We purchased the Vodavi XTS in 2001. We had copper lines and it worked great for us. Everybody had their own voice line. But to save $$$ we moved to a PRI but we are finding it difficult to move over.
1) Told we could fax through PRI but unable to. Start dialing and connection drops. Have Cox Communications PRI and they state it is a Straight PRI with no soft switches and not VOIP. How do we do it???
2) We have cordless phones that worked great before with Verizon. If we wanted caller id or notification of voicemail they worked great but now with Vodavi Voice Mail (I think pathrfinder) and PRI no caller id or voice mail notification. Is this doable??? We were told yes in meetings by company purchased system from but now they say no. These people do not want to go to digital sets and right now we do not have $$$ for even refurbished sets.
3) Right now I think we have Caller ID for name and number turned on but only number coming through. Called in to Cox why.
4) When had own phone lines and line appearances was great for bosses and secretaries. They would put call on hold and intercom boss that person on line 1 and boss pick up line one but now can not. Told to have them transfer call to boss' line. Any other way??
Sorry I am new at this and I have tried programming this the best I could but really am not sure what XTS can do with PRI and what can't or what we could do with PRI anyways.
Any help would be appreciated

Pri and regular lines don't have much in common other than a Line number appears on the screen when a call rings in or you make an outbound call. Pri is much better than regular lines believe me. BUT you have to know how to program DID route tables, and ringing assignments. Not the same thing as CO line ringing. Caller ID both name and number works over PRI. I don't know of any carriers that don't provide that. You do have to request that they turn it up either as DNIS or ANI with Caller ID deluxe. For standard cordless phones to show caller id you need an slt card with that function.You also have to program the phone to have the correct id type.

If the caller name worked before on the XTS it still will, but as stated above it needs to be turned on from the telco and PRI display name as well as some other options has to be set correctly.

Putting calls on hold can still be done by line appearance, but that is a bit unrealistic considering the PRI has twenty three lines. You should use Park Keys. With Call Park you can do the same thing...park it call someone, tell them which park it is on, they hit pound and the key to pick it up. That simple.

You mentioned digital sets? What phones are you using now?

The XTS with PRI is an awsome combination but when you change to PRI you must use the Hybrid PBX capability. You can't use a square key system design unless you fill up all your flex buttons with 23 channels of voice. If you really want to simulate the old square key system method you can program some call park buttons onto all the phones. Pressing the park button will put your call on "Hold". Just press [#] before pressing the lit park button again to retrieve the call. The park button will be lit steady on all phones until the recipient answers the call. When answered, it leaves "park" and the button is immediately ready to be used again. You should only need a couple of park buttons to satisfy your needs.

Caller ID: It is actually ANI/DNIS that is delivered over a PRI but that is a technicality. If you have a digital dispatch or digital pathfinder the caller info will be stored with your messages. To get "CID" on an analog station you need the more expensive SLT w/CID.

Faxing should be no problem as long provided that your PRI is not a dynamic circuit.

Derrick, you beat me to the punch while I was typing and you have solid information too. You always do a good job and it makes me wonder why I even bother trying to put in my 2 cents worth at times.

From the mouth of two it must be true.

Wen faxing make sure the fax is dialing a nine and a pause before the number or the fax will drop. You can program the fax extension to not need a nine by directly selecting a line when it goes of hook. It is a bit tricky to do, but it works great.

Thanks for the info.
I really appreciate it.
Regarding the faxing, the Vodavi rep could not get it to work using the PRI. If we dialed the number using a vodavi SLT it sounded like the fax picked up aok but when we put a fax on it would dial, and then disconnect and never go anywhere.

Any help regarding cordless phones and voice mail notification. We are using a pathfinder with our cordless and Starplus Triad 8 button, 24 button and some slt phones but most slts are cordless from many makes and models.

Also regarding the callder id with these makes and models, how can it be set up they are all supposedly set up to receive residential caller id and when we had verizon copper lines with caller id added they worked. now no.

By the way we added a pause after dialing on faxes and not work.
In addition we have very old timeclocks at remote locations and they are on Cox centrex lines. When we try to connect using our pc modem dialing out the pri with 9, there is no connection I receive the error autodialer error. I tried setting the modem to a lower dial speed which we never needed to do before but not work. Any help would be appreciated. I just do not want to go back to copper lines if this can work.

I guess when you say a Hybrid PBX Capability it is not the XTS that we need but possibly the DHS or STS or XTS-IP??

Try programming your SLTs for off hook preference to a pool group and/or program your devices to not wait for dial tone. Your modems are not recognizing the internal intercom as valid dial tone and/or your provider may not be providing any tone. If it still fails to dial, you will have to implement LCR. The XTS delivers 440 Hz tone with LCR.

When you changed from 1FBs to PRI, you gave up the former square key system feature. You are going in the wrong direction if you think another system will restore that to you. As I stated, you cannot have direct line appearances on your phones unless you assign all 23 digital voice channels as direct appearing lines and fill up of your flex buttons. If you have a fractional with perhaps 8 channels or so, you could try it but that is not a recommended method.

Thank you for you answers.
I agree, we are not where we were.
But right now where we were is looking better than where we are.
My people and boss are frustrated that what was so easy is now either a pain or added steps to accomplish or not doable.
We have tried the 9 pause with the fax on pri and did not work. Our vodavi tech could not get them working through PRI so had to go with centrex for pri.
Do not know if we have moneys to purchase the SLT card with CID but will look into it.
Right now will purchase two more 8-button digital phones because two people need caller id and voice mail notification and right now SLTs not have either.
We set up phones not using ring appearance since all phones lit up and rang with this. Instead went and used call coverage which has worked some but the ringing of one phone then another and another is driving people crazy. On department has gone back to using 24-button digital phone as if it were a SLT with call pickup using 0#. Too much noise.
We are a Municipality and our people answer all calls whether it is their did or not.
That way people are getting good customer service.
Thanks again!

I have never had a problem faxing through pris. It seems to me your tech may be in over his head.

But let me ask a simple question. How is the PRI connected to the XTS? Did you install a PRI card in the system cabinet? Something doesn't make sense to me here. I get the feeling that most of your lines were centrex lines with cordless phones attached directly to them and that the XTS has its own lines seperate from the cordless phones.

We have a PRI card in the XTS.
We ported over from Verizon all of our lines at the Town Hall to the PRI. All calls but 5 centex lines used to contact centrex offices remotely come through the XTS on the PRI. When we could not get faxes to work through the PRI, we then moved some of the "existing" ported fax lines back to centrex and they are now working aok as faxes but not able to dial using a modem but working on that. We use to have cordless phones that had their own phone lines when we were just digital/centex. At that time we did not have the cordless phones through the XTS due to nothing gained. We had voice mail through our phone provider for everybody and needed digital for offices that had many lines and needed their people to pick up a line if others were busy.
With the addition of the PRI we brought everything through the XTS (except fax)
The cordless work now except for caller id (which somebody said I would need a SLT card with CID) and no voice mail notification but

Your main benefit with PRI is DID. If everyone is groaning over learning the PBX type function, check into changing your PRI to a fractional to reduce your cost and just keep DID for those users who need it. Then reinstall a portion of your old lines for general calls. That way, you can have both services and everyone should be happy. Use the Centrex lines for incoming only and busy forward to a DID number for overflow calls only. If you get lots of overflow calls, then add more centrex. Use the PRI for all outgoing calls and send either each station's DID number or your main number on a phone by phone basis.