[BSalita]

The Dial Plan Wizard is a Windows software application that assists in creating new dial plans, verifying existing dial plans and testing the plans. It is also an excellent tool for learning how to construct dial plans. The wiz greatly automates the otherwise difficult and confusing tasks of dial plan crafting and testing.

A dial plan is a string of characters that is entered into Sipura VoIP devices to control the device's dialing behaviors. It is only relevant to Sipura devices.

This is the first beta of the wiz. I believe it to have suprising and considerable functionality, well worth the download/setup/learning-curve efforts -- if you are a dial plan person.

The wiz is written in VB.Net 2003. The download is quite large (8MB) due to the large database and perhaps .Net stuff. The zip file probably contains the .Net framework installation. Installation is quite simple and fast on systems that already have .Net. I don't know the experience for systems that do not. XP is certainly recommended but I believe that 98+ will work too. XGA or better resolution recommended. Feedback needed.

Please download a copy of the wizard here.

I will continue to edit this message with additional content during the beta period.

Instructions, release notes, screen shots to follow.

Please give feedback on the following:
* general comments
* accuracy of terminology
* usability (GUI and functionality)
* future enhancements
* new direction
* relevance
* bugs
* distribution issues with .Net, missing files, installation, etc.
* can you help in the project?
* accuracy of emulation

Some specific help needed:
* I'm hoping that mberlant and others will help fill out the databases. There is considerable functionality that can be added by simply entering more data. The system is designed to be database driven. The more data, the more powerful the software.

* My available time to work on this project will soon approach zero. Please send me a private email if you would like to assist or even takeover the project.

* I haven't had sufficient time to performing testing with the Sipura devices. Specifically, more testing is needed on:

1. Timeout handling especially P delay
2. Situations where there are multiple matches.
3. Handling of extra dialing digits.


Macro Substitution

When the wiz encounters a text bounded by plus signs (+), it will attempt to resolve the contents according the macro processing rules. First, it tries to resolve using the builtin macro list. The values for builtin macros come from the user's selections in the lines grid. There are four builtin macros:

1. +modelcode+ resolves to the Sipura device code (SPA3000)
2. +line code+ resolves to the devices line name (line1, gw0, etc.)
3. +line type+ resolves to the type of line (FXO, FXS)
4. +provider+ resolves to the VoIP provdiers name (BroadVoice)
5. +country name+ resolves to the selected country name
6. +country code+ resolves to the selected country code (1 for US)
7. +area code+ resolves to the selected area code
VoicePulse)

If the macro is not one of the above, it will next try to resolve the macro using the Macro table in the database (Dial Plan Wizard.mdb). There are 25 macros currently in the database such as (+Fire+, +Police+, +City Code+, +6d+). The substitution for the macro name can be either a substitute string from the Substitution column, which can also contain macros. If the substitution string is null (empty), the Query column is used. The Query column must either be null or contain a valid SQL SELECT statement. The SELECT will then be invoked. If successful, the returned result will be scaned for additional macros. If the macro still cannot be resolved, the wiz will assume it really isn't a macro and the string will be passed on to the parser unchanged.

Here's a dial plan that uses macro substitution:

( 011,xx. | *xx | +directory assistance+ | +fire+ | +police+ | 0 | 00 | < : 1+area code+>[2-9]+6d | 1[2-9]xx[2-9]+6d )

+area code+ is a builtin macro that resolves to, say 312 (Chicago)
+directory assistance+ is 411
+fire+ is 911
+police+ is 911
+6d is xxxxxx

Note that +6d is not terminated by a trailing +. The rules permit the omission of a trailing + if the next character would be invalid as a macro name. A macro name consists of the letters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, spaces or an underscore.

Thus, the above dial plan would resolve to:

( 011,xx. | *xx | 411 | 911 | 0 | 00 | < : 1312 >[2-9]xxxxxx | 1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxx )

+fire+ and +police+ macros are resolved by the SQL SELECT statements such as:

SELECT Fire FROM Countries WHERE [Country Name] = "+Country Name+"

This SQL statement says to look in the table named Countries, in the column named Country Name for the string "United States" and return the entry under the column "Fire". Thus 911 is retrieved for the United States but perhaps 18 or something else for other countries.

The macro feature permits generalized default dial plans such as (+fire+ | +police+ | 1[2-9]+2d[2-9]+6d | [2-9]xx.) which perhaps will resolve to a usable dial plan for many countries. Macros are also used to specify selections for the database.

All of this macro stuff is very powerful provided the database is well contructed.

I thank mberlant for the macro procssing idea.

Default Dial Plan/Element Selection

The wiz grabs default data elements from the Data Element table and supplies them to the data element grid according to a simple rule. If an entry is blank or matches the user's selected value, then that dial element will be included in the plan and thus will appear in the grid. Relevant columns are Line Type, Provider, Country Code, and Area Code. For example, if a row has a Country Code of 1 (United States) and an area code of 312 (Chicago), and that matches the user's selection, then that dial element will be included. Examining the various tables in the database will make this all clearer.

This feature, along with the macro processor, and a well stocked database, can provide a user with a smartly choosen default dial plan immediately upon his selection of his provider, country and area code.

[floepie]

Thanks, Bob. I'm eager to try it out. Could you tell us which .NET redistribution pack is necessary to download? 2.0 or 1.1? Or, would either suffice?

[BSalita]

The software is compiled for 1.1 or later.

[floepie]

OK thanks. I'm a total newbie to this, but I've been active on the boards here in the last couple days and have learned a lot, but take my limited experience w/ a grain.

The app is very straightforward, but it evades me how to configure the 2 lines of the 3000 independent of one another. Changing one variable on one line changes the same in the other line.

I'd like to see the power of the 3000 unleashed as far as composing dial plans for gateways as well, unless I missed that. I suppose it would be relatively easy to insert the @gw0, etc. where needed.

I'm not too sure what the significance of the last default element is. It looks like it may be for all calls placed to The Netherlands? Interestingly enough, I need that b/c that's the only international destination I need!

Just a few observations I've made at this late hour, but a fantastic start! Thanks for your efforts.

[mailme@sekhar.net]

Its really a great effort! It would be nice to have the gateways as well

[BSalita]

1. flopie has found a bug. Upon selecting another line, its suppose to automatically load in the dial plan for that line, just as one would expect. It must be confusing to not see it work as one would expect. I see that it correctly display's each line's dial plans but just doesn't auto reload.

2. I found another bug with the selection of area codes for non-USA countries. If you select a non-USA country, selecting an area code will crash the app. I assume this is because the list of area codes is zero length for non-USA countries. The workaround, of course, is to not attempt to drop down the list of area codes for non-USA countries.

3. The default dial plan and subsequent list of dial elements are specified by the database's data. They were randomly thrown in for demo and test purposes. They are fine for playing with and learning about the program. After experimenting, hit the "Remove All Dial Plans" button and enter your real working dial plan. The databases need to be set up with reasonable default dial elements/plans for each country, area code and provider and line. Until that happens, the defaults won't be proper. I'm hoping someone volunteers to make the databases behave more reasonably as I must move on to my contract work.

4. mailme@sekhar.net, are you requesting that gw1, gw2, gw3 be added for the SPA3000? If so, this is a database issue. If they are added to the .MDB file's SPA-3000 table, they will automatically show up in the application's grid. The .MDB file is a Microsoft Access file that contains the application's data. The data is structured into various tables. There are tables for each device. Within each device's table, there is a row of data for each line.

I'm actually a newbie myself so I don't really understand all that is important for dial plans, Sipura device setup and what the defaults should be. While I have a SPA-2100, I've done only the minimal configuration. This is why some defaults may look goofy.

My goal is to supply a tool that, given help from others, will become very powerful and useful.

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming!

[BSalita]

Feedback is telling me that I need to show a more sensible dial plan when the wiz first starts up. Can someone propose what this should be?

[floepie]

Just off the top of my head, would it possible to have a drop down next to each element whereby the user would be able to select which gateway intended for that call? This option would have to be grayed out for those units that don't support such a feature. This way, the user could compose each element, such that when all are combined, they would result in *all* allowable calls from the handset. For most users then the elements would remain relatively permanent. When one then decides to change which elements are routed to which gateway, the user would then be able to keep the element intact and simply use that drop down to reselect another gateway and the dial plan would then be adjusted automatically.

I think including such general elements in the wiz such as xx.|*xx.|**xx. as well as all international (011xxxxxx.) would be a good idea and further, it might be nice to add them in a permanent way such that they can be selected or deselected. That way, the most general of dial plans can never be removed, but they can only be deselected. The manually configured ones would fall underneath the more permanent ones, and they could then be fully deleted from the UI. Also, it may be more user friendly for those that are new to dial plans to add a small description in () as to what "xx." actually means.

BTW, xx. is "at least one digit", so when xx. is present as an element, having 1 'x' under column 1 would suffice. As of now, there is also an 'x' under column 2.

Would it be possible to have a button that reads "add element" so that new elements do not have to be added to the dial plan string? This may be a way to add a general description of what needs to be added for the newbie in the form a drop down as well.

I don't know the first thing about programming, so I'm not sure much of the above could be implemented w/o a good amount of hassle.

[BSalita]

A Sipura support web page mentions a US dial plan of

(011,xx. | *xx | [3469]11 | 0 | 00 | <:1+area code+>[2-9]xxxxxx | 1[2-9]xx[2-9]xxxxxx)

perhaps this should be the default plan for the US.

Note that +area code+ is a builtin macro that is automatically replaced by the selected area code. I've added more info to the first message of this topic regarding the macro feature.

[BSalita]

I've found a third bug. This is serious. The dial element [3469]11 is being parsed and de-parsed as [46] so 311 and 911 disappear. I'll fix this and the other two bugs mentioned above around Monday.