[maku]

In our company the 3CX PBX is used to integrate ISDN Lines via Patton Smartnodes and VOIP Lines. All these lines report the
inbound caller id without any additional prefixes.

Just recently we added another VOIP provider from a different country. Now we would like to accomplish the following:

- The outbound rules should direct calls to the correct line using unique prefixes, e.g. 0 uses the german line, 9 uses the
other line.
- Every line should have a unique prefix added to the incoming CID in order to distinguish where the call is coming from.

I'm researching this issue since a while now and since there seems to be no solution for it with 3CX. I believe that this is a
common request and i cannot believe that this is not supported by 3CX. With Asterisk this is a simple change in the config
file. I'm not talking about the ISDN lines since that could be done in the patton box. I'm having trouble with the SIP
accounts.

Currently i would be happy if i could have at least some way to accomplish this (e.g. changing a template file, modifying
a script in either the filesystem or the database).

If this is not supported by 3CX, then i'm definitely wondering how other users are solving that issue? Maybe i'm going into
the wrong direction?

Anyway i believe this is a serious deficiency and should be easy to add in a new version of the 3CX PBX.

[martins]

I have exactly the same problems like maku! It would be perfect to have an option per VOIP Provider to add a prefix to the CID.

br

Martin

[KerryG]

- The outbound rules should direct calls to the correct line using unique prefixes, e.g. 0 uses the german line, 9 uses the
other line.
- Every line should have a unique prefix added to the incoming CID in order to distinguish where the call is coming from.

What part of this can't you do with 3CX? Outbound trunk routing by prefix is easily handled within the outbound routes and incoming calls will modify caller ID name based on DID name or ring group/queue name. That seems to accomplish both of your requests so I am not sure what I am missing from what you are asking for.

[maku]

But these names are appended. What i need is a prefix so that an inbound number gets the correct prefix in the CID so that a phone displays the right number to use to simply press the 'call back' button. Maybe i did not understand the whole concept of routing but this feature is pretty important in my eyes.

Thanks for any insight on this...

[KerryG]

Stating that you want to modify the caller id number for proper call back makes sense now as I can't think of a way to do this currently off the top of my head. While I understand why this is important to you, there probably is an extremely small number of people that need that functionality. If there are more, I am sure they will chime in with their comments.

[comresource]

If there is a specific pattern you can match some phones will allow a custom dial string to match that pattern and prepend a specific digit before sending.

[maku]

I really enjoy reading all those posts since they just reflect how poor this problem is addressed in 3CX. I think it's pretty common for PBX setups that you need a particular prefix to reach the outside line most cases it's either '0' or '9'. And if a call comes in from an outside line, it's prefixed with the matching prefix. That's a common feature since decades across all PBX systems. Now tell me why a modern VOIP Software like 3CX cannot provide such a feature. Even if i would stick with just one provider, i believe it's a must have feature. Especially if OSS systems like Asterisk allow this kind of customization with a simple pattern search and replace function. The provider templates of 3CX allow a pretty straightforward approach to map values from the incoming INVITE to the internal data structures. Why can't we just prefix the inbound CID in exact that template if it cannot be achieved using the user interface?

[KerryG]

Without having to resort to customized code in config files, you are even out of luck with any GUI based Asterisk system like trixbox Pro/SwitchVox or even FreePBX so to say its a common feature in other systems isn't exactly accurate. I absolutely agree with you that this would be handy in your situation. I typically do not use any dial prefix for my clients so I do not experience an issue with this and I have never needed to have multiple inbound trunks that I could return a call out of the same trunk it came in on.

Even on systems where they wanted to dial 9 first, I simply have a rule that allows 7 and 11 digit dialing so it will work with or without dialing 9 first so that I avoid the issue altogether. While this works in virtually all situations, your situation is certainly different. While I can see why you need this, I am not sure it is needed by a large group of people. If I am wrong, they will chime in and say so.

[maku]

OK, i'll give a simple example where this rule does not apply. In Germany the numbers 112 and 110 are assigned to police, fire and medical services and calling these numbers is prohibited by law and fines do apply if abused. So with internal extensions in the range from 100 and up this easily raises troubles... So seriously, the leading prefix is the perfect utility to prevent this.

[KerryG]

I would think that since 1xx are emergency services numbers that you would never create extensions in the 1xx range since if you have extensions there then you would never have that call go out the trunk to begin with, therefor negating the need to deal with it. The problem is that during an emergency, people will very often forget to dial a prefix for emergency services. In the US, the emergency number is 911 and most companies who use dial prefixes use 9, but in an emergency, almost all people will not dial 9911, they will simply dial 911. For this reason, we never recommend people create extensions in the 9xx range. In your case, I would do the same thing, I would use 2xx or some other group for extensions since if someone grabbed a phone in an emergency and kept trying to dial 112 for emergency services and couldn't get out, you could potentially be liable. Why not avoid using extension 1xx range and not have to worry about it.

I am not trying to invalidate your point, I am just trying to look at it from a different perspective.

[dab]

It would be perfect to have an option per VOIP Provider to add a prefix to the CID.

+1 since my VOIP provider only send the national number without countrycode. I've also voip-lines from different countries attached to my 3CX. On the phone or 3CX Assistant there is no chance to see from which country (or VOIP provider) the call is coming from. For example if I get a call from Germany 02733xxxxx and miss this call and try to callback, I will call to Switzerland, as 02733xxxxx is a correct number. Thats because there is no prefix like 0049 which does the routing over the German-VOIP provider.

[igor.snezhko]

+ 1 we have the same problems

[slickric01]

I'm not sure if the following would fall under the same request, but with other systems we have the ability to prepend additional info to the Caller ID Name at either the trunk level or ring groups/queues.

So if a call comes in to the sales queue, we could define a CID Name prefix of Sales: which would appear before the caller party's name. Some of our clients have different trunks/lines for different company names they operate. Setting a Name prefix at a trunk level would allow the ringing phone to display what trunk/company the call came on.

[igor.snezhko]

This is possible in 3CX in Global Options Node