Understand the dial plan settings

CIC creates the initial dial plan settings when a system administrator runs Setup Assistant on the server and chooses to create a dial plan. Setup Assistant includes a wizard that allows the administrator to specify a list of local area codes and exchanges. Setup Assistant then uses that information to create the appropriate entries in the dial plan, along with some default, generic entries. You can see the local and default entries when you open the phone numbers configuration in Interaction Administrator.

If the system administrator chose not to create or import a dial plan when running Setup Assistant, the dial plan will be blank.

For more information on Setup Assistant, see IC Setup Assistant Help.

Default dial plan entries

The following default entries in the Phone Number Configuration container allow Customer Interaction Center to format and classify certain types of calls without Administrator modification or input:

		
		

		
		
1411
5551212
Nxx5551212
1Nxx5551212
+1Nxx5551212

		
		

		

		

		
		

		
		
$$$NxxXXXXZ
1$$$NxxXXXXZ
+1$$$NxxXXXXZ

		
		

		

		

		
		

		
		
$$$NxxXXXXZ
1$$$NxxXXXXZ
+1$$$NxxXXXXZ

		
		

		

		

		
		

		
		
NxxNxxXXXXZ
1NxxNxxXXXXZ
+1NxxNxxXXXXZ

		
		

		

		

		
		

		
		
011+Z
011Z
+Z

		
		

		

		

Rules for standardized numbers

The dial plan configuration packaged with Customer Interaction Center illustrates the preferred way to implement standardized number formats. If you want the phone numbers to be completely international and portable to any location in the world, keep these characteristics in your standardized number format:

• Numbers are completely specified. Entries should contain a country code preceded by a plus sign (+), an area/city code (if applicable), a local number, and an optional extension.

• Exceptions are:

• The number is purely an extension, like /131.

• The number is a specially-recognized number in a country, such as 911.

• Numbers are location-independent and must contain address information rather than dialing information. For example, an international number should not be standardized to include the 011 International Direct Dialing (IDD) prefix, because other countries and numbering plans have different IDD prefixes.

Wildcard characters

Wildcard characters are variables used to represent a range of numbers in phone number patterns. Patterns can consist of all digits, all wildcard characters, some non-dialing characters (such as + and /), or any combination.

Special characters

These characters are not actually dialed, but are preserved as part of the stored phone number:

• + is a prefix to introduce a country code.

• / is a prefix to introduce an extension for direction extension dialing.

Ordinal numbers

Ordinals identify the position or order of a number in a sequence, such as 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc. Their positions are displayed in braces such as {1}, {2}, {3}, etc., and can be combined with dialable digits.

The following table indicates input and output patterns for a local phone number, 872-3000:

Dial groups

A dial group is a group of lines or channels that are defined in the Line Groups container and that CIC uses for outbound calls. The lines included in this group should have a direction of Outbound or Both, rather than Inbound, to avoid line contention when dialing.

You can assign dial groups to patterns in the dial plan to direct certain kinds of outbound calls to specific lines. For example, outbound international calls might be directed to one dial group, while local outbound calls are directed to another dial group.

You could also create a SIP line group and assign it to the default sip:Z entry in the dial plan so that all SIP calls will use the SIP line group.

Location filters

The location filter assigned to a dial plan object determines the locations to which that object applies.