Some locales prefer to provide users with secondary dial tone once they have started dialing external calls. This dial tone is heard by the user until they have completed dialing and a trunk is seized at which point call progress tones are provided by the trunk, or camp on/busy tone is provided by the system if the required trunk cannot be seized.

Release 4.0 and Higher

The use of secondary dial tone is provided through the Secondary Dial Tone check box option on the ARS form to which the call is routed. When on, this setting instructs the system to play secondary dial tone to the user.

The tone used is set as either System Tone (normal dial tone) or Network Tone (secondary dial tone). Both tone types are generated by the system in accordance with the system specific locale setting. Note that in some locales normal dial tone and secondary dial tone are the same.

When Secondary Dial Tone is selected, the ARS form will return tone until it receives digits with which it can begin short code matching. Those digits can be the result of user dialing or digits passed by the short code which invoked the ARS form. For example with the following system short codes:

In this example, the 9 is stripped from the dialed number and is not part of the telephone number passed to the ARS form. So in this case secondary dial tone is given until the user dials another digit or dialing times out.

In this example, the dialed 9 is included in the telephone number passed to the ARS form. This will inhibit the use of secondary dial tone even if secondary dial tone is selected on the ARS form.

Pre-4.0 IP Office Secondary Dial Tone

Pre-4.0 systems provided dial tone through the use of the short code feature Secondary Dial Tone and the [ ] special characters. For example, on a system where 9 is used as a prefix for external dialing, the system short code 9/./Secondary Dial Tone/0 will trigger secondary dial tone when users dial a number prefixed with 9. This method is not supported by Release 4.0 which provides ARS forms for the control of outgoing calls.

In order to allow further digit matching, the digits dialed are put back through short code matching against any short codes that start with [n] where n is the digit used to trigger the system secondary dial tone short code.

On all systems where secondary dial tone is used, a ; should also be used in dialing short codes that contain N.  

For example:

System Short Codes

User Short Code

[9]0N;/Busy/0

The user dials 90114445551234. The 9 is matches the system secondary dial tone short code and unlike other short codes this is applied immediately. The user's dialing is put through short code matching again using the normal order of precedence but matched to possible short codes beginning [9]. In this case the user's [9]0N; short code would take precedence over the system [9]0N; short code.