Phone number parsing - workarounds?

General
#1

Hi,
I’m trying to store a (admittedly) weird phone number. Reason: separate outgoing numbers for business/private with existing equipment.
Goal is: reach my FritzBox de-anonymized, initiate a call-through, tell the FritzBox to publish my
outgoing number, and then call the contact.
Basically it’s working fine when I dial most of this manually.
I need, in this order:

  • *31# to publish my own number to the FritzBox
  • +49 international code
  • 1234567890 the number of my landline
  • a pause
  • 1234 a pin code for the call-through function
  • a second pause
  • either a 0 when calling anonymous OR #31# to publish my landline number (preferred)
  • the contacts number with or without international code.

The sequence up to past the pin code is working fine as usual:
*31#+491234567890p1234p → is okay
I can then manually type in #31#, get a signal and can dial my contacts number anyhow.
Also working fine: the anonymous variant and no special characters:
+31#+491234567890p1234p0p012349876654321 → is okay, can be stored in contacts and can be called, but as “anonymous”, because of the missing “#31#” for the fritzbox.
International notation fails with “invalid phone number”:
+31#+491234567890p1234p0p+4912349876654321 → doesn’t work because of the “+”.
Even worse:
+31#+491234567890p1234p#31# → is misinterpreted as service request and doesn’t even open the regular phone screen.

So, I could reach my goal if the phone would allow me to store and dial whatever I want. But it won’t.

Why is it necessary to parse and check a number? Is there any workaround, any string to tell the phone NOT to check the number first?

#2

You should open a bugreport about this. You can use Buggr from Chum to fill the bugreport template.

#3

I just found out I can mask the #31# by writing \#31\# and at least this part is working without calling a net service. The second plus sign however is forbidden, but I can replace it with the “original” int’l prefix or just zero (because my landline will stay in Germany for sure).
So a valid, storeable contact number now will be
*31#+491234567890p1234p\#31\#0123456789
which can’t be written into the phone number field but at least pasted or generated by my nextcloud instance.

Personally I don’t think that a bug report is constructive. The parsing of elements of the dialled number as commands or replacements is more useful than my absurdly strange needs nobody else asks for.

#4

Have you tried using the terminal to call this number? If this works you could make a script and a desktop icon. Maybe this helps:

#5

No, didn’t try, but thought about it. Thx.
But in the end it’s not just one number, but a whole group of (future) business contacts. It’s simpler to store the numbers along with the contacts.

#6

There should be a message in the log/journal like

     VoiceCallManager::onError message

after you get the “invalid number” from voicecall-ui. Does that say anything useful?

#7

You could also try to comment lines 544 and 545 in /usr/share/voicecall-ui-jolla/VoiceCallManager.qml

540             } else if (message.indexOf("Error.Cancelled") !== -1) {
541                 // Don't show notification, notification already published in main when the
542                 // state first changed to disconnected/null.
543                 needsPublish = false
544             } else if (message.indexOf("Error.InvalidHandle") !== -1) {
545                 root.error = qsTrId("voicecall-la-invalid-number")
546             } else {
547                 root.error = qsTrId("voicecall-la-generic-error")
548             }

Just for testing though.

EDIT: forget that, it will just suppress the message, not the fact that an error happened.