[asterisk-users] Dialplan strategy suggestions needed

[Myles Wakeham]

I have a new Asterisk system going into production next week and I'm a 
bit stumped as to the best way to handle the Dialplans for it.

The Asterisk system is replacing 4 separate PSTN lines with both SIP & 
PSTN inputs.  The setting up of the dial plan is giving me some design 
headaches, which probably means I'm missing something obvious and doing 
this the hard way.

I have separate entire phone 'systems' for each incoming DID.  For 
example, this one system will handle 4 separate incoming DIDs.  The 
first (let's call it Company A) takes a call, plays a menu, gets input 
from the caller, directs them to the appropriate extension (ie. Press 1 
for sales, 2 for support, etc.).

The second DID has a similar setup with a menu, but its for an entirely 
different company.  The incoming extension number I'm getting for this 
will be entirely different, therefore will be the definition of this 
phone menu structure.

The others are simply numbers that go through a 'Time of Day' check and 
then simply forward to an extension.

I have it all working fine by using:

extern => 2125551111,1,.....
extern => 2125551111,2,.....

etc. for the first number, and then a second set for the second number like:

extern => 2125551112,1,.....
extern => 2125551112,2,.....


The problem is when I get to the Background() command to play the sound 
file and get the input from the user for the menu.  Since the input from 
the user becomes the extension, I then have a problem that my 
multi-faceted dialplan now gets confused with what extension applies to 
what menu, etc.

I need to be able separate these into their own sections so that 
extensions won't conflict but I'm not sure how to do this.  All the 
calls are coming in from one SIP provider, so I have only one context 
that I'm using because of that.  I'm not sure if there is a way to 
create separate contexts for this and branch to them?

I must be approaching this wrong.  Can anyone point me in the right 
direction so I create something that is manageable for the future and 
won't have conflicts on user inputs between the systems?

Thanks
Myles