Change dialing plan digits from 3 to 4

[DallasTXtech]

I have a fully deployed IP Office with VM Pro and foresee the 3 digit dialing plan being a problem. How should I plan for this? What obstacles will I face?

 

[sizbut]

The challenge obviously is to avoid overlaps. You can't have extension 200 and 2000 (yes you can but it makes calling 2000 very very difficult). So keeping all your extension number lengths the same saves a lot of hair pulling.

If its not been running too long, bite the bullet and tell everyone that their extension number is changing from xxx to yxxx. There is a tool in IP Office Manager to renumber all extensions (Tools | Extension Renumber) which will allow you to add y000 to every extension number. (I can't recall it is renumbers the hunt groups also so they would have to be done manually and incoming call routes checked).

Of course, if you do that people will start to wonder why they're having to dial an extra y digit on all internal calls unless you start having extensions that start zxxx and wxxx reasonably soon.

Fortunately, Voicemail Pro bases mailboxes on the the user and group names. It should cope pretty well with the change unless you've already added a lot of custom callflows that have logic based on extension numbers.

Stuck in a never ending cycle of file copying.

 

[IPGuru]

You can't have extension 200 and 2000 (yes you can but it makes calling 2000 very very difficult).

not if you are in a sensible part of the world & can set dial delay count sensibly (still not a good idea though, if only for readability concerns).

for the rest of it the biggest obstacle will be (as sizbut suggested) user resistance. Extn renumber should sort things out smoothly & VM should "Just Work"



Do things on the cheap & it will cost you dear

 

[DallasTXtech]

Sizbut and IPGuru, thank you for responding. Sounds like the users will be the only major obstacle, and that will not be a problem'o!