Solved Problem with "Forward to Outside Number" after upgrade to v16

[Piers]

Not very happy but a customers PBX upgraded to v16 at 03:00 on Sunday morning by itself is set to updates at this time but I did not think that included major releases.

So Linux based install running on Hyper-V, all been working fine no changes in a long time.

Outside office hours call redirect to external number (another office which handle out of hours call outs this is a 24hour business). I got a call last night to say it was constantly engaged.

Upon investigation I found it had upgraded the previous day to v16 and in the log was:

[Flow] Target endpoint for xxxxxxxxxxx can not be built!

Is this a bug? Is there something that needs to be reconfigured (not seen the release notes this caught me on the back foot).

This is obviously business critical for them so if it is a bug a prompt fix / workaround would be appreciated.

Regards

Piers

 

[Saqqara]

Flow] Target endpoint for xxxxxxxxxxx can not be built! , normally means it can not find an outbound rule to use.

Have you locked down your outbound rules ?

Can you ring the external number normally ?

 

[Piers]

As I said nothing has changed and all outbound calls (rules) still work.

Not sure it there is a new security default somewhere, but I did hae a good look and could not see anything that might affect it.

 

[_DJ_]

Hey Piers,
The redirect to an external number, is it setup directly in the inbound rule?

If so, you might need to set-up an additional Outbound Rule to fix this:

Go to Outbound Rules -> Add.

Best practice to add a 'Block all' rule first:

• Give the rule a usefull name like 'Block'
• Add all extension groups to the rule.

Save.
This will block all calls made from any made User-Created Extensions

Now to fix, add another rule:

• Give the rule a usefull name like 'System Extensions'
• Enter prefix criteria '0-9'
• Select the preferred route for outbound calls.

Save.

 

[Piers]

Hey Piers,
The redirect to an external number, is it setup directly in the inbound rule?

If so, you might need to set-up an additional Outbound Rule to fix this:

Go to Outbound Rules -> Add.

Best practice to add a 'Block all' rule first:

• Give the rule a usefull name like 'Block'
• Add all extension groups to the rule.

Save.
This will block all calls made from any made User-Created Extensions

Now to fix, add another rule:

• Give the rule a usefull name like 'System Extensions'
• Enter prefix criteria '0-9'
• Select the preferred route for outbound calls.

Save.

Yes, it is on the inbound rule of the company main number which is setup as follows:
Destination for calls during office hours > Extension > IVR 02 Auto attendant
Destination for calls outside office hours > Forward to Outside Number > 01XXXXXXXX

This has worked for the last 12 Months, has this changed in V16?

OK I will give it a go.

 

[Piers]

Hi DJ

Thanks for best practice I have reconfigured as above but unfortunately it has not helped, exactly the same.

Piers

 

[Piers]

OK Solved it, it seems a bug has been fixed in v16 that had previously allowed this is work. The outbound rules was tied to a group of extensions, as this was not an extension making the call but an inbound rule it should have not and been allow to use the outbound rule.

So to fix it I added a very explicit Outbound rule with the whole number as the prefix and fixed number of digits. This enabled that specific number to be called without opening up the PBX.

Thanks to comments above they enabled me to work this out.

 

[_DJ_]

What was the difference with the solution suggested earlier?
It sounds like the solution you've found is basically a more restricted version of the outbound rule for system extensions.

 

[Piers]

Sorry when I saw the 'System Extensions' I assumed that was a group of all the Extn's. It was removing the extension group that enabled the call. I now realise you did not mention group in the second part of your suggestion thus would have worked but what would stop this not being miss used.

The way I understood your best practice tip to remove all extn's from Default group and explicitly block calls from that group and create a new group with all the extn's with the outbound route. So any new extn would not be able to make calls until added to the System Extensions group and removed from Default. So I obviously miss understood what you meant.

 

[_DJ_]

No worries, glad to see you've got it fixed. And ofcourse for reporting your solution here as well.

 

[StefanW]

In v15.5 some outbound call-flows incorrectly impersonated Groups where the call did not had a user bound to it but used any group which matched to to call destination.