False 911 Calls

Bernece Johnson · ‎04-01-2010

Does anyone have a good way to decrease accidental 911 calls? We use 9 as our to reach an outside line and currently have 911 and 9911 route patterns created. I heard of a way to redirect the call momentarily to another number so that if 911 where dialed, it would get the hang-up and not the 911 operator. Has anyone had success in doing this.

Thanks

William Bell · ‎04-01-2010

I have seen two options put in play. One was to use the Attendant Console application (built-in) to "play a prompt" using the queuing mechanism. I believe they were sending the call to CER after playing the prompt, but I am not sure. I didn't bother mucking around with this approach because it just didn't seem like a good idea at the time. Given that Cisco was talking about killing AC, even back then (this was a few years ago).

The other approach is similar but uses Unity/Unity Connection instead. Calls go to a call handler, that plays a prompt and then transfers the caller. I am still not wild about this idea myself. It would work (911 is just a number like any other) but there are things to be careful of for sure. Not the least of which is ensuring that (a) you don't have a 911 call come it at a time when ports are 100% utilized and (b) that you have redundancy built into the overall solution. Which, using hunt lists with CFNA/CFB configs you could do this.

So, it is do-able but it is 911 so we have to be careful here.

I have also seen an organization change the off net access code from "9" to something else (8 seems to be a common option for some strange reason). That seems a bit extreme to me.

HTH.

Regards,

Bill

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HTH -Bill (b) http://ucguerrilla.com (t) @ucguerrilla

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Bernece Johnson · ‎04-01-2010

Bill,

Thanks for the insite. I will look into those options and see what I can come up with.

safety2008 · ‎04-02-2010

if you look in call manager, under route pattern for 9911

and 911. you can remove the urgent priority checkvbox,

if it is flagged. that way the call does not get routed right away and mistakes to 911

can be avoided.

David Hailey · ‎04-02-2010

While you can remove the urgent priority flag, it is actually recommended best practice to always set emergency patterns for urgent priority. Not required, but highly recommended.

Hailey

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Bernece Johnson · ‎04-05-2010

We currently do not have it set up for urgent priority, but still goes out directly to the 911 dispatch. I have a couple of things I am going to try and will post if they work.

CHRIS CHARLEBOIS · ‎04-05-2010

In my experience with 911 operators, they would much rather have several mistaken dialers who stay on the line and say that they misdialed than a single hangup. They have to respond and try to find out who called if the caller hangs up, including dispatching a squad car if they cannot get a response. Whereas, a misdial can be explained in 10 seconds. I think this is more an education issue than a technical one.

My point is, if you put in some sort of artifical delay, you may reduce the number of false 911 calls, maybe. But you are teaching your callers to hang up when the realize that they have mistakenly dialed 911, and that may not be the best response in that situation.

Bernece Johnson · ‎04-05-2010

That is true, but depending on the department, we still get them dispatching. We have been trying to educate the users for over a year to stay on the line, but since we a a banking institution, they are still dispatching in a lot of our locations. What ever we come up with will be a short term fix until we can adjust our dialing plan to use and 8 instead of a 9 for outbound calls. But since we are still in a hybrid environment this is not an option at this time.

snicklas · ‎08-25-2010

Before implementing CER, the route pattern 911 would not be marked urgent so the inter-digit timeout would come into play. Then another pattern of 911X would be set to reject the call. This would catch most of the mis-dialed calls to 911.

But now with CER installed, and it isn't that easy, because 911 is now a DN on a CTI route point. A DN can't play dial-tone, so a 911 translation pattern is required to play dial-tone when the user presses 9 to begin an external call to a non-911 number. Becaseu the TP is always set to urgent, 911X will never get matched. We average about 1 misdial a day.

I might look into the AC option.....

Chris Tolley · ‎08-25-2010

We changed to 8 for an outside line.

Before change we averaged 6 false 911 calls a month

After change we have had 1 in 4 months, and that one was the day after the change