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Colleagues directory

The Colleagues page (Voice → Colleagues) is your team’s on-net directory: every SIP extension user with a live presence badge and a one-click call button. It is a surface for using the directory day to day — glance at who is free, click, talk. For the underlying presence API (snapshot, SSE stream, wire states) see the Colleagues reference; for the federation settings that decide what you publish, see Presence federation settings.
The examples below assume each colleague already has a SIP extension. If the directory is empty, start with Extensions and desk phones and come back.

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What the Colleagues page shows

Open Voice → Colleagues (or search “Colleagues” in the command palette). The page lists one row per teammate’s SIP extension:
  • Name and extension — the display name and extension number (or SIP username when no extension number is assigned).
  • Presence badge — a colored state: Available, On call, Do not disturb, Away, or Disabled.
  • Call button — one click dials that colleague internally through the in-browser softphone. Greyed-out buttons carry a tooltip that explains why the colleague cannot be called right now.
A search box at the top filters the list by name or extension, so the page stays usable as the team grows. Your own row never appears — the list is a directory of people you can call, and the Voice → Extensions page remains the management surface where you create or retire endpoints. When no one has an extension yet, the empty state links you to create the first one.

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Reading presence

Each badge means something specific about what a call to that person would do: Presence refreshes automatically — the page polls in the background, so a colleague answering or hanging up flips their badge within a few seconds, and a device that stops registering decays to Away within about a minute. You never need to reload the page to see a change, and if the underlying request fails the last known state stays on screen (with a retry prompt) instead of the list blanking out. What your colleagues see about you is decided by your own presence sources: the status you set from the dashboard header, plus any federated sources (Teams, Slack, Webex, Zoom, calendars) you opted into on Settings → Presence. Federation can only ever make you appear busier than your manual status — a calendar meeting can flip a colleague’s view of you to Busy or Do not disturb, never the other way around. See Presence federation settings for the per-source behavior matrix.

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Click-to-call

The Call button hands the colleague’s extension number (or SIP username, when they have no extension assigned) straight to the in-browser softphone and originates an internal call. Internal calls stay on-net: they traverse your SIP routing inside Orbit and never touch the public phone network, so no outbound dialing rules, caller-ID policies, or PSTN charges apply. What happens next depends on where your extensions terminate:
  • In-browser softphone users — the call rings their browser tab; your own softphone panel opens with the call in progress.
  • Desk phones, mobile SIP apps, and a registered PBX — the call is delivered to every device registered to their extension, exactly like a call dialed from your desk phone. See SIP trunk setup for how a PBX attaches to this internal topology, and Browser softphone calling for the softphone’s own calling controls.
If you are already mid-call, every Call button disables until your current call ends — the softphone places one call at a time. A colleague who is On call or Do not disturb can still be reached with the Intercom control (see the Colleagues reference), which auto-answers on their end instead of ringing.

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Worked example: an internal echo call

The safest way to learn the flow is to call a colleague just to prove the path. Pick any row showing Available:
  1. Open Voice → Colleagues and find a teammate whose badge reads Available (search their name if the list is long).
  2. Click Call on their row. The softphone panel opens and dials their extension — you hear ringing within a second or two.
  3. When they answer, say hello and hang up. The call appears in your call history as an internal call with no per-minute charge, and both your badges flip back to Available a few seconds after hangup.
An echo call like this is also the fastest end-to-end test after onboarding a new extension: it proves registration (their device rang), origination (your softphone dialed), and media (you heard each other) in one gesture, before anyone tries a real call.

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Directory hygiene

The directory is a projection of your SIP extensions — accurate entries come from accurate extension records, not from settings on the Colleagues page itself.
  • Who appears: every enabled SIP extension user, except you. A colleague with no extension assigned shows under their SIP username and is still click-to-callable.
  • Display names: the name on the row comes from the extension’s label (for example “Alice — Support”), not from the dashboard profile. Rename it by editing the extension under Voice → Extensions — see Extensions and desk phones.
  • Disabling vs removing: disabling a colleague’s SIP credential keeps their row visible with a Disabled badge, so an auditor can still see the endpoint exists. Removing the extension deletes the row entirely.
  • Duplicates: if one person shows up twice, they have two separate SIP extensions (common after a re-onboard). Retire the stale one under Voice → Extensions.

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Troubleshooting

A colleague is missing from the list entirely. They have no SIP extension yet (or theirs was deleted), or the row you expect is a disabled credential — disabled extensions stay visible with a Disabled badge rather than vanishing, so a fully missing row means the extension record is gone. Create or restore it under Voice → Extensions, and the person appears on Colleagues at the next refresh. Presence is stuck — someone shows Away who is actually at their desk, or On call long after hanging up. Work in order:
  1. Give it a minute — badge changes propagate within a few seconds for call activity, and roughly a minute for a device that drops off the network.
  2. Check that person’s device: an Away badge means nothing is registered to their extension, so their softphone tab or desk phone genuinely lost registration — have them re-register or re-open the softphone.
  3. If the badge contradicts your own view of yourself, that is a federation issue, not a directory issue — check your Settings → Presence tiles against Presence federation settings.
Click-to-call fails or the button stays greyed out.
  • The button is deliberately disabled while you are mid-call, or while the colleague is On call, Do not disturb, or Disabled — hover it for the exact reason. If they are On call or Do not disturb, use Intercom instead.
  • Your softphone is not ready: open it once and confirm it shows registered, then retry. See Browser softphone calling.
  • The call starts but the colleague never rings: their extension has no registered device (badge might be stale Away). Ask them to re-register, or check how their devices attach in Extensions and desk phones and, for a PBX-hosted colleague, SIP trunk setup.

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Cross-references