Twelve years of quick start guides
2012 · D-series
2013 · D70 International
2014 · D50
2017 · Switchvox Appliance
2018 · A-series
2023 · P-series
My role
I designed, illustrated and wrote the quick start guides end to end: information architecture, layout, typography and content. Engineering contributed the technical passages, such as server and SIP configuration.
Every guide fit on one page, printed in one color, so resellers could print their own copies cheaply and every phone could ship with one.
When a phone arrives fresh, the first thing its user sees is the language picker. Each language is listed in its own name and paired with a region, so someone who doesn’t read English can still find theirs.
The phone’s processor couldn’t handle a full animation, so I chose a few keyframes of the sweeping beam, just enough to make the screen feel alive without slowing the setup.
1 · Find your language
2 · Tap it and press OK
3 · The phone starts up
First-run language setup on the P370, shown with its post-merger Sangoma branding. The animated version plays at the top of this page.
Who sets the phone up
Admin
Stands up the system
Racks two PBX servers, one live and one redundant, then manages everything from the web admin
Guide: Switchvox appliance, 2017
Reseller or telecom provider
Installs for its own clients
Sets up office after office, often a whole floor of phones at once
Guide: D-series, 2012
Digium · Sangoma
Provisions before shipping
Registers each phone to its server and extension, so the box arrives ready
→
Employee
Unboxes the phone and makes a first call
Pre-provisioned: plug in and go
Cold start: pick language, server and extension on screen
Guides: D50, A-series, P-series
I mapped the setup journey across four roles. Three of them do setup work at very different scales: the customer’s own admin, a reseller or telecom provider installing for its clients, and Digium or Sangoma provisioning phones before they leave the warehouse. The fourth, the employee, is who all of that work is for.
The 2012 guide asked everyone to share two pages, from attaching the stand to editing Asterisk configuration files. That was the main pain point.
Later guides applied progressive disclosure: server setup moved to its own appliance guide, and the phone guide became a focused end-user reference for calling, voicemail, transfers, and queues.
Before · 2012 · Everyone on two pages
After · For admins, 2017
After · For users, 2014
2 · Every way a phone finds its owner
Behind every setup sat the same system: two PBX servers, one live and one standing by as a redundant backup, managed through a web admin. What changed from customer to customer was who did the work. A large rollout, a single new hire and a phone shipped to a remote office each needed a different route to the same moment: plug it in, and it’s yours.
So setup became a spectrum, from everything done before the box is opened to the person at the desk doing it themselves, on the phone or in a browser. Each phone also carried as many lines as its model allowed, two, four or six, and every route had to handle all of them.
The setup flow
Three ways the system gets set up, one moment for the person at the desk: plug it in.
Route
Who does the work
What the person at the desk does
1 Shipped ready
Digium, Sangoma or the reseller registers and provisions the phone, then ships it
Opens the box, plugs it in, starts calling
2 Assigned by address
The admin enters the phone’s MAC address in the web admin and binds it to the person’s extension, with an optional password
Plugs it in at any workspace in the building, and it registers to their extension
3 Open registration
The admin opens the server to new phones for a window of time they choose
Plugs in and picks their extension from a list on the screen
4 Set up on the phone
Creates the extension
Picks their PBX from a list, enters the password, selects their extension
5 Set up on the web
Creates the extension
Plugs in, then logs into the PBX’s web portal and finishes there
The admin’s side, on paper
The 2017 appliance guide takes the admin from an empty rack to a ringing phone: mount the server, configure the network, then create each extension and assign a phone to it by MAC address. A note offers the self-service alternative, an assignment code entered on each phone’s keypad, followed by picking the extension from a list.
Step 1, hardware installation: one page, one color, lettered callouts tied to the steps.
Phone-extension setup, from the same sheet.
Same controls, phone or web
Anything a person could change on the phone, they could also change from the PBX’s web portal: favorites, email, username, volume, screen brightness, even a reset. Admins saw the same settings in each person’s profile, from the MAC address and line keys to backlight and ringtone.
Keeping the phone and the web in parity meant nobody had to work out which one to use. It’s the same idea that shaped the D80, where the touchscreen had to keep every function of the button phone before it.
One checkbox closes the loop with the first screen of this story: an admin can force language confirmation on next login, so the phone greets its new owner with the language picker.
The Switchvox admin, with a person’s profile open.
Wireframe: profile, phone, line keys, display and sounds on one page.
Onboarding after the first call
Onboarding didn’t stop once the phones worked. When a release reorganized extension management, the admin home opened with a guided tour and a card for each new feature, so admins found what had moved without calling support.
Switchvox admin home, introducing a release with a tour.
For international markets, the D70 guide removed text entirely. Two numbered illustrations cover the stand and ports, so one sheet works in every market without translation.
My D70 line art, drawn for the 2012 guide and reused across later ones.
The wordless international guide, 2013.
From the A-series onward, every guide followed one template: a numbered diagram, a matching key, and features alongside.
The 2023 P-series guide covers seven models with a single 20-item key, so each new phone got its documentation at minimal cost.
A20 / A22
A25
A30 · One template, 2018
D40
D50
D70
P-series, 2023: seven models, one key.
The directive was fewer setup calls. One-page guides in every box, paired with setup routes that put the work on whoever was best placed to do it, made onboarding self-service.
Customer Success saw setup calls drop and configuration issues rarely escalate. Resellers printed the same guides for their own customers, and reviewers noticed the short time to first call.
On setup · D70
VoIP Supply blog, 2016 · Read the review ↗