| Two questions regarding external dial access and abbreviated dialing
Hi guys, first of all I am a server/network admin, so I am very much a newb on phone systems. I am not even sure that I am posting this in the correct forum, but hope I am. Our phone system says Norstar MOX16 on it, but our phones say Meridian, so wasn't sure which forum I should post this in. Anyway, on to my questions.
1. Currently we dial 7 to get an outside line then the full 10 digit number. This is different from every other office I have ever worked in within the US. The de facto standard is 9, so I would like to change it to that. The phone consultant we deal with (who has been doing work for this company long before I have) is saying that this is not possible since we have feature codes that start with 9 ([FEATURE]981 or [FEATURE]983 for example). This just doesn't sound right to me...why do we have to hit feature then if 9 is supposedly reserved for this purpose? If we press 9 it just says "invalid number" on the display right away.
2. I would like to implement what I have been told is called "abbreviated dialing". We have 2nd office across town that runs a completely different PBX system (this is a recent merger) with extensions in the 2000 range. I would like to configure our phone system so that someone can dial a one-digit access number followed by the desired 4 digit extension and then have the PBX drop the initial digit, prepend the rest of the dialed string with the first 6 digits of the actual number, and then route the call over the public network. For example, if the destination number is 555-345-6789 then I want a user to be able to dial 46789, at which point the PBX would drop the 4, and prepend 555-345 to the "6789" that they punched in. Is this possible? The phone guy is saying that the only way to do this is to program a speed-dial on every single phone that consists of the external access number followed by the first 6 digits of the destination number. This sounds way too cumbersome to be true. I have already accomplished this same feat at the other office this morning, enabling our users there to dial 4xxxx to get to any extension at this office.
Thanks for your help! |