Page 171 - Asterisk™: The Future of Telephony

When we include other contexts within our current context, we have to be mindful of
the order in which we are including them. Asterisk will first try to match the dialed
extension in the current context. If unsuccessful, it will then try the first included con-
text (including any contexts included in that context), and then continue to the other
included contexts in the order in which they were included.
As it sits, our current dialplan has two contexts for outbound calls, but there’s no way
for people in the [employees] context to use them. Let’s remedy that by including the
two outbound contexts in the [employees] context, like this:
[globals]
JOHN=Zap/1
JANE=SIP/Jane
OUTBOUNDTRUNK=Zap/4
[incoming]
exten => 123,1,Answer()
exten => 123,n,Background(enter-ext-of-person)
exten => 123,n,WaitExten()
exten => 1,1,Dial(${JOHN},10)
exten => 1,n,Playback(vm-nobodyavail)
exten => 1,n,Hangup()
exten => 2,1,Dial(${JANE},10)
exten => 2,n,Playback(vm-nobodyavail)
exten => 2,n,Hangup()
exten => i,1,Playback(pbx-invalid)
exten => i,n,Goto(incoming,123,1)

exten => t,1,Playback(vm-goodbye)
exten => t,n,Hangup()
[employees]
include => outbound-local
include => outbound-long-distance
exten => 101,1,Dial(${JOHN})
exten => john,1,Dial(${JOHN})
exten => 102,1,Dial(${JANE})
exten => jane,1,Dial(${JANE})
[outbound-local]
exten => _9NXXXXXX,1,Dial(${OUTBOUNDTRUNK}/${EXTEN:1})
exten => _9NXXXXXX,n,Congestion()
exten => _9NXXXXXX,n,Hangup()
exten => 911,1,Dial(${OUTBOUNDTRUNK}/911)
exten => 9911,1,Dial(${OUTBOUNDTRUNK}/911)

[outbound-long-distance]
exten => _91NXXNXXXXXX,1,Dial(${OUTBOUNDTRUNK}/${EXTEN:1})

Building an Interactive Dialplan | 143