Blog / how-to
Setting Up UniFi Talk for a Small Office
How to set up UniFi Talk for a small office: phones, number porting, extensions, a Smart Attendant with business hours, and a proper test.
By the end of this one you'll have a working phone system on UniFi Talk: desk phones adopted, a main number that answers with a short menu during business hours and takes voicemail after, and your existing number on its way over from your old provider. This is written for a small office, two to eight phones, that's already running UniFi gear or about to.
One caution up front: Ubiquiti moves menus and renames features between releases, so treat the paths here as a map, not gospel. The concepts don't change even when the buttons do.
Plan first
Talk runs as an application on a UniFi console (a Dream Machine Pro or similar), so confirm yours supports it before promising anyone a phone system. UniFi phones are powered over Ethernet, which means each desk needs a PoE switch port or an injector. Each active outside number carries a monthly subscription from Ubiquiti, billed through the Talk app; internal extension-to-extension calling works without one.
Then do the part everyone skips: sketch the call flow on paper. Who answers the main line? What happens if they don't pick up in four rings? What should a caller hear at 9 p.m.? Ten minutes with a pen saves an hour of clicking later, because the Smart Attendant is just this sketch turned into blocks.
Step 1: Install Talk and adopt the phones
Install the Talk application on your console, plug the phones into PoE ports, and adopt them from the Devices section the same way you'd adopt an access point. No SIP credentials, no PBX, nothing to provision by hand. That simplicity is most of the reason I put Talk in small offices instead of a traditional phone system.
While you're here, let the phones finish their firmware updates before you configure anything. Half the "my phone is acting weird" calls trace back to a device that was set up mid-update.
Step 2: Start the port early, and cancel nothing
If the office has an existing number, callers know it, so you'll want to move it. Porting lives under Settings > Porting in the Talk app: you fill in the form, sign a Letter of Authorization electronically, and upload your latest carrier bill. Ubiquiti says the process takes two to four weeks once the paperwork is in, and in my experience that estimate is honest.
Two gotchas. First, do not cancel your old phone service until the port completes; cancelling early kills the port and can lose you the number. Second, the details on the porting form must match your old carrier's account records exactly, right down to the business name. A mismatch is the most common reason a port bounces.
Grab a temporary number from Talk in the meantime so you can build and test everything while the port grinds along.
Step 3: Users, extensions and a ring group
Under Assignments > Users, add each person, then assign their desk phone (Assignments > Devices works too) and give them an extension. A person without an outside number assigned can still call other extensions, which is fine for a warehouse or lunchroom phone.
If more than one person should answer the main line, create a Talk Group from the Users page. You can set it to Simultaneous, where every phone in the group rings at once, or Sequential, where they ring in order. For a small front office, Simultaneous is usually right; Sequential is for a defined pecking order.
Step 4: Build the Smart Attendant
The Smart Attendant is Talk's receptionist, and it's found under the Engagement tab. Add one, point it at your main number, and build the tree: a greeting (text-to-speech is fine to start, a recorded human voice is better once the wording settles), then blocks for keypress menus, ringing phones or groups, playing audio, and voicemail.
Keep the menu short. Nobody listens past three options, and "press 1 for sales, press 2 for everything else" beats a seven-branch tree every time. Set office hours in the attendant so after-hours calls go straight to a closed greeting and voicemail instead of ringing an empty room. Remember statutory holidays; the schedule won't.
Step 5: Failover and 911
Two settings people miss. Under Settings > Call Settings there's a Failover Redirect Number: if your internet goes down, inbound calls forward there, typically the owner's cell. Set it on day one, not during the first outage. And because this is VoIP, 911 uses the service address you register in Talk, not wherever the call happens to originate, so make sure that address is entered and correct before the first phone goes live.
Test it like a caller
Call the main number from a cell phone and work the whole tree: every keypress, the voicemail, the group ring. Then test after-hours by temporarily shifting the schedule rather than staying late. Leave yourself a voicemail and confirm where it lands. Finally, pull the WAN cable for a minute and confirm the failover number rings. If you ported a number, repeat the inbound tests the day the port completes, because that's the day something new is in the path.
Where it gets harder
A single office with a tidy call tree is a Saturday job, and I'd encourage any capable owner to do exactly what's above. It gets harder with multiple sites, analog door buzzers and fax lines, call queues with real volume, or compliance requirements around recording. And like the rest of a UniFi stack, a phone system needs someone watching firmware releases and logs on an ongoing basis; that's a service, not a one-time setup. If you want a second set of eyes on your plan before you buy anything, that's a thing I do.