I’m using PIAF and the followme module is not working as expected, but I don’t know wherever it’s FreePBX issue or PIAF issue, so I’d welcome any help.
I want to specify an external phone number in the followme:
+15555555555#
However after I click submit the leading plus sign is being stripped.
I’m running the PBX for family members spread all over the world and fixing all the trunks outbound routes to accommodate for missing plus sign is a PITA.
So two questions:
Is it a FreePBX issue or a PIAF issue?
If it is a FreePBX issue – why the plus sign is stripped and do you think it makes sense to file a bug to have it addressed by developers?
If anything, +1 should be stripped in the outbound route and/or trunk. Otherwise there’s no way to tell the difference between the LD call and the international call to countries with fewer than 7 digits phone numbers.
The plus sign has been used as a prefix for the international (country) dialing code since the early era of cell phones.
Follow me basically needs to have the number exactly as it would be dialed from a phone (with the exception of the # which designates the call as an outside call. So, however you dial the number from one of your extensions is how you need to enter the call in follow me.
If you need to force the call to a specific trunk, you do that in the outbound routes module.
You can also define specific prefixes to manually force a call to a specific trunk…
Say you want to force something to force your call above to trunk “1”, you’d enter it in follow me as “10115555555555#” then match everything in the outbound routes and strip the 101 before sending it out the selected trunk.
+15555555555 is precisely how I would dial it from the phone. As I said my outbound routes depend on the plus sign.
I can of course rewrite all of my outbound rules and/or trunks, but that defeats the purpose of having standards. The plus sign prefix is not some combination of numbers I made up (like 101), it’s the de-facto standard which has been in use for over 15 years.
Yet, the creator(s) of the Followme module decided to strip it.
Most phones do not have a + key, + is a “metacharacter” defined within e164 and should resolve to the locale specific prefix for internation dialling, 011 for NANP 00 for many other countries. Land Lines only accept DTMF signalling 0-9 and * and #. Many SIP providers and Mobile Carriers use this though, so it belongs in the trunk where appropriate.
While I disagree that the existence of a dedicated + key matters at all (wherever it’s a dedicated key or is available as a long keypress doesn’t matter, most phones nowadays have a way of entering the + sign; and how often do you dial numbers not from an address book/memory), it has no relevance in the context of the Followme, which has nothing to do with the keys available on the phones.
By your logic, the plus sign should be stripped or not allowed when received from extension, not in the followme.
One of the suggestions above was to create another “metacharacter” in form of the string of numbers to replace the plus sign in the Followme. There is a metacharacter for that already.
There’s no good reason why the + sign should be stripped in the Followme module.