What Unavailable Dialplan Forward does on a VICIdial phone

Every VICIdial phone entry has a field called Unavailable Dialplan Forward. It is blank by default, and most people never touch it. But it changes one specific thing: where a call goes when the phone rings and nobody picks up.

Normally, an unanswered call rolls into the phone's voicemail box. Unavailable Dialplan Forward overrides that. When the field holds a value, the unanswered call is sent to a Dialplan extension instead. Voicemail is skipped entirely.

What the field actually does

If Unavailable Dialplan Forward is populated, any call sent to this phone that goes unanswered is forwarded to the Extension you enter. The number you put here must exist in the dialplan on your Asterisk server, the same way a regular dial plan number does. If it isn't a real extension, the forwarded call has nowhere to land.

A common use is sending unanswered desk calls to a shared queue, a receptionist line, or an IVR (interactive voice response) menu so a missed call still reaches a human instead of sitting in a mailbox.

How the call decides where to go

flowchart TD
  A[Call rings the phone] --> B{Answered}
  B -->|Yes| C[Agent talks]
  B -->|No, times out| D{Unavailable Dialplan Forward set}
  D -->|Empty| E[Goes to voicemail box]
  D -->|Has a value| F[Forward to that extension]
  F --> G{Context entered}
  G -->|Blank| H[Default context]
  G -->|Named| I[That context]

The context gotcha

You can enter just an extension number, or an extension plus a context. If you leave the context blank, the call is routed to that extension at the default context. If your forward target lives in a different context, you have to name it, or the call lands in the wrong place or fails outright.

This field sits near the voicemail settings on the phone entry, so it is easy to confuse with them. For the bigger picture of how phone entries fit together, read the VICIdial phones and aliases guide. If you are still deciding what a dialplan number is in the first place, see what the VICIdial dialplan number is.

VICIfast provisions a secure VICIdial server in under a minute so these phone fields are ready to configure on day one. See pricing.