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Getting Started with the Simple Wizard

December 13, 2011 by sipsorcery

The Simple Wizard is the new way to create SIP Sorcery dial plans. It’s designed for people with fairly straight forward call handling requirements with one or two steps per call.

This post is an overview of how to get started with the Simple Wizard and includes a guide for the some common steps that are likely to be undertaken with it.

Step 1: Create a new Simple Wizard dial plan

The dial plan option is only available in the Silverlight portal. Once logged in select the dial plans menu option and then the Add button. A dialogue box will appear with the different dial plan options available. Select Simple Wizard, choose a name and then click Add.

Once the dial plan is created the Simple Wizard screen will appear and you are ready for step 2.

Step 2: Create speed dials for outgoing calls

A common requirement for outgoing call rules is to create some speed dials for frequently called destinations. The Simple Wizard allows any format desired for speed dials but a common way to create them is to use a * prefix, for example *100, *101 etc. For this example we will create 4 speed dials for calling family member’s mobile numbers.

• *100 for Mum
• *101 for Dad
• *102 for Older Brother
• *103 for Younger Sister

The screenshot below illustrates the creation of the first speed dial. The crucial point is to leave the Destination Match type as Exact. An exact match is as the name suggests one that matches the called number exactly without applying any substitutions, wild cards etc.

Once all the speed dials have been entered they will be displayed in the outgoing rules grid and are immediately ready for use (remember to update the Outgoing Dial Plan on the SIP account you want to use with the dial plan).

Step 3: Create outgoing call rules for international routing

Once your speed dials are set up the next thing is to create some rules for processing calls to the traditional telephone network or PSTN. For PSTN calls it’s common to use different providers for calls to different international destinations. For this example we will set up rules for 3 international prefixes.

• Irish calls with a prefix of 011353 use provider blueface,
• Australian calls with a prefix of 01161 use provider faktortel,
• US calls with a prefix of 0 or a prefix that doesn’t start with 0 use provider callcentric.

The difference between setting up the international calling rules and the speed dial rules is that the Destination Match type used is now Prefix. Again as the name suggest a prefix match is only concerned about the start of the dialled number. Prefix matches can also use pattern substitution to represent commonly required number patterns.

• X will match 0 to 9,
• Z will match 1 to 9,
• N will match 2 to 9.

Once all the international rules are entered they to will appear in the outgoing rules grid and are available for immediate use.

Step 4: More sophisticated outgoing call rules

The exact and prefix match rules and the default Dial command used in the above examples are just the start when it comes to creating outgoing call rules. More powerful matches can be created using the Regex destination match type, it allows full regular expressions to be utilised.

The DialAdvanced command also allows multiple stage forwards and different options to be set on the forward(s) used to process the outgoing call. The DialAdvanced command can use the same powerful dial string options that are used in the Ruby dial plans.

Step 5: Incoming rules

After the outgoing rules are successfully configured the next step is to take a look at the incoming rules. It’s not actually necessary to use a dial plan for incoming call processing with SIP Sorcery. By default all incoming calls will be forwarded to all registered bindings on the main SIP account. However if different behaviour is required such as forwarding an incoming call on one provider to a different provider or to multiple SIP devices then an incoming dial plan is required.

For this example we’ll set up two incoming dial plan rules.

• Incoming calls from provider1 should be forwarded to mobile number 0447623322 at someprovider,
• Incoming calls from provider3 should be forwarded to SIP accounts mine1 and mine2.

Currently an extra step is required to be able to distinguish calls by provider.

1. Create a new incoming only SIP account for each provider that needs to be distinguished in the dial plan,
2. For each SIP account created in step 1 set the Incoming Dial Plan to the Simple Wizard dial plan being created,
3. On the provider’s Register Contact field use the SIP account set up for it in step 1.

Once the providers are correctly configured then to distinguish them in a Simple Wizard dial plan is as simple as selecting the corresponding SIP account in the drop down menu.

Once the rules have been created they will be displayed in the incoming rules grid and are available for immediate use.

Step 6: Forward unanswered incoming calls to voicemail

The final step is to forward any unanswered incoming calls to voicemail. To achieve this it is as easy as creating a new incoming call rule that applies to Any SIP account rather than to a specific one as the rules in the last step did.

Since the SIP Sorcery service does not provide a voicemail service anyone wanting to use one will need to create an account with a 3rd party SIP provider. The instructions on how to set up a free voicemail account with Callcentric can be found in a SIP Sorcery Recipe.

Once you have a voicemail account set up the incoming call rule will be something like the one below.

As with outgoing rules there are many more things that can be done with incoming call rules such as setting a time window that they should apply and filtering based on the caller ID.

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