How the Conference Factory feature works

Last Updated : Sep 01, 2026 |
The Well Known Conference URI is a unique SIP address used by the endpoint to initiate a conference. The Conference Factory URI is a unique SIP address of the Conference Server. An Avaya phone receives the Well Known Conference URI from the settings file.
Session Manager contains a list of all provisioned Well Known Conference URIs and Conference Factory URIs in the database. Session Manager uses information specified in the Session Manager Communication Profile of the user to route the conference call of the participant to the appropriate conference server as follows:
  1. When the first participant wants to initiate a conference, the participant either presses the conference button on the phone or drags additional contacts into the spotlight (as applicable for some conferencing products).
  2. The endpoint then sends an INVITE to Session Manager with the REQUEST URI set to the Well Known Conference URI.
  3. Session Manager receives the INVITE, reads the Well Known Conference URI, and runs the originating application sequence.
  4. Session Manager compares the REQUEST URI of the INVITE with the provisioned Well Known Conference URI list.
  5. If the URI does not match, Session Manager proceeds with the normal routing process.
  6. If the URI matches, Session Manager routes the call towards an appropriate conference server based on the priority level setting of the Conference Factory URI mappings:
    1. Session Manager identifies the Conference Factory Set defined in the Session Manager Communication Profile of the originator and matches the provisioned Conference Factory Sets for evaluation.
    2. Session Manager compares the media type contained in the INVITE (SDP) with the media criteria specified for the first Conference Factory URI mapping of the Conference Factory Set.
    3. If the media types match the media attributes, Session Manager replaces the REQUEST URI of the INVITE with the respective Conference Factory URI and routes the call to the respective Conference Server that is the SIP Entity identified in the current Conference Factory URI mappings.
    4. If the media types do not match the media attributes, Session Manager compares the media type with the media attributes specified for the next Conference Factory URI mappings in the matched Conference Factory Set and so on.
    5. If there is no match between the endpoint media types in the INVITE and the media attributes specified for other Conference Factory URI mappings, Session Manager denies the conference initiation request and send back 403 response to the upstream SIP element.
    6. If the SDP is not present in the INVITE message, Session Manager routes the call based on the If SDP Missing field setting in the Conference Factory Set Web page,
      • If the SDP is not present and the field is set to Allow, Session Manager routes the call to the conference server as indicated in the Conference Factory URI mapping.
      • If the SDP is not present and the field is set to Deny, Session Manager does not route the call to the conference server as indicated in the Conference Factory URI mapping. Instead, Session Manager skips this conference server and goes to the next Conference Factory URI mappings until Session Manager finds an SDP status set to Allow.
      • If the SDP is present, Session Manager ignores the If SDP Missing field.
You can create multiple Conference Factory Sets in Session Manager. You can create a maximum of ten (10) Well Known Conference URIs.
You can add multiple Conference Factory URI mappings in the Conference Factory Set. To each Conference Factory URI mapping, you can assign a particular URI, Entity Name (Conference server name), Audio-Video-Text media attributes, Match Type parameters, and SDP parameters. A conference server, defined as a SIP entity in the Conference Factory URI mapping, can be associated with multiple Conference Factory Sets. You can import and export these Conference Factory Sets and Well Known URIs using the Bulk Importing and Exporting feature. You can assign Conference Factory Sets to the conference servers using the Communication Profile Editor feature.
Session Manager replicates the Well Known Conference URIs table and the Conference Factory URIs table to all the core Session Manager instances and the associated Branch Session Manager instances. If a Branch Session Manager cannot communicate with the core Session Manager, the Branch Session Manager compares the Well Known Conference URI from the REQUEST URI of the INVITE with the provisioned Well Known Conference URI list on the Branch Session Manager. The Branch Session Manager then routes the call to the appropriate conference server or SIP entity that matches the associated user's feature server (SRS) or local trunk gateway.