Best practice for Route Filters in CCM 5.1

[Tommer Catlin]

Im going over a design from 4.1 to 5.1. We are rebuilding from scratch and looking at what has been done on the 4.1 server over the years. How valid are Route Filters and in what situations are they used best in? Seems to me that Route Patterns can take over most the work that needs to be routed. But Im trying to figure out if it is a requirement to use Route Filters or to just skip over them.

Thanks!

[shikamarunara]

It is not required to use route filters, but it is good practice if you are looking to streamline your patter list. Let's say you are implementing 10 digit dialing. If you have 5 or 6 six local area codes you can streamline these for the site by creating a single 9.@ route pattern and refer to a route filter that will contain all of the local area codes. Now imagine following this process for 20 sites. There is a lot of work to do to get even a single route pattern 9.@ for all 20 sites, but imagine how much more work it would be if you had to create a route pattern for every local area code for each of the 20 sites. Route filters take some getting used to but are WAY worth the time invested.

-Shikamaru

[r.stockton]

Just as another opinion, I find 9.@ and Route Filters to be combersome and harder to troubleshoot. While true, there may be less of them to configure, as far as readability and managing, I find just using Route Patterns to be more effective, easier to read and understand and a bit more in line with those of other PBX systems.

However, this is simply my opinion and I cannot offer a solid technical reasons to support said opinion :)