Custom Tag

why would 911 need its own line item? All the tools are there to do exactly what you want. Perhaps you didnt think of a method?

the tenant custom tag is stored in the database as a different value/key pair than the extension.

you might want to store bits of data about the tenant instead of putting it into every extension. How you use the data is entirely a matter of custom programming.

/TL/TENANT/bgn/tag : XZH
/TL/bgn-532/tag : XYZ

see, two different value key pairs, potentially two different sets of data.

you can also store more than 1 thing in a single tag, you just need to script a way to collect it.

like assigning them as channel variables

VARIABLE1=VALUE1 VARIABLE2=VALUE2 VARIABLE3=VALUE3

Yes.. we have and it does work.. we have in our trunk for on the SIP Header 1 the following:

P-Asserted-Identity:

This works great when set on the extension level. Again for the customer they forget that Custom Tag = 911 (would be better to have one labeled 911) less chance for error.

We will be changing the code to reflect the IF not on the extension level to get it from the tenant level..

That's all fine and good, the fact remains that the "customer" needs to understand and there should be a field for 911 ONLY.

Add it or change Customer Tag make no difference but adding a new field would be best..

IF you don't give your customers access to the admin interface this wouldn't be a problem, but we do..

your thoughts..

Alex..?

Thanks
George

the consensus is there's only ever going to be 1 custom tag for the extension.. because you can stick dozens of values in that 1 tag. as far as the confusion of 911 your custom tag could be..

911_CALLERID=5025551212 SOMEOTHERSETTING=somevalue

Yep I get that, sorry to say that does nothing to alleviate any confusion on the customer end.. IF all customers were computer people that "might" be one thing.

BUT fact is they are not, they are Doctors, lawyers, construction, electrical engineers etc etc.. making it simple and clearly laid out is the smarter approach. 911 is an area that if its not clear and correct the lawsuits fly..

The way we are doing it using the Custom Tag is getting us by BUT to honestly ITS WEAK!! and leaves us libel to a certain degree and as a result we have to check to make sure the customers are using the field and correctly, there by wasting our time and resources costing us time and money. On the other hand If it were clearly laid out it would be left to the customer to make sure its correct.

George

so let me ask you.. does the number your using to identify them need to be specific on each extension? or is this more of a Tenant thing? It seems that their callerID would cover their extension uniqueness.. if all extensions in a tenant share a single value, there might be a better solution by creating a special emergency trunk script that ignores things like forwarding, recordings, etc and just completes the call with minimal options.

On the tenant level it is no longer a problem IF the 911 number is different from the normal outbound number by using the custom tag on the tenant level.

The problem comes in when you have remove offices, people working from home..

Simple example..

We all have office extensions we also have home extensions, some of our guys work from home full time.

ALL outbound calls display the company’s main number, this goes for remote and home users alike.

Setting 911 on the tenant level covers the office users no problem BUT will not for the remote and home users, the 911 operator will get the wrong information. So for home users we for 911 ONLY use the custom tag. There we display their home phone number so IF they happen to have an emergency and dial 911 from their office phone the 911 operator will get the correct information.

Now for me and you this is not a problem, I get it and will not forget, for Joe customer on the other hand to remember that Custom Tag means 911 is unlikely and as a result is risky and in the case of an emergency can be the difference between life and death.

Since it’s not clearly labeled 911 we have a responsibility to double check what the customer is doing to make sure the fields are correctly filled out. Where IF it was clearly labeled we could put it on the customer to make sure it’s filled out correctly..

It’s a matter of liability, 911 is nothing to screw around with. It needs to be clearly defined, currently it’s not. So no matter what you tell the customer or have the customer sign will not stop the lawsuit from coming your way if you 911 operators send emergency services to the wrong address.

My Self “I prefer to minimize my risk”, adding a 911 field like the custom tag in both tenant and extension levels cannot be hard to do, and it make since to do so..

George,

Do I understand this correctly - you are asking for a field (on the tenant and extension levels) similar to custom tag but called 911 and used for that purpose only?

Alex,

yes exactly..

Thanks
George

This is ideal!

YES, because then we could essentially "assign" a 911 DID/profile for a group of people that want to maintain their custom DIDs.

It saves from creating 50 911 profiles with our upstream provider

George,

I am assuming you created a special trunk that is only used for 911? Also, what do you send if no 911_CALLERID is specified for any extension>?

yes we have a truck for 911 only, it reads from the extensions custom tag, IF there is nothing in the customer tag it will send the user or tenant default called ID.

99% of the time our customers only display 1 DID for all out bound calls regardless of location, having a place for 911 would be so much cleaner and would not be confusing to the customers that mange there own tenants.

NOTE: 80%+ of our tenants manage there own tenants

Do you mind sharing your step by step on this?

please share step by step if you dont mind

thanks

Could you please elaborate how you would use these profiles should we make them available?

1) what's in the profile
2) on what level are they to be maintained - or they are just profiles managed by tenants and assigned as needed
3) how do you see them assigned

moshe - jimellis

what we did was create a trunk for 911,

host information - pointed to 911 provider
dialstring creation - Generate

SIP Header 1 = P-Asserted-Identity: < sip : $ { DB ( TL / $ { tenant } $ { TL_DASH} ${MYEXTENSION}/tag)}@###.###.###.###>

take out all the spaces
### = you servers IP address

on the extension level in the Custom Tag you would put the number (DID) that is for that location with 911 assigned to it.

doing it this way the tenant can use other numbers for outbound dialing BUT if / when a 911 call is made the 911 operator will always get the correct information.

IF the tenant only has one location and only uses 1 number for all outbound calls you can set this on the Custom Tag on the tenant level.

It would make more sense if there was a 911 specific field on both the tenant AND extension levels. Both are needed for remote office and multiple locations.

hope this helps..

We had a 3rd party (another forum member) develop a solution for us. We have a custom page we add under the Menu/Link Manager and we call it "911 Override". It brings up a list of all extensions for the system with a place to put the name and the desired Caller ID. We fill in the name we want to present and the TN we want to present and save the form. Then we update the outbound route for 911 to a new custom outbound route that removes the original name and caller id and populates it with the information from the form. Currently we only allow our system admins to populate the form as i am not sure we trust the end users enough to fill in two simply boxes :)

So far it was done the trick and we can now with a simple form control the name and TN presented when calling 911.

We have implemented this on our STE boxes and our MTE box.