Plans

Plans enable you to predefine where calls will be delivered in any given scenario. You can change the active call plan at any time via the Smartnumbers Hub web portal, enabling the organisation to adapt appropriately as events develop.

For example, if staff are denied access to the premises, calls may be diverted to an announcement service while staff relocate. When staff are available a new plan can be activated to deliver calls to their new place of work.

Plans can also be used to mitigate the risks of communication infrastructure change projects, for example, migration to SIP. Separate call plans can be created for each phase of migration, enabling you to direct calls across to new destination numbers in stages, and easily roll back to a previous state if call failures are detected.

Plans can be given a recognisable name and description to make it clear which plan should be activated for a given scenario.

Creating a plan allows you to pick which routes in your Control service should be delivered to when the plan is active. Each plan must have at least one route specified, with up to three routes being available.

The primary route is tried first, followed by the secondary route and tertiary route in case the call cannot be delivered due to one of the reasons for rerouting you have configured. If the tertiary route also fails, the call ends.

To see the plans you have currently set up for your routing service, click Plans in your left-hand navigation, or press the View plans button at the top right of the routing service page. The currently active plan is marked in blue in the table of Plans:

Creating, editing and deleting plans

You can create up to 9 plans at any time by clicking on the Add plan button on the Plans page of your routing service. 

When you upload a set of numbers and routes or use inline editing to update routes in a brand new Control service and there is no active plan, you will be prompted to create your first plan. Route 1 will be automatically set as the default route, but you can update that and add a secondary or tertiary failover route if you wish.

• Click 'Save' and then the numbers will be validated to ensure that there are no errors that may prevent calls from being delivered
• If no errors are found, you will be asked to confirm before the changes are reflected in your live Control service. After confirming, the changes will be applied over the course of a few minutes with no downtime.
• If any validation errors are found, please correct them in the spreadsheet and re-import the document using the steps above.

You can create additional plans to cover up to 9 call routing cases that can cover various business and disaster recovery scenarios.

You can also edit existing plans by clicking the three-dot menu next to the plan activation button on your service’s Plans page. Any changes made will be instant.

Plans that are currently not active can be deleted by clicking the three-dot menu and selecting Delete plan:

Activating a plan

To activate a plan, you can simply go to the routing service page and click “Change plan” if you have the relevant permissions. Using the dropdown, pick the plan you would like to activate, click Next, and confirm your choice.

You can also activate plans directly from the Plans page in your routing service by clicking Activate next to the plan you wish to make active.

When your plan has been activated, the Control service will immediately start routing calls according to the primary, secondary (if any), and tertiary (if any) routes set up in the plan.

Smartnumbers Control is optimised for mobile devices, allowing you to easily and securely invoke plans if you are unable to access a computer.

We recommend that you bookmark the pages for the Control services you are responsible for in your mobile browser, so that you can easily access them on the go wherever you have internet access.

You can also change the active plan by dialling an automated telephone number. Please note that this is an optional feature that must be enabled for your Control service. If you wish to enable this feature, please contact the Smartnumbers Support team at support@smartnumbers.com.