Restrict/deny 911 calls per station

[wagnerm74]

Hello, I wanted to deny 911 calls from specific stations. I believe I would use a COR to do this but and the existing COR's I have all allow 911 but each restricts other features like service observe, local or long distance calling, etc. I haven't been able to figure out how to deny 911 on a COR. How would I go about creating a new COR (or an alternative way) to deny access to 911, allow local and LD calling, be service observed, and allow internal calling.
Definity running CM 4.x

 

[dialtonebone]

For ethical and legal reasons, I'm going to assume you are okay to do this and work in some type of facility like a prison or jail where 911 calling is okay to block/redirect.

COR's have an FRL in them - this restricts your dialing privilages via route-patterns.

You would want to create a route pattern for 911 calls, give it an FRL high enough that it denies the CORs you wish to deny.

After verifying your CORs, something along these lines would be next:
"cha route-pattern XXXX"
"cha ars ana 911"
"cha ars dig 11"
"cha ars ana 11"

Don't forget to test 911 and 9,911 from both phones that SHOULD be permitted and phones that should NOT be permitted

 

[joe2938]

In the USA this is against the law.

 

[wagnerm74]

joe2938 - I have read that in a few places, however, I cannot find any specific laws/ordinances to cite. Do you know where I can find that documentation? Also, is it federal, state, or a local ordinance? One of our corporate attorneys looked into it and couldn't find anything. Granted I don't know how much time was spent on it.
If you have any links to this sort of law would be very much appreciated.

randycarrol - thank you. I will check this out. That's one thing I have had issues with is understanding the FRL's and how to use them.

 

[kyle555]

Well, this blog post, no longer on Avaya's site had a .gif of which states had rules... and the wayback machine didn't capture that.

https://web.archive.org/web/2011122...ng-access-to-9-1-1-what-does-the-law-say.html

Here's one too:

http://www.911etc.com/legislation

 

[dialtonebone]

wagnerm74 - I'm not going to play lawyer, but I'd really second-guess this decision. There are bajillions of reasons to never block 911 but there are only a few scenarios where blocking it is legal/ethical.

Instead of looking at the legality of it, let's look at a scenario:
You block 911, a child or guest of the company is in the area and needs help. They dial 911 from a phone and it is blocked by the company. At this point they have no way to reach emergency services - has that been accounted for?

I'm really curious about the use case here and what it is, if you don't mind sharing.

 

[kyle555]

I agree with Randy. Unless you're a prison or a hospital, and even then you'd probably need to re-route to the area's security.

 

[wagnerm74]

randycaroll - I have argued this with my management for the past month to no avail. I don't want to do it but my hands are tied unless I can find an alternative.
Here's the situation.
Our call center added a new team that only does manual outbound calls. In two months time they have misdialed 911 around 30 times with many of them dispatching an officer due to the agent hanging up.
Our FAC for outside line access is 9, of course. The agents are apparently pressing 9 for outside access and then somehow hitting 1 twice. After a little digging I found that we had a rule in ARS for 11 that has a route pattern that inserts a 9 and also an ARS digit conversion changing 11 to 911#. Which seems to be the most noted "best practice" when I search forums.
First off I had added decided to add a second FAC for the ARS as #3 and created a abbreviated-dial button on the agents phones and they were instructed to press that instead of 9. We still get calls to 911 because the system would still see the dialed digits 11 once in the ARS table. I still don't know why it still works, the ARS and ARS digit conversion no longer have the rule but it still dials 911. In the CMS logs it shows the station dialed 11#. I don't know where else it would have a rule for outbound.
I recommended that we remove the 9 FAC (maybe even change it to a 911 in the dialplan and not have a single digit 9) and then use #9 (rather than the earlier #3) instead because it would be simpler to train everyone but that was shot down in flames.
Against my recommendations I was ordered to remove the 11 rule and digit conversion so anyone dialing 911 would first need to hit 9+911. However, this did NOT seem to make a difference, the agents are still placing false 911 calls. To make matters worse, I have now been instructed to find a way to block specific extensions from dialing 911 all together and have 1 or 2 stations near them that would be used for emergencies.

Something that one manager asked is if the agent could see the full number before it's dialed it may help the agent. Right now the second you hit 9 (or #9) it opens the outside line and any digits pressed are immediately passed to the ARS. Instead he would rather see it happen more like a cell phone. In other words, the agent would dial 9+14401234567, visually look at the display to be sure it's correct, then press a button to send the digits (like headset, lifting receiver or pressing a "Make Call" soft button). That way they would see 911 on the display and be able to correct it. I have yet to find a way to do this, either under change station or any of the system/global settings. Ideally that would want to be done per station.
So options I have considered so far.
1. Punch the agent each time they dial 911. - HR didn't approve
2. Telling the agent to slow waaaayyyyyyy down. - Didn't work
3. Adding a second FAC and making it a speed dial - didn't work
4. Removed ARS digit conversion 11 to 911#
5. Remove 11 ARS entry - no worky (first I changed it to just DENY but didn't work)
6. Remove the 9 access code - I almost got shot for that
7. Reroute to a VDN that plays a short message then route to digits #9911# - also shot down (they think blocking is a better idea than delaying a call by playing a message)
8. Block 911 from only specific phone stations. - not sure yet.
9. Dial like a cell, press all digits to inspect on display, then press a button or go off-hook to dial them.
10. run away - not sure yet


Incidentally, it doesn't appear that Ohio has a law in place for blocking 911 in a business yet. However, I do that they are working on a bill for Kari's Law but that has not passed.

 

[kyle555]

Have you thought of settings up 9+10 digit? That way there'd never be a reason to have the next digit be 1 and have the off-chance of double-pressing 1 or missing the 1st digit of the NPA and entering the second as 1 - like 9-1-212 and missing the 1st '2'

Just go 9+10 digit - the 1st digit of any NPA is never 1. That way you'd have to miss the 1st digit of the NPA and double press the 1 in the second digit.

 

[Wanebo]

I am on the "never ever block an emergency call ever" side also. This is how we went around the high number of misdials we were seeing on our CS1K's. Calls to 911 get routed first to our Callpilot where the caller gets a message "You have dialed an emergency services number. If this is an actual emergency please dial 1 or stay on the line. If you have reached this message and this is not an emergency please hang up now." Then the system takes any keypress and processes it to send to the PSAP, or if the caller stays on the line for 2 seconds after the message ends the call is sent to the PSAP. If the caller hangs up before the timeout then the call is dropped.

The timing is pretty similar to the built in misdial prevention default threshold so when that is turned off and this processing is used emergency calls get to the PSAP in about the same amount of time as if misdial prevention was on.

 

[1a22ip]

How about if the Agent Dials 911 in error and a fine is issued the AGENT PAYS!

ED

1a2 to ip I seen it all

 

[dignoffo]

wagnerm74,

Have you reached out to Mark Fletcher who is Avaya's 911 expert? He may some ideas to solve your issue.