Hi,
Sometimes I receive calls from users telling me that when outside people call and once automated service answers, they put a valid extension but the system replies that the extension is invalid.
From inside the network, I can call the extension no problem. I even call with the outside number and able to access extension. Can’t recreate the problem.
It is getting to be a nuisance as I receive often emails from remote sites informing me of this problem. Problem does not happen every day. But on a day it happens, it happens often and with different extensions.
Also we have a few sites, and I only have problems with this particular site.
Thanks in advance for any help provided.
Please don’t post the same thing multiple times as multiple posts become noise and get ignored. You’ll go crazy with different people giving different info in each post.
Now to help you to try and track this down. Increase the logging level in asterisk.
at the asterisk cli (you get there by typing asterisk -r):
set verbose 3
Now next time somebody says it happens get the number they called from and the time. And review the /var/log/asterisk/full log around that time to see what is happening
You should see the numbers they are entering and also see the entry for playing the audio that tells them they have dialed a invalid number.
Locate a complete call or two and post that information for us to review.
Thanks for the info.
Verbose already set at 3, checked logs but unfortunately, the calls were earlier than the last 2000 entries.
Next time I get a call for this problem, I will immediately check the log and post the entry.
Thanks again for your help.
What kind of outside lines are these people phoning in on?
What kind of zaptel card do you use?
The 2000 line limit is a limit of the web viewer you have.
Login to the box directly and look at the file it will be there. use vi, nano, etc.
Do you use ring groups?
We are using ring groups to match extensions from our legacy PBX to the new extensions on our * PBX…
So say on the old PBX i was 223, and the new one I am 2011… I wanted all my old extensions mapped to the new ones, so we used ring groups for this…
by default ring groups are not dial-able from anything that comes in on the from-pstn context (default context for zapata.conf) and anybody that dials the RG numbers from the IVR will get exactly the results you are saying… invalid extensions… even though if you dial it from an internal phone it will work fine…
I;m wondering if maybe you’;ve done the same thing… if so, this was the fix I did to make RG’s dial-able from IVR
in extensions_custom.conf just add:
[from-did-direct-ivr-custom]
include => ext-group
Hi,
I’m having the exact same issue, but I know how to recreate it 
step 1) Have 2 pbx’s (atleast 1 running free pbx)
step 2) Trunk the pbx’s together
step 3) Create an outbound route for some extensions to go over the trunk created in step 2. In my case this is 3xxx
step 4) Create an IVR, and allow for direct dial
step 5) While in the IVR, try to direct dial any 3xxx number
step 6) Receive message of “Invalid extension”
Basically the “direct” number you are trying to dial while in the IVR is a valid extension, but it isn’t a “local” extension.
Well I have come up with my own solution to this problem. When you direct dial inside of an IVR, freepbx goes to the “ext-local” context. In the ext-local-custom context I included the context for the outbound route I wanted to use. So for me, I added the following to extensions_custom.conf:
[ext-local-custom]
include => outrt-001-ETHO