atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Vodavi Telephones & Systems Starplus 616 Flex

At our office we have a Starplus 616 Flex phone system. Our phones are 616-12 units. Hanging from the terminal block beside the 616 Flex unit is a RCA plug and cable. It is terminated at a location labled MOH. We assumed this to be Music on hold. Since we currently do not have Music on hold we tried to use the function. We set a radio to a local channel and plugged the RCA jack into the headset port. We did not get MOH. Do we need to turn it on somehow.

Hi there,

MOH is automatically provided on the 616 flex, however background music does have to be turned on through programming (flash 21, btn 7).
The MOH pair is y/o, o/y. Make sure your cable is connected properly to this pair.
However I think your problem lies in the fact you are plugging an rca jack into a headset port on your radio.
Do your self a favor and go to radio shack and get a 1/8 " mono cable to 2 alligator clips on the other end. You won't need a punch down tool that way. And whilst you are there you may want to consider a cheap cd or mp3 player for your moh source, there is nothing worse than listening to radio commercials and/or static whilst being placed on hold. Hope this helps.

Paul
Key Telecom, Inc.

Further troubleshooting on this problem has revealed that with an active music source supplied, we are able to get background music on all of our phones. However we still do not have MOH. Our system has a main line and two additional roll over lines, so I made sure to check each of the three lines to be sure that I had no MOH on any of the three lines. I also read in the manual that there were two levels of HOLD, determined by pressing hold either once or twice. So I tried to get MOH by pressing hold twice. Still no results. I also found that there was a volume control on the main control pannel, I made sure that it was not turned off or down low and creating the problem. Still trying to solve problem

The press hold once or pressing it twice is just a difference of one station only being able to pick up the call on hold or all stations being able to access a line on hold. Pressed once means any station on the system can pick up that call on hold, and pressing it twice means only the station that placed the call on hold can pick it up from that specific station.

Maybe the connection on the yellow orange pair is not bridged, that could cause the MOH source to not go through the system.

Not sure what else would not allow the music to be heard on hold, if it is being heard as Back Ground Music, unless it is not enabled in the system programming.

I will check further and let you know.

Is there a volume adjustment? I thought there was a microdial that was used to adjust the hold volume near the power cord? I may be confusing it with a 1224, or maybe they both have it.

No confusion, you are correct.

If you are getting BGM, then the connection is fine. The only thing you can do is try adjusting the volume as cswroe has suggested. There is no programming to turn on/off MOH on the 616Flex.

Thank you all for your input. I agree with your idea of volume adjustment, but as I idicated in my previous post I have already eliminated that as a possible problem. Could you rcomend any other troubleshooting steps that might help. Is there a system reset or re-initializing that I could try? Could a single phone be an issue that I should unpug all phones and bring them on line one at a time? Any other ideas?

You could try resetting the system, get into programming then dial (* rest) then hold or to reinitialize the system dial (* init) then hold.
Both of these measures are used to clear out programming/data errors in the system and will not resolve hardware issues. It now sounds to me like whatever hardware inside the ksu is used to power moh is shot and you may need to replace the ksu which is readily available on the reseller market. Your telecom guy will be able to get you one. The starplus line is old and it might be time to consider a new system.

I seem to remember that there are seperate BGM and MOH pots on the analog stazrpluses. Sounds like the BGM volume may be set fine, but MOH is way down.

I'll look at the manual when I get home tonight.

You are correct, I just looked at a manual (dusty) and it shows separate adjustments for MOH and Background music.