04.1 Routing V2

Navigation: Call Handling | Routes

Overview 

The Routes page allows you to create and maintain routes into and out of your phone system.

Inbound

Inbound routes are perhaps the easiest to understand and the most common one that needs to be maintained.

Inbound Routes control how a call into your organisation is delivered. Some of the more common things that you might do with a call are:

• Make one or more handsets ring
• Play a message
• Send the caller to a Voicemail box
• Give the caller a choice of options (IVR) e.g. Press 1 for Sales, 2 for Accounts.
• Enable recording
• Play an after hours message

You can also perform some far more complex operations on a call all from a Route.

Outbound

In less common situations you may also need to configure Outbound routes. You can use an Outbound route for the following:

• Least cost routing (LCR) - send different calls via different 'trunks' based on the type of number (Note; trunks are able to do simple LCR without requiring a special Outbound Route).
• Enable recording
• Caller ID Masking
• Dialing restrictions (e.g. who can dial international no.s) (Note: trunks can also provide basic dial restrictions).

Understanding Call Routes

Each route belongs to a 'Context' and is normally triggered when a dialed No. matches a Target.

Calls can be considered to originate from two sources

Inbound calls - calls from a third party to your organisation

Handset calls - calls made from a staff member to another staff member or an external party.

In some specialised circumstances calls can be originated from the phone system itself. Discussion of these system generated calls are beyond the scope of this article

When a call comes into your phone system or is dialed from an internal handset the call is placed into a specific Context. For inbound calls it is called 'Inbound', for internal calls it is called 'Handset'. 

Once the call is placed in a Context the dialed number is matched against all of the available Route Targets within that Context. The Context priority is used to control the match order. Targets with a low value priority (e.g. 0) are considered first.

The first Route with where the dialed number matches the Target will be used to control the flow of the call.

If more than a single Target (within a Context priority) matches the Dialed Number then the Target with the longest pattern will be selected. (e.g 

When two Target patterns match the phone number the Target with the most exact match will be selected (e.g a pattern of 03 8320 1800 will be selected over a pattern of 03 XXXX XXXX as 'X' patterns are considered in-exact).

Routes may also have a Schedule. When a Schedule is applied to a Route it will only be active during the defined period of time.  If a Route is not active then it won't be considered when doing the above pattern matching.

For calls originating from an external party the DID (incoming phone no) that the caller dialed is used to match against the Targets pattern.

For calls originating from a handset the Phone No. that the staff member dialed is used to match against the Target pattern.

Creating a Route

Click 'New' to create a new Route.

Select the Context that the Route is for.

Enter a pattern for the Target that is to be used to trigger the Route.

A target can contain any alpha or numeric characters.

The following special pattern characters are supported:

Enter a meaningful Name for the Route. This might be something like the department name.

Finally, enter a Description that will help you or someone else in 12 months time understand why this route was created.

Pattern Examples

The following provides some example of how to use patterns:

Steps

Once you have created the Route you MUST add one or more Steps to the Route. A Route without any Steps will simply hangup the call. (More accurately it will return to the calling route. This is an important difference if you are using the 'Gosub' step.)

To create a Step click the 'Steps' tab and following the instructions.

Recording

To enable Recording for this Call Route click the 'Recording' Tab.

Schedule

To limit what times of the day this Call Route applies to click the 'Schedule' Tab and set the time range.