Quite a few people have asked us why there isn't a simple GUI tool to do this. The most imporant word of the last sentence was "simple" - because there is a GUI tool for looking up DDI translations, but it's only real use we have found is to look up every possible programmed DDI in the system. It also only appears in some chosen later versions of Matworx.

So we'll stick to MOC mode programming in this post.

For those who don't know - DDIs (Direct Dial Inbound) is a single or range of phone numbers which are all on your ISDN circuit. An ISDN2 or ISDN30 circuit can have between 1 and unlimited telephone numbers attributed to it - and when someone dials one of these numbers, BT (or whoever your carrier is) will present the last few digits down the wire to your phone system. It's then up to the phone system to decide what to do with it. In the USA, it's often called DID (direct inward dialling).

The NEC 2000 IPS supports between 3 and 4 digits at the end of any DDI for programming. You use a seperate command to tell the system whether it needs to look at the last 3 or 4 digits.

Usage - Part 1

The first command for DDI programming is 76xx. The xx part of the command is the DDI plan you're looking at - which is 99% of the time DDI plan zero. So let's assume this and use the full command 7600.

The FD (first data) for command 7600 is the last few digits of the DDI you wish to look up - lets say for example the DDI 0207 111 1234 is the number we wish to scrutinise. If you had setup the IPS to look at the last four digits, then you'd type 1234 as your FD, if you setup the IPS to look at the last three digits, then you'd type 234 as your FD.

The SD (second data) for command 7600 This will read back to you either "NONE" or a 3 digit number. This number is essentially a table reference in between 000 and 999. The table is there inbetween the last bit of programming to give you the flexibility of pointing a DDI to one of four destinations, depending on whether the NEC 2000 IPS phone system is in Day, Night, Mode 1 or Mode 2. I digress!

You can change this SD to anything you desire, between 000 and 999 - just be aware that in the next section of this tutorial, we may find the number you chose is already being used. We'll set this to 100.

Usage - Part 2

The second command for DDI programming is one of four settings - 7601 for when the PBX is in day mode, 7602 for night, 7603 for Mode 1 and 7604 for Mode 2. You will almost always only use Day and Night (if that!).

So let's have a look at the Day mode for 100 (set in command 7600).

The command is 7601, followed by the FD of 100, which will return a second data of "None" or a number. This final number is the terminating destination of this DDI - it could be an extension, a virtual number, a queue or most things 'internal'. You cannot point a DDI directly to an outside number.

Problems / Solutions

Probably the biggest complaint with DDI programming in MOC is that there isn't a command to display the information in reverse. Example, if I have an extension 100 and want to know it's DDI, I can't simply look this up quickly. I have to trawl through all the whole table (in 7601,2,3,4 - 1000 numbers, potentially) looking to see if there are any matches.

If you're familar with the MACH Script Editor - then you can run a command in to lookup all DDIs which have been assigned. It takes a while but is useful in cutting away all the chaff.

There is a GUI for DDI translations in MATworX version 11 or higher.