Conditions for using wildcard characters

While it is much easier to type and read the wildcard character style rather than an ordinal list for the standardized phone number template, there are two constraints on using this style in other formatted phone number fields in the Dial Plan property sheet. Both the Dial String and the Display String fields substitute a different format of the phone number input that was converted via the input pattern. In both of these substitution strings, the number formatted with the wildcard characters (like the input pattern) must meet the following conditions:

1. The phone number template cannot contain any characters as part of the actual display string or dial string. For example, you could not display the letter X as the extension separator in a phone number because X is a reserved formatting character. The following phone number template would be invalid in the Display String field on the Dial Plan page; you would have to use an ordinal list to display that last x character:

   +33 0X XX XX XX XX xZ

2. The number and order of the characters must match between the input pattern and the substitution string. For example, if the input pattern contains 11 wildcard characters, the display string or dial string must also contain 11 wildcard characters. In addition, if the first wildcard character in the input pattern is N, then the first wildcard character in the substitution string must also be N. If the second wildcard character in the input pattern is X, then the second character in the substitution string must be X, and so forth.

   In the following invalid example, the input pattern has 11 wildcard characters, but the display string has only eight since it does not include the area code.

   Input Format	Invalid Display String
   +1NXXNXXXXXX/Z	NXX-NXXXX /{Z}

Fortunately, the above conditions are met more often than not, and it is usually safe to use the wildcard style of phone number template.

The following table shows several illustrations of how the wildcard style and ordinal list style of phone numbers can be used interchangeably in the template format.