Checking and Correcting Phone Numbers

When checking phone numbers (extensions), the Data Check is looking for situations where more than one entry in the database has been assigned the same phone extension.

This includes users, groups, or address book entries being assigned an extension that has been previously assigned to any other entity. All phone items found are flagged with High Severity. The Data Check checks the “Desk Phone or Extension” and “Vocera Extension” fields for users, and the “Vocera Extension” field for groups. Matching phones between different address book entries are not flagged.

You must change one of the duplicate phone numbers, or the first entity assigned an extension number will receive all calls for any entity assigned that number.

For example, the groups “Engineers” and “Facilities” (who share the same physical office) have both been assigned extension 6543, as has Tom Swift, the head engineer. If someone attempts to call Tom using extension 6543, the call may be routed to the Engineering group instead of his desk phone.

Desk extensions must be unique. If the users have actual desk phones, these numbers are already unique. If you are in an environment that does not have desk phones, extensions are used for paging callbacks, and still must be unique. For complete details, see the Desk Phone and Extensions discussion at About Users and Telephone Numbers.

There is one situation in which changing one of the matching extensions is not needed—when two different group names represent the same group; in other words, one group is a duplicate. In that case, you should remove the duplicate group (after consulting with its members) and consider creating the duplicate name as an Alternative Spoken Name of the surviving group.