Lync Voice Routing

Configuration of voice routing in Lync involves a combination of what Microsoft refers to as dial plans, voice policies, PSTN usages, routes, and trunks. This section covers the fundamental concepts of these objects and how they all interact so that users can make phone calls from Lync. Any Lync voice administrator should have a solid understanding of these items in order to properly configure Lync Enterprise Voice.

All voice routing in Lync is based on the international standard E.164 format for phone numbers. E.164-formatted numbers start with a + sign and are followed by a country code, and the remainder of the number varies depending on the country. For example, an E.164-formatted number in the United States consists of the + sign followed by the North American prefix, 1, a three-digit area code, and seven additional digits. A fictional sample number usually written as (234) 567-8901 within the United States formatted for E.164 is written as +12345678901.

Lync dial plans, routes, and trunk translation rules use regular expression patterns to offer a degree of flexibility rarely found in PBX systems. Regular expressions, or regex for short, are a special text syntax that can be used to identify a pattern. There are entire books on regular expressions, but for Lync’s purpose it allows admins to easily identify specific number patterns. Lync voice administrators should become familiar with basic regular expression syntax before configuring Enterprise Voice.