Allow both 2 and 3 digit extensions?

[timb]

First of all, I just wanted to mention that today I set up 3CX for the first time, and it took me less than an hour to get up and running with my ITSP, Digital Receptionist and a few extensions. I can't believe how easy it was. Great job!

I have run into a few problems that I can't seem to find an answer for. The most important of these issues is the extension length. When installing 3CX, it asks how many digits to set for your extensions and mentions that this cannot be changed. I selected 3 digits. We're currently transitioning from 2 to 3 digit extensions. Our current system allows aliases to be entered and we have 2 extensions per user (one with 2 digits and one with 3). The IVR will allow either extension length to be used. I haven't figured out how to do this with 3CX, and I'm not sure if it's possible.

I did find the SIP ID field and it appears that this works similarly to an alias. When I dial the SIP ID from an internal extension, it works as expected. However, if I dial the SIP ID after being routed to the digital receptionist (external -> DID -> digital receptionist -> 2 digit SIP ID), it does not work as expected and the digital receptionist voice recording just repeats (it doesn't say that the extension was invalid).

Is there anyway to allow both 2 digit and 3 digit extensions from the digital receptionist?

 

[eagle2]

Seems not possible.

The only way I managed to achieve some results is to create a loop SIP trunk (to 127.0.0.1) and to handle 2-digit (or vice-verse 3-digit) numbers via outbound rules appending (or deleting) one digit, i.e. making numbers like [1-6]x 3-digit, e.g. 9[1-6]x or vice-verse 9xx to xx.

Regards

 

[timb]

Thanks for your response, that sounds like an acceptable workaround.

I tried it out and wasn't quite able to get it to work. I think I was pretty close, but I guess I'm too much of a 3CX noob to get it to work at this point.

I've thought about it a bit more and I think we'll drop the 2 digit extensions and add a prompt letting users know the extension format has changed. We've been telling people to use 3 digits for 3 years now, which I think is long enough.

 

[eagle2]

OK

may be some more details necessary to make it working:

In this example I will convert 2-digits numbers like 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x to 3-digit numbers like 24x, 25x, 26x, 27x in a similar scenario like your case.

1. Create a Generic SIP trunk (not SIP provider) to server 127.0.0.1 port 5060 (without registration) and name it 'Loop' (or whatever makes sense for you).

2. Go to VoIP providers menu, select provider 'Loop' and go to 'DDI' tab.

3. Add all 3-digit numbers you need as DDIs, i.e. 240 - 279. Click 'Apply'

4. Go to 'Source-ID' tab and check 'Source Identification by DID' and set 'SIP field containing DID numbers' to 'User part'. Click 'Apply'

5. Go to "inbound rules' menu, select 'Loop' provider and each DDI number select corresponding destination, i.e. 240 to 240, 241 to 241, ... Apply settings.

Note steps 2-5 are standard DDI settings.

6. Go to 'Outbound rules' menu. In rule for 'Loop' set Call for for numbers starting with 4, 5, 6, 7 and length of 2 digits. In 'Make outbound calls on' strip zero digits and prepend the digit '2' (this will add '2' in front of 2-digits numbers like '4x', '5x', '6x' and '7x').

Note with this rule you may convert 2-digit numbers like '22' to '222'. However it is not recommended using simultaneously numbers '22' and '222' which are differentiated only by timeout or entering end-of-dialing digit like '#'.

The possible drawback of this approach is consumption of 2 SC licenses during each call.

Hope this helps.
Kind regards.