Set Up Your Team

Set Up Your Team

Set up your team creates everyone at once — an extension, a portal sign-in account, and Pulse mobile access — in a single pass. It is the fast path for a brand-new phone system. Everything it does can also be done one person at a time from Extensions and Managing Users.

Open it from the Finish setup checklist (organization switcher → Finish setup). While your Nova steps are incomplete, the Nova group shows a Set up team shortcut. The wizard is not itself a checklist item — it completes the underlying steps (location, extensions, users), and those tick themselves off from your real data.

Note

You need permission both to create users and to manage PBX settings — the wizard does both jobs, and neither permission covers the other. Organization owners have both. A single run handles up to 100 rows; split a longer roster across runs.

Caution

Nothing is created until you press the button on step 3. Steps 1 and 2 only collect information, and step 3 is a preview that writes nothing.

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Step 1 — Tenant essentials

By the time you reach this step your phone system is provisioned, the 911 emergency route is seeded (Kari’s Law §9.10(a) — dialing 911 works from every extension, no prefix, no permission), and a default outbound caller ID is set. The step reads all three back to you and then collects:

Field	What it does
Main location	The street address emergency services are given when someone here dials 911. If your account already has locations, pick one instead of typing a new address.
On-site 911 notification	Required. At least one email address or one mobile number. When anyone at this location dials 911, these recipients are notified at the same moment so someone on site can meet responders — RAY BAUM’s Act §506(b). The step will not continue without one.
Outbound caller ID	Optional, pre-filled with your current default. The picker lists only voice-capable numbers you already own.
Departments	Type a name and press Enter to add it as a chip. Departments are created only if they don’t already exist; you can also type one straight into a row on step 2.
911 location requirement	Whether an extension must carry a dispatchable 911 location before it can be saved. See below.

Step 2 — Set up your team

A grid with one row per person. The columns are # · Ext · First · Last · Email · Dept · Location · Pulse.

A row needs an extension number, a first name, and an email address to create a person. Rows you leave blank are ignored.

Filling the grid quickly

• Paste from spreadsheet — copy rows straight out of Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers and paste. Headers are optional; the columns are worked out from the content either way, and the mapping is shown to you before anything lands in the grid. You can also paste directly onto the grid.
• Upload CSV — the same parser, from a file.
• Download template — a starter file with the right headers and example rows.
• Extensions start at — blank extension cells auto-fill upward from this value (1001 by default), skipping anything already in the grid.

The Pulse column

Pulse is the SIPSTACK mobile app. This column is not a yes/no, because “give them the app” means four different things:

Choice	What it means
No app	Desk phone or softphone only. Nothing is sent and nothing is shown.
Pair now	You are handing this person their phone during this session. A QR pairing code appears on screen after everything is created. No email is sent.
Email link, pair later	For a remote hire. They receive an email containing a sign-in link — they set their own password, then pair Pulse from Switchboard when they are ready.
Shared device	A shared phone or tablet with no personal inbox. No personal invite goes out; pair it from the extension page when the device is in front of you.

Note

Credentials are never emailed. The invite email carries a single-use sign-in link and nothing else — no password, no pairing code, no QR. Pairing codes are only ever shown on your own screen.

Step 3 — Review & create

A dry run against the server. It creates nothing — it reports exactly what pressing the button would do.

• Ready / needs attention / blocked counts across the top.
• What will happen — the literal list: the location and departments to be created, extensions created, users created and emailed, and how many pairing codes will be shown.
• Rows to look at — the server’s own explanation of each problem, per row.
• Blocked rows are skipped, not blocking. One bad row in a sixty-person paste never holds up the other fifty-nine. Fix it afterwards and add that person on their own.
• Seats. If your plan’s extension allowance runs out part-way down the list, you get one message naming the row where it ran out, rather than an error on every row below it.

Pressing the create button on this step is what performs the writes.

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After it runs

The completion screen shows a row per person with five stages:

Stage	What it covers
Ext	The extension itself
User	Their portal sign-in account
Link	The user linked to the extension
Invite	The sign-in link emailed (only for email link, pair later)
Pulse	The Pulse pairing code minted (only for pair now)

Each row reports Created, Partly done (it stopped somewhere, and the row names where), or Skipped / Blocked (it needs an edit before it can be added).

• Retry the unfinished rows re-runs only the rows that started and did not finish. This is safe: creation is keyed on the extension number and the email address read live from your account, so a retry picks up the missing steps and never duplicates what already exists. Blocked and skipped rows are deliberately excluded — they need an edit, not a re-run.
• Show QR appears on every pair now row. Scan it from Pulse Mobile (Account → Pair with QR) to sign that person in. The code is shown on this screen only, it is never emailed, and it expires. To issue a fresh one later, open the person under Account → Users.
• Export result as CSV saves the whole run, stage by stage, for your records.

Note

New extensions are staged like every other Nova change. Click Apply Changes in the pending-changes banner to push them to your PBX — until then they won’t register or take calls. See The Commit System.

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The 911 location requirement

Step 1 exposes the same tenant setting as Nova PBX → System → PBX Settings → Emergency calling (911), pre-filled with the value your account currently has. While it is on, an extension can only be saved once you have told us the physical address it dials 911 from.

Caution

Turning it off lets you save extensions that have no dispatchable 911 location. If someone dials 911 from one of those extensions, emergency services may not receive the street address, floor, or suite they need to reach the caller — RAY BAUM’s Act §506(b) requires that address to be present. SIPSTACK still routes 911 calls either way, but we can only pass on an address you have given us. Leave it on unless you are mid-migration and know exactly what you are turning off.

Every change to this setting is recorded in your Audit Log, including who made it and when.

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What the wizard does not do

• It never buys or assigns a phone number. Numbers are bought from Phone Numbers, where the cost is shown before you commit.
• It never emails a credential. Passwords and pairing codes are never sent by email — the email link option sends a sign-in link and nothing else.
• It is not the only way in. Everything here is also available one person at a time, and nothing about the wizard is remembered as “done” — your Finish setup checklist keeps reading your real extensions, users, and locations.

Related pages

• Extensions — add and manage extensions one at a time
• Managing Users — portal sign-in accounts, invites, and re-issuing pairing codes
• Locations & E911 — dispatchable addresses and notification recipients
• Departments — organizational tags for filtering
• PBX Settings — the tenant-wide 911 location requirement
• Account Setup — the Finish setup checklist this wizard is reached from