btrain2871

My current dialplan is setup for 4 digits and there may be a need to go to 5 digit due to overlaps of DID ranges across remote offices. What is the steps to do this? How painful is it? Is there some tool to use?

martinyoung

Avaya Provision can do this but it is a very expensive program. The process is pretty straight forward. All the records that use station numbers are pulled from your switch, modified and then dumped back in. This will include (but not limited to), stations, VDNs, vectors, announcements, coverage paths, speed dials, hunt groups, etc. Intuity has a built in utility that will convert the mailboxes for you as long as you have the same fifth digit for all mailboxes. I have done this a few times but I gather from your questions you have not.

It is a relatively painless job if it is done by someone who knows how and what to do. I do not recommend that you go this alone because it will not be painless if you do it by yourself. Get an Avaya Business Partner to do this. Either Al (or someone he recommends) or find a local BP.

Are you going to have your DID vendor start sending you five digits or will you be inserting a digit on your ISDN trunk groups? That question, and more, will be asked by the person doing the work. There is a lot to think about before actually beginning the work.

__________________
Marty
Retired Avaya DSIC tech

PBXtech.info

 

btrain2871

wow.. thanks. Sounds like an undertaking.

ahays

I will be happy to refer you to a 30-year+ Avaya retiree who is now a consultant with a copy of ProVision that has done many of these 4 to 5 digit dialplan conversions. Just drop me an email.

regs,

.al.

__________________
Al Hays, ACE, MCSE, CCNA
Homepage: http://www.jeral.com/
Training: http://www.jeral.com/avaya-learning.html

btrain2871

Al, you're always in the mix if we ever do anything major..

But for now My location currently has an s8700 CM3.1 with MM and I have 4 other domestic sites with s8300's that are all connected to an MPLS network where we use IP trunking between offices and they all share the NY MM but are not LSP's. Also another location in LDN that has it's own s8700's.. MM that controls other Intl offices.

We have now aquired another company who has an office in NY with an s8500, intuity audix and they have some domestic sites (houston, LA, ldn that have s8300's and IA770's) that are not lsp'd and they do 4 digit dialing across vpn.

So we are taking over these switches and there are some small overlaps in teh dialplans where there are exact same DID's. Any suggestions on a day 1 scenario that will have no impact to the users and then what things should look like infrastructure wise going forward? we want to do 4 digit dialing between these new offices and be able to network vm.

My thoughts were.. day 1 do nothing!!
or have the overlapped users change their numbers and then assign a prefix per location. but there may be some resistance to changing numbers for some.

going forward I'm thinking we will be looking at either an ESS or lsp'ing these other locations and 6 digit dialing??

martinyoung

To keep four digit dialing with multiple sites having overlapping DIDs, you really only have one option and that is really a seven digit dial plan. If you have AAR available at each site you can use that.

Assign each site a unique three digit AAR number and let everyone know what goes where. Here are a couple examples, to reach John in the New York office dial 120-3456 or to get Mary in Houston dial 121-3456.

You will assign the AAR codes in AAR Analysis and route the call to a route pattern which will contain the rest of the dialing info. Lets go back to the first example, 120-3456. In AAR you program any calls starting with 120 to go to route pattern 1. Route pattern 1 directs the call out trunk group 20. Now you deal with the rest of the programming. If trunk group 20 is a tie line to that office from your switch, just delete three digits and 3456 will go out that trunk group to John's phone.

On the other hand if trunk group 20 is a PSTN trunk then you delete three digits and insert 1212567 in front of the call to station 3456 and you will outpulse 12125673456 over the PSTN network to John's phone.

This will need to be setup in each PBX using whatever trunks you have available and AAR must be available in customer options.

__________________
Marty
Retired Avaya DSIC tech

PBXtech.info

 

btrain2871

Martin, we didn't discuss '7' digit dialing.. why 7 instead of 6?? Also, that would work on day 1 but with all these various pieces of Avaya equipment we want to be able to integrate.. whatever we do on day 1 to the users (ex.. making them learn 3 digit codes) we don't want to make them do anything different say 6 months from now. The other issue is we will not stop at this one place but will keep aquiring other companies that would have to be integrated so with my sites set of systems along with theirs and all their vm's.. what's the optimal design to have ?

martinyoung

A six digit dial plan and using AAR codes to route the calls are not the same thing. You still have a four digit dial plan. To go back to my example, you could have station 3456 in your switch and several others. The only one you can reach by dialing 3456 is the person in your switch. To get to any other switch you need to prefice the station number with an AAR code so the PBX knows it is not in your system.

You need to start planning now so that you can get them all integrated. If every company comes in with a four digit or less dial plan put together a spreadsheet assigning a unique two digit number to each location now. And by a unique two digit number I mean each PBX will have a different prefix. If the stations in your system are 3xxx and the stations in Houston are also 3xxx, your PBX would be 20 and Houston would be 21. So when the six digit dial plan is implemented your stations are 203xxx and houston is 213xxx.

__________________
Marty
Retired Avaya DSIC tech

btrain2871

Ok, I see your point. What are your thoughts about the different systems including VM? This company for instance has a 200 person office in NY using an S8500 and their Houston office is only 5 people with an S8700 setup.. Regarding VM systems.. is it best to leave them as is and just network them using MM Message Networker or is there a way to have all of their mailboxes/messages migrated onto my MM system and then maybe LSP the other sites off my s8700?

martinyoung

You have an office with five people on an S8700? That is massive overkill.

If you wanted to put every person on your one MM you will need to spend a lot of money adding ports and hard drives. One major downside to this is if the MM is down for maintenance, no one anywhere has voice mail.

Is there a reason to network the voice mails? Are the people going to have mail boxes in several different VMs? This will be confusing to the users because they will have a problem figuring out which VM to call for messages.

__________________
Marty
Retired Avaya DSIC tech

btrain2871

overkill ?? There isn't a word in the dictionary that can explain that insanity.

The reason to network them is to be able to forward msg's. Collapsing onto 1 MM system then eliminates the problem of what vm system to call for messages because it will be one for everyone but that stuff hasn't been established yet. 4 digit dialing and dialplan issues on the switch end are the main problem right now.

martinyoung

You have a lot of things on your plate now, I would put the voice mails on the back burner for now. I would think about them when (or just after) you go to six digit dial plan.

Ask the Business Partner about that when you get them for the dial plan changes. They will be able to tell you the best way to do this. They can also verify what you may need to purchase for each VM to network over the PSTN. Or what it would cost to beef up your MM.

__________________
Marty
Retired Avaya DSIC tech