mitel250,
Nice name by the way.
Anyway, someone really has your system messed up if 9911 is the only way 911 works on your system.
By default, 911 is a feature code called Emergency Call. You can look this up for yourself at System > Devices and Feature Codes > Feature Codes > Emergency Call.
When 911 is dialed from an extension on the system it will use the Emergency Extension Route programmed on the extension, default is Trunk Group 92001. You can look this for yourself at System > Devices and Feature Codes > Phones > {extension} > Associated Extensions > Emergency Extension.
I typically set this for Automatic Route Selection [ARS] which is 92000 by default. You can look this up for yourself at System > Devices and Feature Codes > Feature Codes > Automatic Route Selection.
If it is set for ARS, then it will try to use the trunks in ARS Route 1 unless you created a specific Route for it. You can look this up for yourself at System > Numbering Plan > Route Groups. By default, you will find the following Route Groups.
P1000 1 Local [Dial Pattern: N+][Facility Group P1500: Local]
P1003 2 Toll - Local
P1011 3 Toll - Long Distance
P1013 4 Operator
P1014 5 Internat'l-Station
P1015 6 Internat'l-Operator
Since P1000 is set to Order 1 which is the first Route Group 911 will check, really the only one it will check. It will see the N+ which means any number that starts with the number 2 thru 9 and any number of digits after that, which 911 matches with.
Since by default it matches with P1000 it would go to Facility Group P1500 unless that has been changed. If you look at Facility Group P1500 you will see that uses the following dial rules.
3 Echo 3 Digits After Toll Field
4 Echo Local Address
Since there isn't a Toll used it will follow 4 Echo Local Address or in other words it will send 911. The Trunk it goes out of will be what the Facility Group shows as the First Trunk Group in the List, which by default is 92001.
So, for you to state that you can only dial 9911 to make a 911 call means that someone has made some major changes to your system, and they didn't have a clue as to what they were really doing.
For just 9911 to work it doesn't use the Emergency Call Feature but treats the call as a normal Outgoing Call which uses the Outgoing Extension under Associated Extensions instead of the Emergency Extension. It recognizes it as an Emergency Call due to 911 being configured as the first Emergency Number by default. You can see this for yourself at System > Numbering Plan > Emergency > Emergency Numbers. It will also follow what the Outgoing Extension is set for on the extension that dialed it which by default is 92001, but it could also be set to ARS, which is 92000 by default, see above.
It also seems to me that they started your system as a dial 9 instead of leaving it as a dial 8 which is sort of odd, but there may have been a reason for it. When the systems were first created by Inter-Tel a long time ago, they were configured by default to use 8 as the Outgoing digit so changing it to 9 was a big change. Later on, they allowed the system programmer to create the default to use dial 9, but most VARS stuck with the 8 unless there was a really big reason not to, which typically there wasn't.
You can see what your outgoing feature code is set to by going to System > Devices and Feature Codes > Feature Codes > Outgoing Calls and my guess is that it is set to 9 and all of the 9xxx(x) feature codes start with an 8 now.
So, you have some work to do, but if you have any questions, you can always press F1 on the screen you are on or you can post another question.
Thanks,
TE
