Abstract: A personal digital assistant (PDA) stores a list of available phone features and policies and selects certain phone features and policies from the stored features and policies. When connected with an internet protocol (IP) phone device, the PDA downloads the selected phone features and policies to the IP phone device in a new location, so that the IP phone device can be operated as the user's personal phone. The PDA verifies the user's identity to ensure that only authorized individuals have access to the IP phone device or IP-PBX. Also, the PDA, with phone features and policies stored therein, visually displays phone configurations and mappings to an administrator of the IP-PBX for verifying the actual configuration of the phone system based on the stored configuration.