially claim other companies' desk phones as long as you knew the phones' MAC addresses. While this wouldn't really benefit you since you wouldn't be able to use the phones since they wouldn't be physically in your possession, it is a kind of denial-of-service vector. Do you know if there are mechanisms to prevent this, and what they are?

SteveInWA

I don't have any inside information as to security measures.  I would assume that the real-world potential for an exploit like that would be extremely low.  The attacker would have to be a paying G Suite customer with licenses.  If they were engaged in any sort of mayhem, identifying them would be trivially easy.

GIOS

I have a 508VS; does Google Voice work with my device.  I do not have any In or Out going service.  Or is the 508VS a DEAD Device with Obi?

username

https://cloud.google.com/voice/  Pricing options are $10, $20, $30 per month. You need at least the $20 tier for it to support a desk phone.

It appears that Google Voice is now available for all G Suite customers. There is not yet a support option at https://support.google.com/ but I assume it is in the cards soon.

janishouse

The likelihood of such an exploit occurring in the actual world must be quite slim.
drift hunters

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