Outbound dials to DIDs - Best approach

[ian.watts]

Yet again I saw somebody dialing a DID for somebody in another office.. but the same system.
The end result on that is the outbound call routes to the SIP Trunk, and in turn the trunk routes it to the DID right back to our PBX and the inbound rule thusly sends it to the other party's extension.

Ideally 3CX would see an outbound dial to a configured DID on the PBX and would not route such calls through the trunk. The trunk is metered.. and is effectively costing twice (outbound minutes.. and the inbound minutes..) with this provider. Instead, it would follow the inbound rule for that DID.

Can this be done? Is it available? Should it be a feature request?

In lieu of it being available.. what's the best approach?
I know I can make outbound rules to "drop" the calls for the derp factor.. but seems there is/should be a smarter and friendlier way. Alternatively, would be nice if the provider saw such "loopback" calls as unmetered.. but I can also see how routing DIDs to other destinations could be abused..

Ugh.. I see two more calls in the same fashion.. why..

 

[positron]

You could put the DID number in the SIP ID field of the extension which is assigned the DID, and 3CX will route all calls which match the SIP ID to that extension.

 

[leejor]

Or create a Loopback trunk...

http://www.3cx.com/forums/viewtopic.php/internal-users-dialing-dids-instead-of-extension-20002.html?forum_uri=internal-users-dialing-dids-instead-of-extension&start=&t=20002&sid=9b081ba7cbc37622e23cf9372e8485b1

In a nutshell, for those that can't get into the Partner Forum , SY came up with this answer back in 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.

 

[craigreilly]

i've put in this idea before with little traction - and now there is a new system in place... hope they transfer the existing ideas.
Outgoing calls should check against the inbound DID's (as an option) before processing outbound rules.
If someone is having this kind of issue, then they can enable this config setting.


I did use loopbacks once, and it went to an IVR that said "This is an internal number. Please call the user directly. <hang up>".

 

[ian.watts]

That's about as much as I figured would be the case.. there is no "good" answer here.. other than the hacks we all put in place to gimp things along.

There should be something in place to check outbound dials and matching DIDs should route according to inbound rules.

While positron's idea may work somewhat, it is still a workaround for what ends up being a DID issue more than an extension one.. I could say they were calling the "main line" which could be a DID which routes to an IVR and not an extension at all.. so that hack wouldn't work for that.

Besides.. somehow I'm hoping that SIP gets enough traction "some day" that my userpart for SIP ID might actually come into play to dial by "email address".. riiiight.. because telco will let that happen and near free global calls will go unnoticed.. But that's another story.

 

[dig1234]

Agreed. It would be great to have a checkbox which says something like: Check inbound rules before processing outbound.
The SIP ID trick also won't work for Ring Groups which is what we use for our DID's.