The Voice workspace in Devotel Orbit gives operators two closely related surfaces for on-net calling: the Colleagues page and the Extensions page. Colleagues shows who is reachable right now through a presence sidebar; Extensions is where you create and manage the SIP endpoints that make a colleague reachable in the first place. This guide walks through both surfaces, explains how presence flows from the extension layer up to the sidebar, and gives a day-to-day operating pattern for adding a colleague and checking whether they can take a call.
What the Colleagues presence sidebar shows
Open Voice → Colleagues. The left-hand presence sidebar lists every colleague who has a SIP extension or softphone registration, with a badge that reflects their current state:
- Available — registered and not on a call; the call button is live.
- On call — on an active call; the call button disables until the call ends.
- Do not disturb — present but not accepting calls; calls are blocked.
- Away — no device currently registered; calls ring unanswered.
- Disabled — the extension or softphone credential is disabled.
Your own row is hidden because the list is a directory of people you can call, not a mirror of your own status. The sidebar refreshes in the background, so badge changes show within a few seconds. If the underlying presence request fails, the last known state stays on screen with a retry prompt instead of blanking the list.
Where extensions come in
A colleague only appears in the sidebar once they have a SIP extension or a registered softphone endpoint. The Voice → Extensions page is the management surface for those endpoints: you create an extension, assign it to a user, label it, enable or disable its SIP credential, and retire it when it is no longer needed.
The create extension dialog reused across Voice → Extensions and the Colleagues empty state keeps the flow consistent. Whether you start from Extensions or from the "Add your first colleague" prompt on Colleagues, you are creating the same object:
- Extension number — the short internal dial string.
- Assigned user — the colleague the extension belongs to.
- Label — the display name shown in the sidebar (for example, "Alice — Support").
- SIP credential state — enabled or disabled.
Changing any of these on Extensions updates the Colleagues sidebar at the next refresh. Disabling a credential keeps the row visible with a Disabled badge; deleting the extension removes the row entirely.
How presence, extensions, and click-to-call work together
The presence badge is a projection of the extension record plus real-time registration state:
- The extension record defines whether the colleague exists, who they are, and what number to dial.
- The softphone or desk phone registers against that extension.
- The presence service combines registration health, active-call state, and the user's DND setting into the badge shown in the sidebar.
- Clicking Call hands the extension number to the in-browser softphone and originates an internal call.
Internal calls stay on-net: they traverse your SIP routing inside Orbit and do not touch the public phone network. No outbound dialing rules or caller-ID policies come into play, and no per-minute PSTN charges apply. The call rings every device registered to the colleague's extension, exactly like a call dialed from a desk phone.
If a colleague is On call or Do not disturb, the standard Call button disables, but the Intercom control can still reach them with an auto-answered leg on their end.
Worked example: add a colleague and verify presence
The fastest way to confirm the whole chain is to create an extension and place an internal echo call.
- Go to Voice → Extensions and click Create extension (or open Voice → Colleagues and use the empty-state prompt). The same create extension dialog opens either way.
- Fill in the extension number, assign the user, set the label, and save.
- Have the colleague open the in-browser softphone once. Their badge should flip to Available within a few seconds.
- From Voice → Colleagues, find their row and click Call. The softphone panel opens and dials their extension.
- When they answer, speak and hang up. Both badges return to Available a few seconds after the call ends.
This single gesture proves extension creation, registration, presence rendering, and media path in one flow.
Managing presence day to day
A colleague is missing from the sidebar. They have no SIP extension, or their extension was deleted. A disabled credential still shows as Disabled, so a fully missing row means the extension record is gone. Create or restore it under Voice → Extensions.
Presence is stuck. Give it a minute: call-state changes propagate within seconds, and registration decay to Away takes about a minute. If someone shows Away while at their desk, their softphone tab or desk phone has lost registration. If your own badge contradicts what you expect, check Settings → Presence for federation sources (Teams, Slack, Webex, Zoom, calendars) that can only make you appear busier, never less busy.
Click-to-call fails or the button is greyed out. Hover the button for the exact reason. It disables while you are mid-call, or while the colleague is On call, Do not disturb, or Disabled. For On call or Do not disturb, use Intercom instead.
Cross-references
- Colleagues (reference) — the presence snapshot and SSE stream APIs and the dashboard surface compared with Extensions.
- Extensions and desk phones — create, label, and register the SIP endpoints that populate the directory.
- Browser softphone calling — the softphone that click-to-call dials through.
- Presence federation settings — the per-source toggles that decide what you publish to this page.