Caller IDs

• Overview
• Caller ID for outbound calls to telephone numbers
• Caller ID for outbound calls to SIP addresses, local inbound services and WebRTC clients

Overview

A Caller ID is the calling number presented to the person you're calling.

Outbound calls made using Aculab's Outbound Call Providers must specify a validated Caller ID as their calling number. Outbound calls placed through your own call providers may have different restrictions on using validated Caller IDs.

For REST outbound applications, the Caller ID is specified using the from property of the JSON object supplied when starting the service.

Aculab Cloud maintains a list of Caller IDs on your account (you can set this in the Cloud Console's Settings / Caller IDs page) that have been validated to ensure they are genuine and accessible by you. All inbound telephone numbers purchased on your account will be added automatically to this list. The validation process calls the number and displays a PIN code which then needs to be entered on the call.

In order to ensure appropriate use of the Caller ID, the value you provide is checked and, if necessary, modified before the outbound call is placed.

Caller ID for outbound calls to telephone numbers

For regular outbound calls, the caller ID should be a full international number without the leading '+' or '0' - for example '441908273800' for Aculab's UK Headquarters. It is an error for the caller ID to be empty in this case.

For REST connect actions and UAS transfer calls, the caller ID is usually left empty and, in that case, the caller ID of the outgoing call will be that of the original call if it was incoming, or its dialled number if it was outgoing. However, if the resulting caller ID is not a valid number - for example if the original inbound call was not from the telephone network and had a caller ID of bob@1.2.3.4 - the transfer attempt will fail since telephony caller IDs must be valid E.164 numbers. If the caller ID is populated then it is handled as for regular outbound calls.

In order to ensure appropriate use of Aculab's outbound telephony providers, for all outbound telephone calls placed through them with a populated caller ID, we check that it's one of the following and will fail call attempts where it isn't:

• in your list of validated Caller ID numbers
• one of your inbound numbers purchased through Aculab Cloud
• the full international number taken from caller ID of the latest primary call if that call is incoming
• the full international number taken from the call_to of the latest primary call if that call is outgoing

Caller ID for outbound calls to SIP addresses, local inbound services and WebRTC clients

For regular outbound calls, the caller ID should be a SIP username - for example 'manage_account'. If the caller ID also contains an address - for example 'manage_account@1.2.3.4' - the '@' and all characters to its right are ignored. If the caller ID is empty, the default SIP username 'aculabcloud' is used.

For REST connect actions and UAS transfer calls, caller ID is usually left empty and, in that case, the caller ID of the outgoing call will be that of the original call if it was incoming, or its dialled number if it was outgoing. If the resulting caller ID remains empty, the default SIP username 'aculabcloud' is used. If the caller ID is populated then it is handled as for regular outbound calls.

When the call is placed, the address of the Cloud is appended to the caller ID. So, for example, on the EU Cloud, a call with a caller ID of 'manage_account', will result in a call being placed from sip:manage_account@sip-0-2-0.aculab.com