7 Digit Extensions

[raytaylor]

Hi there,

I am about to start a project where I will be providing the phone lines for a new suburb and need to provide a phone system to handle the calling via voip delivered by fibre optic cable to each house.

However i cannot figure out how to set 3cx to use 7 digit extensions.

I need to set it so that if a user dials their neighbour 929-9082 it will call their extension, rather than go out their trunk to the pstn exchange and back in through their neighbours trunk.

If they dial a 7 or more digit number that is not an internal extension, then it needs to go out their trunk to the pstn exchange to be connected. Eg. if they dial 929-9083 which is not an internal extension, it needs to go to the pstn to be connected to a recipient somewhere else.

Is it possible to do this with 3CX?

I really dont want to have to learn trixbox or asterisk. I have got 3cx working as an office pbx and it works really well - would be awesome if i could use it for this project also.

We are assigned random 7 digit numbers from the wholesale voip provider. 3CX is hopefully going to be used to act as a mini exchange so that calls around the suburb dont need to go through the trunk lines and save bandwidth to the voip provider and then return back in another trunk again.

 

[leejor]

I don't believe that 7 digit extension numbers is an option as 3Cx was designed to be a PBX, not a central office switch. There may be a "back door" way to do it but, the good folks at 3CX would be the ones to revel that, if they so choose. Don't hold you breath.

What you can do is have four digit extensions but create a dialplan the allows callers to dial 7 digit numbers with the call sent out on a pseudo trunk then back into 3CX as a DID/ direct SIP call. This came up in the forums a while back (someone wanted users dialling the full 10 digit number of another extension , to not use an outbound trunk, then come back in to 3CX).

I'd have to do a search to find the details. Found it...

Have a read through this. http://www.3cx.com/forums/internal-users-dialing-did-s-instead-of-extension-20002.html

You won't be able to stop people from dialling four digits to reach each other, if, they discover that they can do that, unless you block it in the dialplan of an ATA assigned to each user.

 

[eagle2]

In 'Settings | Advanced | Custom Parameters' there is a parameter called 'ENL'. I haven't tried, but may be you can try to change it to other value than '2' to '5', i.e. '7' in your case. This will also affect the system extension numbers (must be also 7-digit).

Otherwise I think it is possible to play with outbound rules - delete / prepend digits, depending on exact numbers associated,

Regards

 

[willow]

according the manuals and the installation process you can only have 2,3,4, or 5 digit extensions. That being said, I have never tried to setup a 7 digit extension. You can only set the extension length at the time of install. changing it via the custom parameters page will basically hose your installation and nothing on the system side will register.

 

[eagle2]

Obviously there is a hazard in changing this parameter afterwords - the system may crash. However, if you decide to test it, make a backup before, and if crashed reinstall the 3CX and restore the configuration.

 

[raytaylor]

I have tried going to the linked thread: internal-users-dialing-did-s-instead-of-extension-20002.html but it comes back saying i am not authorised to view the forum.

Anyhow, does anyone else know how I could accomplish this?
I really dont want to have to learn asterisk as I am not a linux person - i am quite capable of managing a 3cx system running on a windows x86 pc, as i manage microsoft servers as part of my job.

 

[eagle2]

The idea is pretty clear.
Have you tried modifying the parameter - risky, but may help.


Otherwise you can implement a trick with outbound rules and DDIs, having 2- or 3-digit extensions - it is possible to dial DIDs instead of extension numbers. Send me your e-mail in a private message.

Regards

 

[willow]

IF your phone supports it you can build a dialplan rule that states that when you dial a number the phone will delete all of the numbers and add the extension. then the call is sent to the pbx as the extension and not the external number.

 

[KerryG]

You dont want to have to build a phone dialplan every time you add a new number. Within 3CX I just don't see a way to do this because it isn't designed as a softswitch. 3CX would need one of two things, either be smart enough to route internal DID's automatically so they never hit the outbound rules, or be able to set the destination of an outbound rule to an extension. Neither one of these is possible today.

One way may be to use a second 3CX system as a bridge and then bridge the calls that match to it and then have an outbound rule that sends them right back. This MIGHT work. I tried creating a master/slave on the same system but you can't do that because it uses the virtual extension number for authentication and they need to match otherwise that would have been a simple workaround.

 

[leejor]

One of the problems you will have is that all of the extensions don't look like they will be using the same prefix. If all of the numbers were from the same DID range (i.e. 929-9xxx) then routing would not be as "messy". Here is Sy's post from the forum that you can't access..

Postby SY » 09:04, Wed 25 May 2011
Technically, the trick can be implemented using loopback SIP trunk.
1. create SIP trunk with 127.0.0.1:5060
2. create outbound rule(s) for this trunk. They should intecept all DID numbers
3. attach existing inbound DIDs rules to this trunk

If everything is done correctly then all outgoing calls addressed to DID numbers will go to the loop back trunk and then returned as incoming calls which will be routed by inbound DID rules.

If you set up enough rules to cover the 7 digit numbers that users are dialling , then the calls can remain internal and not take up two trunks per call, to the provider and then back in. It really depends on how many subs you expect to handle. It's going to be a lot of work if the numbers grow to more than a handful and especially if they keep changing.

 

[KerryG]

That's what I was trying to think of, was how to create a loopback sip trunk. I don't see why that wouldn't work so long as you don't need tons of individual rules.

 

[SY]

About "softswitch":
3CX PhoneSystem (the final product) is the PBX which is the softswitch "class V". It implements some features which are the property of class IV but they were added just because they are really useful.

P.S. Please don't start to discuss design... ideas.3cx.com is a better place to discuss features
P.P.S. About topic: this functionality is not provided "out of the box". It requires additional tuning.

 

[KerryG]

I don't think we are discussing feature requests here, just trying to solve his question. 3CX is not a "generic softswitching engine" like Yate, its not intended to be, nor do I want it to become one. The only goal here is trying to come up with a way that 3CX, today, can handle this person's request.