I see that there are dial rules for both trunks and outbound routes. I’m wondering, when using the pipe ‘|’ symbol to remove a prefix number, should the same dial rule be in both the trunk and outbound route dial rules boxes, or does the outbound route remove the number before the pipe then send it to the trunk without the prefix number? If that’s the way it works I’d expect that the dial rules on either the trunk or the outbound route (depending which comes first) would not have a dial rule that would look for and remove the prefix…
I’m trying to set up a system using a A200 card so that the users can select a particular trunk which would use a specific Zap channel by dialing a prefix (9, 8, 7, or 6) before dialing the outbound number.
Most people when they first make a trunk, think that you put your outbound route’s “dial
patterns” in the trunk settings “dial rules”. This is not quite right.
The “dial rules” in the trunk settings is for adding prefixes or changing numbers like 411 to something else. For example dial 411|5551212. On your PBX’s extensions, you would dial 411 but output 5551212.
Or you’re in a 10 digit dialing area and don’t want to dial the area code. You would add the area code prefix in the trunk setting. Normally the dial rules in the trunk setting is empty.
The outbound route “dial patterns” select the patterns used to access the outside lines. For example, 9|xxxxxxx is dial 9 first then output the next 7 digits (7x s). If there was no “|” then the 9 would be sent out with the 7 digits. The output would go to the first item in the trunk sequence like zap/1 which means zap channel 1.
but that’s a tall order for most people, so with the other changes we made in 2.8 to make all of this easier we added a wizard to do the above (with the defaults being google directory assistance…)
but fundamentally Eugene is correct, just remember:
Outound Route Dial Patterns determine IF a call will use that route and if it does, no other routes below will EVER be tried. In the process it can also strip of prefixes (not until 2.8 can it prepend digits).
Trunks dial rules simply allow for optional manipulation for the specific trunk. Most commonly is adding area codes to allow 7 digit dialing (in the US), adding 1 to allow 10 digit dialing if the trunk requires 11, and similar. The rule does NOT decide whether the call is put on that trunk, just if any further manipulation of the number is required.