As OCS becomes more popular we find more companies deploying it with diverse needs.  During a recent deployment I worked with a client that had over 100 speed dial numbers for various partner companies that they regularly dialed.  Each speed dial was a 3 digit number starting with a # (pound/hash symbol), some of the numbers translated to 10 digit dials, others only 6 digits with 4 more digits dialed by the user added to the end.  As this was in place with the existing PBX it was important to bring this functionality to OCS as well.  After discussing the requirements with the client I used my lab to verify the solution was feasible and consistent to their request.  A few minutes of tweaking the normalization rules and I had a plan.

I started with the companies “Location Profile” (in the OCS Snap-in Right click Forest>Properties>Voice Properties), for this example it will be HQ.ocsguy.local:

I clicked “Edit” on the HQ Location Profile and clicked “Add” to create my first rule.  For this rule we are going to convert “#100” to +513-555-1212:

For the “regular expression” field we are going to enter “^\#100$”.  Next we enter our “Translation pattern”:

Next we enter our speed dial in the “Sample dialed number” field and verify the “Translated number” is what we are expecting to see:

Once we have verified our output is what we want it to be we can “OK” out and now we see our new rule at the bottom of the list:

This took care of part of the speed dial needs, converting #100 to 513-555-1212, but we also wanted to take a 3 digit speed dial and add 4 more digits it to it to complete a 10 digit dial.  For example, we will take #101 followed by any 4 digits and convert it to 614-123-XXXX where the XXXX will be the last 4 digits dialed by the client.

Again we start with the “Add” button and fill out the new rule:

This took care of part of the speed dial needs, converting #100 to 513-555-1212, but we also wanted to take a 3 digit speed dial and add 4 more digits it to it to complete a 10 digit dial.  For example, we will take #101 followed by any 4 digits and convert it to 614-123-XXXX where the XXXX will be the last 4 digits dialed by the client.

Again we start with the “Add” button and fill out the new rule:

Our “Phone pattern regular expression” will be “^\#101(\d{4})$”.  So this seems a bit tricky, but we can break the pattern down:

^\#101 – this section of the pattern means if the user dials “#101”, easy enough.  Next we see:

(\d{4})$ – this section of the pattern means capture the next 4 digits only.

Now we just have to take the #101 and the trailing 4 digits and convert it into a phone number, to do this we configure our “Translation pattern regular expression”

Now we can break down the “Translation pattern” field:

We start with +614123 – this means exactly what it looks like, dial: +614-123

$1 – this means take the string of text captured above and append it to “+614-123”.

Here is what that pattern looks like when we dial #1019999 

In my next article I will cover an expanded version of this scenario where the use of speed dials is the only way certain users can call long distance.

 Now that we have the 2 speed dial scenarios covered we just need to arrange our rules top to bottom so the most restrictive rules are first with the catch all rules (if they are in use) at the bottom:

In my next article I will cover an expanded version of this scenario where the use of speed dials is the only way certain users can call long distance.