Description

Users of a phone system often need to reach various destinations, such as extensions within the same site, different sites (sometimes with different dialing plans) within the same company, and other companies within the same country or in different countries. Because these calls can take different paths, such as the IP WAN or a preferred public switched telephone network (PSTN) carrier, completing the calls often requires dialing various access codes, numbers of digits, or prefixes. In addition, restricting certain destinations, such as 900 numbers, is often prudent.
To require users to understand the specific dialing patterns that are necessary to reach these various destinations is impractical and inconvenient. Digit manipulation, or the ability of Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) to add or subtract digits to comply with a specific internal dial plan or national numbering plan, is important to providing transparent dialing and to creating a unified dialing plan for end users.
Gateway selection and calling privileges are also important dial plan components. Calling privileges are used to implement class of service (CoS). Based on the calling device or line, some destinations are permitted to access call-routing table entries; others are not. Implementation applications include time-of-day routing, vanity numbers, Client Matter Codes (CMC), and Forced Authorization Codes (FAC).
This course describes the digit-manipulation tools that allow a CUCM Administrator to implement flexible and transparent dial plans. The course also describes external phone number masks, digit prefix and stripping, transformation masks, translation patterns, incoming called- and calling-party settings, called and calling transformation patterns, and significant digits. Finally the configuration tools that can be used to implement calling privileges and their different usage scenarios are also discussed.