Direct Inward Dialing

In traditional telecommunications, Direct Inward Dialing (DID, or DDI in Europe) is the ability of a person outside an organization to call an internal PBX extension without going through an operator or intermediate interface of any kind.

When an outside caller dials a number within a specified DID range, the call goes directly to the associated user. Otherwise, the Genie prompts the caller to say the full name of the person or group, or enter an extension.

The DID feature allows callers who are not aware of Vocera or its features to contact users directly on their Vocera devices. DID extends the benefits of Vocera to telephone callers who do not necessarily even belong to the organization that is deploying Vocera.

Your PBX administrator may reserve one or more groups of DID (Direct Inward Dialing) extensions for Vocera users to use. When an outside caller dials a number within a specified DID range, the call goes directly to the device of the associated user. Otherwise, the Genie prompts the caller to say the full name of the person or group, or enter an extension.

To enable DID, your PBX administrator must reserve a range of DID numbers for Vocera to use, and you must identify that range to Vocera. Use the Telephony-DID Information section in the Add/Edit Facility page of the Web Console to specify the range of DID numbers reserved for Vocera.

Tip: The DID numbers that you specify must be 10-digit telephone numbers with area code in the US locale (or full numbers with city and region codes, in other locales).

If your PBX administrator provides the guest or direct access number as part of the DID range, enter it as the guest or direct access number in Vocera, but do not include it in the range of DID numbers that you configure on the DID information page. User and group profiles may be assigned the DID numbers that you specify in the Web Console, and you do not want a user or group to have the same extension as the guest or direct access number.

If an incoming call arrives on a number that is within the specified DID range, but the number is not assigned, Vocera automatically directs the call to the guest access Genie.

When multiple facilities are sharing a PBX, they also share the single pool of DID numbers that are enabled in the primary facility. You cannot distribute different ranges of DID numbers to individual facilities that share a PBX.

When multiple facilities are using different PBXs, each PBX may provide a different range of DID numbers or even none at all. The way each PBX is configured determines whether its associated facilities have access to DID.

Note: DID numbers may be more expensive and more difficult to obtain than other PBX extensions. You do not need to have a dedicated DID number for every user to receive some of their benefits.