Entering Pauses into Shortcodes

Technical Administration
#1

Hi all,

We’re having some trouble getting pauses to work within our short codes or the speed dials in the phonebooks.

We have some shortcodes already programmed into our system which work correctly. We’d like to the dial that shortcode to reach the pager system, and then make two predetermined choices of responses depending on the shortcode.

I’ve tried to save various characters into the field but it keeps saying “Values modified, please check and re-submit” and I can’t get them to save.

For Example:

602,23,01

I’ve tried all the characters I can find as listed in Asterisk manuals for pauses:

p
w
,
.
;

I have limited access to the CLI and we need this to be easily editable, so preferably would like a fix using the GUI but CLI if necessary.

Any advice if this is possible would be great. Thanks.

#2

I don’t think you are going to be able to achieve what you are looking to do using shortcodes as they don’t analogue dial. Shortcodes can only be numbers that are passed on as the called number on the SIP or ISDN trunk protocol and at that point the audio isn’t up so pauses and DTMF characters have no meaning.

The form rejects illegal input in this context, but as a convenience re-writes the input without the punctuation for you before it will allow you to submit.

The only way that I can think of to achieve what you want is to maybe use the Javascript API to dial the pager number and then send DTMF, but that is pretty arcane and can’t be triggered from a normal handset call.

#3

Hi Rob,

Thanks for coming back to me.

That is a shame. We were promised by your reseller this system could work with the pager system in the desired fashion.

Huge shame to hear that it’s not really possible in any easy fashion.

Thanks though