Phonebook

Phonebook

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The Nova PBX phonebook is your organization’s dialing address book. It stores contacts — vendors, partners, customers, after-hours services — that your staff can look up in Switchboard and click to dial. (Browsing it from a desk phone is not available yet; see Phone Display.) Navigate to Nova PBX → Collaboration → Phonebook.

Phonebook changes are portal-only: they take effect immediately, with no PBX commit required.

Company vs Personal

The page has two tabs, each with its own list and Add contact action:

	Company	Personal
Visible to	Everyone in your organization	Only you
Typical contents	Vendors, partners, shared external contacts	Your own speed-dial list
Who can edit	Users with the phonebook manage permission	The owner of the contact

Personal contacts are scoped to your user account — other users (including admins browsing this page) see their own personal tab, not yours.

Phonebook vs Extensions

	Extensions	Phonebook
What it stores	SIP endpoints registered to your PBX	Any contact, internal or external
Who appears	Staff with a Nova PBX extension	Anyone — vendors, clients, partners
Requires PBX commit	Yes	No
Syncs to phones	Via provisioning	Via the phone’s remote directory (not available yet)

A phonebook entry can also reference an internal extension — useful when a coworker should appear in the directory under a friendlier name, or alongside their mobile number.

Managing Entries

Adding a contact

1. Pick the Company or Personal tab (this decides who can see it).
2. Click Add contact.
3. Fill in the fields — only First name is required. Optional fields: last name, company, department, email, extension, office / mobile / home phone, and notes.
4. In Settings, optionally toggle:
   • Mark as favorite — shows a star next to the name for quick scanning.
   • Include in phone directory — pushes the contact to desk phones (see below).
5. Click Create contact.

Editing and deleting

• Click any row to open the contact’s edit page.
• Use the ⋯ menu on a row for quick Edit / Delete. Deleting asks for confirmation and is permanent.
• Click the On Phones badge on a row to flip directory inclusion without opening the editor.

Searching

The search box matches name, email, company, extension, and phone numbers across the loaded list.

Phone Display (On Phones)

Contacts with On Phones = Yes are flagged for inclusion in the directory that desk phones browse (e.g. Menu → Directory → Remote Phone Book on Yealink). That directory always includes your PBX extensions plus any phonebook entries flagged for inclusion; entries without any phone number are skipped.

Not available on phones yet

Browsing the phonebook from a desk phone is not yet available on any brand. The directory file is generated, but phones cannot authenticate to fetch it under the current provisioning model, and Poly’s directory feature expects an LDAP server rather than a file. Tracked in issue #5474 — this page and the Devices page will be updated when it ships.

Everything else on this page works today: the phonebook is fully usable inside Switchboard, and marking contacts On Phones now means they are already flagged when phone-side browsing arrives.

Keep the flagged list short and high-value: add hundreds of contacts to the phonebook, but mark only the most-dialed dozen as On Phones.

Plan Limits

Phonebook capacity scales with your Nova PBX subscription tier. When you reach your tier’s limit, creating another entry is blocked with a limit error — remove unused entries or upgrade the plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the phonebook affect call routing? No. It is a directory for people (and phones) placing calls — inbound/outbound routing is untouched.

Why isn’t my new entry showing on phones yet? Phone-side directory browsing is not available yet on any brand — see Phone Display. Staff can look the contact up in Switchboard in the meantime.

Can other admins see my personal contacts? No. Personal contacts are visible only to the user who created them. Company contacts are visible to the whole organization.

Can I import contacts from CSV? Bulk import isn’t self-serve yet — contact SIPSTACK support for a one-time bulk load.

What’s the difference between a favorite and On Phones? Favorite is a visual star in the Switchboard list. On Phones controls whether the contact is pushed to desk-phone directories. They’re independent.