We are having an issue with callerID being sent to our users when follow-me is enabled.
If a customer calls in and follow-me is enabled on the extension, the main number is shown as the callerID on our user’s cellphone (if this number is setup as the follow-me). The customer’s number should be passing through as the callerID to the user’s cellphone but it is not.
We reached out to our provider and this is what the engineer had to say:
“903736XXXX (any number really) dials 318677XXXX
After ringing with no answer, the PBX starts another call indicating 9903736XXXX is calling 318588XXXX, John’s cell phone.
The GENBAND C15(Switch) looks at the originating calling party as sees that it is 11 digits long. It will not launch a call from an 11 digit number and substitutes the main billing number instead.
Please contact your PBX vendor to have the additional 9 prefixed to the calling party number dropped from the second part of the call.”
How do we get the follow-me module to not show as a 9 in the callerID and have the number dropped by the provider’s trunk? Is this a setting we can change inside the PBX for when it calls the follow-me number it drops that 9?
The current follow-me for all of our users has this in the field 9318333XXXX#. I tried to remove the 9 in the follow-me field, but it doesn’t dial any of the external numbers in our follow-me field.
I’m guessing that you are new to this system and the previous admin caused the trouble you are seeing.
Way back when, someone thought it was a good idea to require dialing 9 before an external number, probably because the legacy system it replaced required the 9, so it minimized user retraining. Well, one problem this causes is that an incoming call from 903736XXXX (answered on an extension) would display the caller ID as 903736XXXX; returning the call from device history would fail because it lacked the initial 9. So, he fixed that e.g. with a custom context that prefixes a 9 before the incoming caller ID.
If my hunch is correct, when 903736XXXX calls, it shows on the extension as 9903736XXXX. But you then have the problem that when used as a caller ID for follow-me, you have to remove the initial 9 that was just added. You can do this with a ‘hook’; see
However, the clean fix is to get rid of all this nonsense and dial numbers the same as you would on a landline or mobile phone. In addition to avoiding various technical issues, it greatly reduces human errors. If you have legacy devices that can’t easily be reprogrammed such as an alarm panel or fax machine speed dial, you can set up the Outbound Routes so that an initial 9 is accepted, though not required.
In any case, make sure that both 911 and 9911 work properly.
If my analysis was completely wrong, please explain how the 11 digit caller ID comes about.
I took over this phone system about 2 years ago. I was not the one who initially set this up. Your analysis I think is spot on. My question is how do I go about changing our dial plan for that? I have a few outbound routes that was setup in the system for informational, emergency, long distance, and local. I removed the 9 in the prefix of the local outbound route, but i called my user and the callerID is still showing the extra 9. Could this be programmed somewhere else?
I’m not worried about fax machines or an alarm system since they don’t utilize the speed dial and do not have an alarm system.