What is a routing code?

What a routing code is

A routing code (in English, a feature code, and because many of them start with a star, also a star code) is a short number you dial from within the PBX, and instead of reaching a person's extension, you reach a destination or an action: a queue, a voicemail box, a menu, a conference room, a recorded message.

You can think of it this way: an extension is the internal number of a person or a device. A routing code is the internal number of a service. Whoever dials it isn't looking for a specific person, but wants something to happen.

The difference from speed dial: speed dial translates a code into an outside phone number. A routing code leads to a destination inside the PBX itself.

Usage examples

• Joining and leaving a queue — an agent dials a code at the start of the shift and begins receiving calls from the queue, and dials another code when leaving for a break.
• Listening to the voicemail box — one code that leads to the box, and from there you hear messages.
• A conference room — a code that takes you straight into the team's conference room.
• A recorded message — a code that plays the current message, for example to check what customers hear.
• An internal menu — a code that leads to a menu intended only for staff.

Not every PBX supports every action, and the codes themselves vary from system to system. What almost always exists: a code for the voicemail box and codes for joining and leaving a queue.

How it works behind the scenes

1. The employee dials a code from their extension.
2. The PBX checks the sequence: is it an extension number? A speed dial? An outside number? Or a routing code?
3. If it's a routing code, the PBX activates whatever was defined for it — just as a phone number leads to a destination.
4. In flexible PBXs, a code also has its own rules: one destination during business hours and another outside them, or a different destination depending on who is dialing.

The last point is important: in an advanced PBX, a routing code behaves almost like an internal phone number. You can apply time-based routing and caller-based routing to it, and change its destination without any employee having to learn a new code.

Routing code, star number and speed dial

The confusion between the terms is common, because they are all "short numbers". The difference is who can dial them and where they lead. A star number is a public number that anyone can dial, and it reaches the organization from outside. A routing code and speed dial are internal to the organization.

Real-life examples

A service center. An agent arrives in the morning, dials the queue login code, and starts receiving calls. She leaves for a break — dials the logout code, and calls go to the other agents.

A yeshiva. The dormitory staff dial a code that plays the message parents hear during seder, to make sure it is up to date. At the end of the session, another code leads to the dormitory's voicemail box.

A nonprofit. One code leads to the board's conference room. At the weekly meeting everyone dials it from their extension, from home or from a mobile.

Tips

• Fixed codes — people get used to a code. When you want to change a destination, change the destination and not the code.
• Don't collide with extension numbers and speed dials. A separate range or a star at the beginning solves this.
• A code sheet for each employee, with only the codes relevant to them.
• Test outside of hours — if a code has time-based routing, dial it in the evening too and see that it reaches the right place.

Agent cheat sheet: a sample list of codes

The codes themselves are not uniform: each organization sets its own, so there is no "universal code" for joining a queue. What is uniform is the type of actions. The table shows a typical list for a small service center, as printed next to the agents' desks. Replace the digits with your own; the third column is worth keeping as it is.

Two notes on the table. The pair *50 and *51 is given as general background: many phone systems have a code to turn forwarding on and off, but the exact mechanism differs between systems, and in some it is done from the handset or the control panel rather than with a code. And the star at the start of the codes is a convenient convention, not a requirement: it makes sure no code collides with an extension number or a speed dial.

One working day, four codes

8:55, joining the queue. An agent at a gemach fund's call center arrives at her desk, picks up the handset and dials *20. She hears a short confirmation, and from that moment the queue counts her as an available agent. No manager needs to mark her on a screen: the code did it from the phone itself. In the control panel, on the Queues screen, she now appears in the list of logged-in agents.

9:00, voicemail. The message light is on. *10 goes straight to her extension's box, with no need to dial a box number, because the PBX knows which extension the code came from. Two messages from overnight, both already sent to her email as audio files, but from the phone it is faster between calls.

11:30, team meeting. The manager invited everyone to the conference room. The women in the office dial *30, and whoever works from home dials the same code from the app. Everyone enters the same room, with no outside number and no long access code, because the code already leads to that specific room. Someone calling from outside, by contrast, arrives through the phone number and dials the room code.

1:00, break. *21 before she gets up from her chair. This is the code people forget most, and it is the most important: an agent who left without dialing it keeps being counted as available, the queue sends calls to her, and the customer hears a long ring on an empty desk. At 1:30 she returns and dials *20 again.

4:45, checking the greeting. Tomorrow is the eve of a holiday. The manager replaced the closing greeting, and dials *40 to hear exactly what a caller will hear. She hears the old greeting: the new file was uploaded, but it was not selected in the greeting settings. Ten seconds of checking saved a whole holiday eve of the wrong message.

Routing code versus time-based and caller-based routing

We already said that a routing code behaves like an internal phone number. It is worth understanding what that means in practice, because this is where most of the tool's power lies. A phone number has three layers of decision: first it checks who is calling (caller-based routing), then what time it is (time-based routing), and if no rule applied, it goes to the default destination. A routing code has exactly the same three layers.

By time. The code *11 for the general box can lead to the box during working hours, and after hours to an internal menu that also lets the caller leave a message for the person on duty. One code, different behavior depending on the time group, and no employee has to remember two codes. The most practical example: a code that plays "the current greeting" plays the opening greeting during the day and the closing greeting in the evening, because it simply follows the same time group the main number uses.

By caller. Here "the caller" is the extension that dialed the code. The same *20 can put an agent into the sales queue if it is dialed from desks 101 to 110, and into the service queue if it is dialed from 111 to 120. Or: the conference code takes the manager to the room with admin permissions, and everyone else to the same room as listeners. Fewer codes to learn, fewer mistakes.

The real advantage shows when something changes. Did the call center move to summer hours? You update the time group in one place, and the main number and the codes change together. Opened a new queue? You add a caller-based rule, and the agents keep dialing what they dialed yesterday. On the Call Flow screen you can see this chain as a diagram and check which rule wins, before someone finds out on a real call.

Common mistakes

• A code that leads to a queue instead of joining it. There is a difference between "calling the queue" (entering as a waiting caller, like a customer) and "logging in to the queue" (becoming an agent). The two codes look similar in the setup, and an agent who dials the first one hears hold music and wonders why nobody is answering.
• A forgotten logout code. The sign: customers complain about long ringing with no answer, and the Queues screen shows an "available" agent who went home. The partial fix: a manager removes her from the control panel. The real fix: tie the logout code to the end-of-shift procedure.
• Time-based routing tested only during the day. The code works fine at 10 a.m., and on Motzei Shabbat it leads to a destination nobody intended. Every code with a time group should be tested in every time window in the group.
• Replacing the code instead of the destination. You want the conference to move to a different room, so you define a new code. Now there are two codes, an old cheat sheet, and half the team in the wrong room. Change the destination, and the code stays.
• A code without a star in the extension range. 200 is both a voicemail code and an extension at the new branch, and one of them will quietly win.
• One cheat sheet for everyone. An agent does not need the emergency greeting code, and a manager does not need the code for joining the sales queue. A sheet per role prevents curious key presses.

When it doesn't work: symptom, cause, fix

A rule of thumb for diagnosis: first check which extension the code was dialed from, then at what time. These two facts, together with the call log that shows where the call actually went, explain almost every case.