Emergency Calls don't seem to be taking precedence over regular outbound rules

[RH_TalkFlo]

Good afternoon, All

I'm hoping someone can walk me through the logic of the Emergency Call Routes. Here's my scenario: We have a system deployed in a school that requires classrooms to dial a 4-digit pin before allowing outbound calls to prevent students from abusing the phones. Our first outbound rule specifies that, should a caller dial the 4-digit PIN followed by a 10/11-digit phone number, the rule would strip the first 4 digits and send the rest through the specified trunk. Without the PIN, the call fails; everything here is working as designed. In conjunction with that rule, under System-->Emergency, we've configured a rule that specifies, should anyone from any department dial 911, grant access to the primary trunk and send the call out with the specified outbound caller ID.

Today, we had a student try to dial 911 from a classroom phone and we received the Emergency Call email notification but the call itself failed. We opened a test window with the e911 centre and began trying different scenarios. What we found was that the Outbound Rule requiring the use of a PIN conflicted with the Emergency Call rule. My understanding was that any call to a number specified in the Emergency Numbers section would supersede any and all outbound rules. In order to keep the PIN requirement for all classrooms, we created an Outbound Rule for 911 at the top of the list (above the PIn code rule) and removed the Emergency Rule for 911. Dialling 911 will not work if both of those rules exist.

I am aware of and have tested the PIN Protect feature but the school does not want to add another step to outbound calls. Am I approaching this incorrectly? Is there another, better way to accomplish the same goal? Is it possible that the Emergency Rules are not working correctly or as intended? This was tested on a system running V20 Update 8 (Build 1121).

Thanks for reading this lengthy explanation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ray H.

 

[KyriacosS_3CX]

Hi,

Is your classroom PIN the same across the whole school? Have you tried doing Prepend Digits in the emergency rules?

Can you let us know the PBX version this setup is using?

 

[Alphabetic]

Im reading between the lines here..

are you saying you're not able to successfully call 911 on your trunk at all? Have you spoke to your provider?

 

[Kevin Attard Compagno]

Would it not be simpler to use the Admin -> Users -> Extension.xxx -> Options -> "Enable PIN Protect" feature?

 

[RH_TalkFlo]

Hi,

Is your classroom PIN the same across the whole school? Have you tried doing Prepend Digits in the emergency rules?

Can you let us know the PBX version this setup is using?

Good morning,

It is the same PIN across the whole school. I have tried prepending the PIN in the emergency rules without success...the error comes back as Not Found (404). The simple solution was to just add 911 as a regular Outbound Rule above the PIN rule, and removing the Emergency Rule altogether. The challenge is that we won't receive the email notification that an Emergency Number has been dialled and we won't be able to quickly identify the classroom from which it was dialled. It's a large school and every second counts when responding to an emergency and that email is valuable.

This site is on a self-hosted (AWS) V20 Update 8 and the only school that has requested the use of a PIN for the classrooms department. Everything else with this system is working well and as required.

Ray

 

[RH_TalkFlo]

Im reading between the lines here..

are you saying you're not able to successfully call 911 on your trunk at all? Have you spoke to your provider?

Hi There,

911 works and has been tested with the provider, the school and the emergency response centre for that area. The call fails to leave the system when coupled with the PIN requirement in the Outbound Rule. My understanding was that the Emergency Rules completely bypass the regular Outbound Rules altogether ie I've created an Emergency Rule that states when 911 is dialled (without a PIN) by any department, use Trunk A and send the call with the appropriate Outbound Caller ID.

This Emergency Rule should just work without any restrictions set in the regular Outbound Rules.

Ray

 

[Alphabetic]

Hi There,

911 works and has been tested with the provider, the school and the emergency response centre for that area. The call fails to leave the system when coupled with the PIN requirement in the Outbound Rule. My understanding was that the Emergency Rules completely bypass the regular Outbound Rules altogether ie I've created an Emergency Rule that states when 911 is dialled (without a PIN) by any department, use Trunk A and send the call with the appropriate Outbound Caller ID.

This Emergency Rule should just work without any restrictions set in the regular Outbound Rules.

Ray

Yes, id expect emergency numbers to bypass too but how come you're doing PINs via outbound rules and not per extension like kevin said?

 

[RH_TalkFlo]

Would it not be simpler to use the Admin -> Users -> Extension.xxx -> Options -> "Enable PIN Protect" feature?

You are correct. I believe it would be simpler but the school admin are hesitant to add another step ahead of dialling a regular local call. I'm still working on convincing them that this would be the better way to go. My issue is that it appears as if the Emergency Rules are not working as intended ie they are NOT taking priority over or bypassing the regular Outbound Rules.

 

[Sunil Wadje]

Your original setup looks correct. Emergency numbers configured under System > Emergency should bypass outbound rules, so the PIN-based rule should not block 911 calls.

Since the emergency email notification was sent, 3CX recognized the call as an emergency call. However, because the call failed and only worked after adding a dedicated 911 outbound rule, it seems the call was being processed by the outbound rules instead of the emergency routing configuration.

I would suggest checking that the emergency route is assigned to the correct trunk and reviewing the Activity Log for any routing-related errors. Based on your testing, this may be related to a version-specific issue in V20 Update 8 (Build 1121).

For now, keeping the dedicated 911 outbound rule above the PIN rule appears to be a good workaround to ensure emergency calls are routed successfully.

 

[RH_TalkFlo]

Your original setup looks correct. Emergency numbers configured under System > Emergency should bypass outbound rules, so the PIN-based rule should not block 911 calls.

Since the emergency email notification was sent, 3CX recognized the call as an emergency call. However, because the call failed and only worked after adding a dedicated 911 outbound rule, it seems the call was being processed by the outbound rules instead of the emergency routing configuration.

I would suggest checking that the emergency route is assigned to the correct trunk and reviewing the Activity Log for any routing-related errors. Based on your testing, this may be related to a version-specific issue in V20 Update 8 (Build 1121).

For now, keeping the dedicated 911 outbound rule above the PIN rule appears to be a good workaround to ensure emergency calls are routed successfully.

Hi there,

The trunks are assigned correctly. If I remove the dial-code/PIN entry from Outbound Rules, the Emergency Rule works without issue. I believe this may be a problem with the PBX software. Any insight @KyriacosS_3CX?

Ray

 

[KyriacosS_3CX]

Could you share (via DM if you prefer) the PIN being used, the emergency number being called and how your outbound rules are set, so I can try and replicate as close as possible?

 

[RH_TalkFlo]

Could you share (via DM if you prefer) the PIN being used, the emergency number being called and how your outbound rules are set, so I can try and replicate as close as possible?

Good evening,

The combination of outbound rules and emergency rules that did NOT work are as follows:

OUTBOUND RULES

Rule 1. "Classroom Dial Out" --> Calls to numbers starting with prefix 7498 --> Calls from Departments 'ABC Classrooms' and 'ABC Staff' --> Route 1 'ABC Primary' -- Strip the first 4 digits -- Outbound caller ID 8885551234. The PIN does NOT conflict with any existing extension.

Rules 2, 3, 4, 5 are all bridges between schools using 3-digit prefixes (all beginning with 4XX) and the 4-digit extension of the callee; no conflicting extensions or prefixes here.

Rule 6. "ABC Primary" --> Calls from Departments 'ABC Admin' --> Route 1 'ABC Primary' -- Strip no digits -- Outbound caller ID 8885551234

EMERGENCY RULES

1. "Emergency 911" --> Number 911 --> Calls from Departments 'ABC Classrooms', 'ABC Staff', ABC Admin --> Route 1 'ABC Primary' -- Strip no digits -- Outbound Caller ID 8885551234

That's it...nothing really complicated. Just to re-iterate, if I were to remove Outbound Rule 1, the Emergency Rule works as intended.

Ray

 

[KyriacosS_3CX]

Perhaps an issue with the outbound caller ID in the emergency rule, that would be something to check, since I did make this scenario and cannot replicate the problem.

Verbose logs & packet capture would be the way to go really, to see exactly what's going on. This should just work, and we don't have any other report of even a similar behaviour to go by.