Cheeky question about the message "call forbidden by administrator"

[davide.bonavita]

Hello there,
maybe the question sounds silly and I'm doing something wrong but... We make outbound calls through different providers (Twilio, DIDWW, Voip.MS) and we always have this problem: when we call a wrong or an unreachable number 3CX plays back the message in subject. Of course the agents come back to me asking why, as an admin, I don't want them to call that number, and after checking the logs (or just trying to call the number through Skype) I tell them the number is just not valid.
This is frustrating both for me and for them, as we waste quite a lot of time, and they have the "feeling", as non techy people, that 3CX itself is not that reliable.

Do you have any suggestion?

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

3CX has a few audio prompts for when a call fails and will actually play them depending on what the SIP Code received was. For instance, if a SIP Provider responds with a "603 Declined", 3CX will play the "Call forbidden by Administrator" message back to the user. A "404 NotFound" will have the 3CX PBX play "Called number does not exist". That said, it's not really under 3CX's control per se as the message may vary depending on what was sent by the provider. As you can probably tell, the message played is appropriate to the SIP Code received, but, if you still want to disable them, you can go into "Settings >> General" and disable the "Play Busy prompt when extension is busy"

 

[davide.bonavita]

Thank you Chris, that totally makes sense. Sadly they reply with the most random error codes...
Would disabling "Play Busy prompt when extension is busy" let the agents hear the early media messages from the terminating carrier?

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

Disabling "Play Busy prompt when extension is busy" will essentially stop the 3CX PBX from "converting" SIP error codes to audio messages and will instead just forward the SIP error code to, the extension in this particular case.

So instead of:

[SIP Provider] >> "603 Declined" >> [3CX PBX] >> "Play corresponding message" >> [Extension]

you'll get:

[SIP Provider] >> "603 Declined" >> [3CX PBX] >> "603 Declined" >> [Extension]

It should not affect early media sent from the provider at all, they should still be heard by the extensions as normal.

 

[davide.bonavita]

Hi Chris, I've tested this and now no error or message shows up on the phone, it just hangs up the call. I thought it would still show some error message to the agent?

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

The PBX will send a SIP error code back to the endpoint but what the endpoint will show will depend on the endpoint. For instance, the 3CX Webclient will indeed not show anything and will just end the call. The 3CX Windows App will show a message in the upper right corner where it says "On hook" when idle. An IP Phone will most probably show the SIP code error as is but again, it will depend on the brand, model and possibly even firmware.

 

[davide.bonavita]

We use the new Desktop App, but I can't really find the "on hook" bit

 

[ChrisC_3CX]

The new Desktop app is essentially the webclient in a native windows application form so I'm afraid it will just end the call as the webclient does. When I said Windows App I meant the following:

 

[davide.bonavita]

Ahhh okay, got it.
Anyway, just out of curiosity, I've talked with DIDWW support as most of the time we hear the message in subject when they reply with a 5XX error code. I've told them to check a number in particular that we can't reach, we received both 503 and 500 from them for our call attempts:


DIDWW:
According to our logs, both error messages, the 503/Service Unavailable and 500/Server Internal Error is coming from the destination side. Please note that it does not indicate that the number is Invalid. It simply states that the number might not be in use.

Davide Bonavita:
Got it. But, based on your experience, shouldn't they reply with a different more specific error code?
Maybe 404 not found or 608 rejected?

DIDWW:
In my experience, this kind of error message is expected as usually, error codes 6xx are "absolute" meaning if we receive the error code in the 6xx range, the call will not try to reroute via other routes.