Is it/will it be possible to apply outbound rules to SMS?

[erostratus]

Seems like the official guide says you must use the +country code prefix when initiating an SMS conversation. With phone calls, you can automate this with outbound rules. Can you not do that with SMS?

 

[charles]

Simply put No. SMS uses direct connections and is not affected by outbound rules.

 

[VasilisV_3CX]

Hi @erostratus,

To add to what my colleague has rightly said, for outgoing SMS, E.164 formatting requires the +country code prefix, this is an international standard.

Note that if a PBX has multiple SMS providers configured, and they all direct their SMSs towards one extension, when that extension replies to a received SMS, it will follow the same routing. Meaning that if an SMS arrives via provider A, when responding, provider A will be used even if your extension is configured to initiate SMS conversations via SMS provider B.

 

[erostratus]

I appreciate the answers. I completely understand why the SMS needs to use the E.164 formatting. But I've never been in an environment where people put the +1 into their contacts' phone numbers. I've never met anyone in the United States who prepends +1 to their contacts' phone numbers. All of our contacts' numbers are simply 10 digits long, and I can create an outbound rule for calls so that the +1 gets added to the phone number when the user dials. It makes a lot of sense to offer these rules. But now, if I want to let my employees text with their contacts, I have to tell them to prepend +1 to every contact's number because I can't tell 3CX to add +1 to 10-digit numbers for purposes of SMS.

 

[StefanW]

if you look around into other 3rd party software you will see commonly the format of e164 is generated by many apps now.

Outlook was the first one to assist users to write a number in a common national format, eg 10 digits, but merged them then into e164. This also makes overall sense. As phone numbers have vastly different formats with different rules from national to international conversion throughout the world. Once it is std. into e164, you have many benefits, incoming caller ID lookup to CRM and co are vastly improved this way.

Assume we would the same "mess" in email formatting as we have it for phone number rules... I will even not like to think about it.

My advice, use e164, it makes your life overall better, a matter to get used to... ;-)

 

[StefanW]

a small addition, even it is not a binding standard, but Sip Connect defines common rules which are not set out in the RFC for SIP. One, for example, is the number format to be used.

https://www.sipforum.org/technology/sipconnect/

• Focus on E.164-based SIP AoRs – the common case for deployments

Interoperability with SIP Trunks following also this recommendation is super for both sides as it reduces support and overhead in the long run...