Dial plan thoughts

[ErikU]

I ran into a bit of a end-point dial plan mistake on my part with a system I put into service for a client yesterday...

The end-point dial plan goals are as follows:

- 3 digit extension numbers. It's a small office with just a handful of extensions.. dialing and remembering should be easy. The client wouldn't be happy if desk extensions were 4 digits.

- Simple dialing on the trunks.. no dial 9 first.. just dial like you do from home.

With that said, I decided to use extension numbers 100-119. That way they wouldn't conflict with any possible combination of numbers going out on the trunk. The end points (polycom) are set with dailplans like this:
[2-9]11|0T|011xxx.T|[0-1][2-9]xxxxxxxxx|[2-9]xxxxxxxxx|[2-9]xxxxxxT|10x|11x|*xx.T|*xxxxx|7x|800

That way the three digit extensions go right out, as do normal outside telephone numbers and feature codes. As you can see, I have a 7x entry because my parking lot is set to park in extension slots 71-78.

The parking lot is the oops,.. because the user can't dial an outside phone number like 705-555-5555 or 713-5555.

Any great ideas on what to do with the parking lot?

How do you guys handle your dial plans?

 

[completetech]

how are they not able to dial out 7xx area codes?

 

[ErikU]

The dial plan intercepts 7x and sends it out to asterisk without waiting.

This is the dialplan in the phone.

 

[wardmundy]

Either take out the 7* in the phone dialplan and teach users to press 71# for the parking lot (or just 71 and wait for the dial timeout to expire) or implement a prefix for outside calls, e.g. 9-678-1234567.

 

[ErikU]

I'd really like to avoid the prefix for outside calls,.. so I may just go with the timeout idea for the 7x...

Thanks for the thoughts.

 

[kenn10]

I'd really like to avoid the prefix for outside calls,.. so I may just go with the timeout idea for the 7x...

Thanks for the thoughts.

You can always just change the parking codes to something that will not conflict with your dial plan. In my area, we have 10-digit local dialing with 6 area codes. I use 1+ for long distance and just 10-digit for local. In my case, 770 is a local area code so I was able to keep the parking in the 70-75 range. You could work your dial plan accordingly.

Since I have area codes starting with 4, 6 and 7, my extensions are in the 2xxx range and other codes were adjusted as needed.

 

[ErikU]

I wish I could, but we have 10 digit and 7 digit dialing. All that remains for 3 digit extensions are 10x and 11x.

I did go ahead and just use a 2 second delay on 7x dialing and it seems to work great. Not really even noticable.

Is there any way to use a * or # code for the parking lot?