What the Template ID field does on a phone

On every VICIdial phone entry there is a small field called Template ID. It's easy to scroll past, but it controls something important: where the phone gets its Asterisk settings from. Get it right and a whole group of devices stays in sync. Get it wrong and one phone quietly behaves differently from the rest.

Template ID is the optional Conf file template that this phone entry uses for its Asterisk settings. Its default is none or blank. When it's blank, the phone falls back to other settings on the entry. When it points at a template, the phone takes the whole shared block from there.

What it actually sets

The template defines the lines that become the phone's SIP peer in the generated config. That covers the device's context, its allowed audio formats, and the host details Asterisk needs to accept its registration. Because the block is shared, two phones on the same template are guaranteed to use the same Codec list and the same rules.

• Default value: none or blank.
• When set: the phone uses the shared template block for its settings.
• When blank: the phone falls back to the per-phone override or the system default.

How Template ID is evaluated

flowchart LR
  A[Phone entry] --> B{Template ID}
  B -->|None| C[Look at override field]
  B -->|A template| D[Apply shared block]
  C --> E[Generate phone config]
  D --> E
  E --> F[Device registers]

The order is what trips people up. Template ID is checked before any per-phone override. If a template is assigned, the override is skipped entirely. So a value you typed into the override field can look like it does nothing — because a template is sitting in front of it.

When to use it

Reach for Template ID whenever you have more than a couple of phones that should share settings. One agent floor's worth of Softphone devices is the classic case: assign them all the same template and you edit one block, not fifty. Leave it at none only when a phone genuinely needs a unique config that no other device shares.

For where this field lives among the other phone fields, see the phones and aliases guide. It pairs naturally with what the phone extension is, since both shape how the device shows up to Asterisk.

Templates are powerful but fiddly to maintain by hand. VICIfast handles the config generation for you so phones stay in sync automatically — see our pricing.