Filter

Written by Filter. Last updated: December 31, 2020

With a filter in your dial plan you can decide what happens with an incoming call based on the telephone number. This way you can send all numbers from, for example, England to your colleague that is fluent in English. You can make a filter for a specific number, a group of numbers, or part of a number (for instance +33 or +31 If you want to filter calls from France or the Netherlands).

Making a Filter group

• Log into Freedom.
• Click on Admin in the menu bar.
• Click on Add.
• Choose the type of filter. You can choose between telephone numbers or anonymous calls.
• Give the filter group a Name and Description.
• Add the (parts of) telephone numbers that you want to add to the filter group. The must always be in the following format:
  +(countrycode)(areacode)(therestofthenumber) – so +4930123456. Don’t add any hypens, parentheses, or spaces to the number.
• Click Save when you have added all the desired numbers.

Adding your Filter to the dial plan

• Choose the phone number where you want to place the filter group.
• Choose the filter group as the first step. This will open two options: “ Meets conditions” and “doesn’t meet conditions”.
• Be aware: If there are already steps in your dial plan and you want to add a Filter above them, look where you want to move the other steps to. Choose ‘move the subsequent steps to “meets conditions” ‘ if you want to place the steps within the filter. If you want to move the steps outside the filter then select ‘move subsequent steps to “doesn’t meet conditions”. Then slick on save.
  Under “meets conditions” fill in what should happen when someone calls from a number that is in the Filter group.
  Under “Doesn’t meet conditions”, fill in what should happen if someone calls with a number that is not in the filter group or with an anonymous number.

Be aware: A variable callername must always be under or in the filter group. If you set the variable callername above the filter group, the filter won’t work anymore.

Tips for the filter group

• Peter usually calls for John and he needs to be transferred every time, it costs a lot of time. You can make a filter group with Peter’s number in it and then have this filter group ring straight through to John.
• If you are regularly called by people from a specific country, you can make a filter group that contains the country code of that country and send those calls directly to the colleague(s) that speak that language. You can even add a voicemail in that language if no one answers that can help this group.
• If you are being bothered or harassed by a person or business, add that number to a filter group. Under “meets conditions”, leave an empty step, which will cause the connection to be broken. This way you don’t have to spend more time dealing with the call.