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phone shoretel tech

How to Telnet into a ShoreTel phone

This is one of those ‘probably never’ pieces of information. I’ve had to do this exactly one time to check and see why a phone was screwing up.
When you need to telnet into any ShoreTel device you must be using the ShoreTel server. You’ll need to know the IP address of the phone you need to telnet into. You can find this in the Shoreware Director under IP Phones > Individual IP Phones.
TelNet Shoretel Phone Screen

  1. Remote into the ShoreTel Server
  2. Go to a command prompt and type in “cd \Pro*\Sho*\*ser*” (that’s a fancy wildcard trick to get there faster).
  3. Type “phonectl -pw 1234 -telneton XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX”. The phone password is usually 1234, but you can change it under IP Phones > Options. Of course this will require a phone reboot, and if your phone is having issues you may have to do it manually. The XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address of the phone.
  4. Telnet into the phone from your ShoreTel Server. If the telnet fails, you’ll have to do steps 1 through 3 again.

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Note: The full path should be “C:\Program Files\Shoreline Communications\ShoreWare Server”. It could also be “C:\Program Files (x86)\Shoreline Communications\ShoreWare Server”
You could also do a “dir \s phonectl.exe” and try to find the phonectl.exe command that way. You can copy that program and the ipbxctl.exe files to another computer and telnet into the phones and switches without remoting into your ShoreTel server.

6 replies on “How to Telnet into a ShoreTel phone”

This does not work: “cd Pro*Sho**ser*” – please also explain the full path WITHOUT the wildcards. Looks like you may be combining more than one “cd” command into one command??? It flat out does not work – it also depends on the system. When I go to command prompt, I’m on the “users\administrator.MyDoman” folder; and doing this command takes me nowhere. It looks like you are trying to say maybe “cd program files” , then “cd shoretel,” then “cd server” or something like that? Again, you have to keep in mind that not everybody’s environment will be exactly the same as yours.

Yep looks like WordPress ate the backslashes, it does that sometime. Will get that updated. Here is the trick, but will update the blog post: “cd Pro*\Sho*\*ser*” and no it’s not multiple CD commands. The full path is “C:\Program Files\Shoreline Communications\ShoreWare Server”. There are only two conceivable ways this wouldn’t work, on a 64 bit system (and it might still), or if you installed Shoreware Director into a non-default place and then you likely know this.

You’d have to do a search for phonectl.* to find it. dir phonectl* /s would look for any file starting with the characters phonectl, and having any number of characters after the “phonectl” part. So it would find these files “phonectla”, “phonectlb”, “phonectlnottherightfile” but never just “phonectl” or “phonectl.exe”.

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