Fix the Reserved Dialplan Number warning

If you set a phone's Dial Plan number and VICIdial shows a Reserved Dialplan Number warning, it means the number you chose is one that VICIdial already uses for its own internal features. A reserved number cannot be dialed to ring your phone, so the fix is simple: pick a different number that is not on the reserved list. This post explains what the warning means, which numbers are off-limits, and how to choose a safe value.

What the warning actually means

The Dial Plan number is the number you dial to make a phone ring, and it maps to an entry in the Dialplan on your Asterisk server. Some of those dialplan entries are already claimed by VICIdial for built-in functions. When you enter a number that collides with one of those, VICIdial flags it rather than letting you save a number that would never work. If you ignored the warning and saved anyway, dialing that number would trigger the internal feature instead of ringing your phone. The background on this field is in what the VICIdial dialplan number is.

Which numbers are reserved

There are two blocks to stay clear of:

• The 8159 through 8501 range, which covers numbers in the 8100s, 8300s, and 8500s that VICIdial uses for conferences and similar internal routing.
• The entire 138300 through 138399 range, a full block reserved for internal use.

These numbers power features like conference bridges and transfers under the hood. A Three-way call and an agent dropping into a MeetMe conference room both rely on this kind of internal dialplan routing, which is why those numbers cannot double as a phone's ring number.

How to pick a safe number

Choose a Dial Plan number outside both reserved blocks, then re-save the phone. The flow below shows the check.

flowchart TD
  A[Enter a Dial Plan number] --> B{In 8159 to 8501}
  B -->|Yes| F[Pick a different number]
  B -->|No| C{In 138300 to 138399}
  C -->|Yes| F
  C -->|No| D[Save the phone]
  F --> A

Run your candidate through both gates. If it lands inside either reserved block, the warning fires and you loop back to pick another. A number outside both blocks saves cleanly and will actually ring the phone.

In practice, pick a numbering scheme that lives well away from those ranges from the start, so you never bump into the warning. A consistent low or mid range for your physical phones keeps things tidy and avoids collisions with the internal blocks. For example, numbering your desk phones from 100 upward, or in the 1000s, keeps you far clear of both 8159 to 8501 and the 138300 block while still leaving room to grow.

Do not just ignore the warning

It can be tempting to save the phone anyway and hope for the best, but a reserved number genuinely will not ring the phone. The conference, transfer, or other internal feature that owns that number wins the routing decision, so dialing it triggers that feature instead of your device. There is no workaround that keeps the reserved number and also rings the phone; the only real fix is a different number. Treat the warning as a hard stop, not a suggestion.

After you fix it

Once you save a valid number, the phone is dialable from the dialplan and the warning is gone. Remember this is separate from the phone extension, which is the device's name and not what you dial; the VICIdial phones pillar guide keeps all these fields straight on one page.

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