Dial groups

To specify a dial group, click Add Group on the Dial Plan page. Here, you can specify one or more dial groups to use to place the call, an alternate dial string (optional) and an alternate classification (optional). The list of available dial groups appears after the CIC administrator creates one or more Line Groups entries and selects the Use as Dial Group check box on the Line Group Configuration property page. A dial group is a group of lines or channels that CIC uses for outbound calls. The lines included in this group should have a direction of Outbound rather than Inbound or Both to avoid line contention when dialing. For more information, see the Line Configuration topic in Interaction Administrator Help.

Click Add Group to specify one or more dial groups to use to dial the outbound call.

A Dial Plan object can include zero, one, or more dial groups. If you do not specify a dial group at all for a Dial Plan object, CIC uses its own default order for selecting available trunks and channels to dial outbound calls (see the Line Selection Order topic in Interaction Administrator Help for details). If you specify one dial group for a Dial Plan object, CIC attempts to use a line on that dial group to dial the call. If no lines are available on that dial group, it uses the default CIC line selection order. To help avoid using the default line selection order, you can specify two or more dial groups for CIC to use when dialing each number. CIC uses the dial group at the top of the list first. If no lines are available in that group, it uses the next dial group down the list until it finds an available line, or until it ends up using the default line selection order. Since different line groups may be trunks from different service providers, you may need to specify an alternate dial string (for example, one that requires a different prefix) for each dial group.

Line Group configuration controls which lines appear in the Dial Group – Add Entry dialog on the Dial Plan page.

Dial groups enable you to specify which outbound lines or channels to use for each type (classification) of phone number. For example, international calls may be directed to one dial group that uses lines with the best rate for international calls. Local calls may be directed to another dial group called Local over low-cost analog lines from the local CO. If you do not specify a dial group for a Dial Plan entry, calls placed via that Dial Plan object use the first available line with a direction of Outbound or Both.

Note:
All of the lines or channels in a dial group must have identical dialing requirements. In other words, you cannot have some lines that require a 9 prefix and other lines that don’t within the same dial group.