Dynamic E911 with Geolocation Support User Guide

Introduction

The Emergency E911 feature includes Geolocation, a location URL record transmitted during an emergency call. This feature is available for US users and requires proper configuration and support from your provider. When an extension dials an emergency number, 3CX will add the pre-assigned E911 geolocation URL to the emergency notification, along with any other relevant data. This will inform emergency services of the exact extension and location of the emergency with precision. Please ensure your E911 settings are correctly configured to take full advantage of this feature.

How it works

3CX supports the Geolocation by Reference method. This minimizes the risk of sending false data to emergency services and it keeps the size of the SIP Invite small allowing UDP as the transport protocol without fragmentation issues. Only providers that support the same method will work with this implementation.

Locations are originally created per trunk and then assigned to users. When an emergency call is initiated, the PBX will check if the user making the call has a E911 geolocation assigned and will add the “geolocation” header in the Invite to the provider and populate it with the relevant data.

Setup

To set up a Geolocation emergency rule in 3CX you need to follow these steps:

1. Create a trunk that supports geolocation. For now the only providers that are supported by 3CX are Bandwidth and Voxtelesys. The option is also available for the Generic templates but it’s up to the customer to test it.

2. Navigate to the trunk’s “Options” tab and locate the “E911 Geolocation” menu.
3. Click the “Add” button to create a location and associate it with a Geolocation URI/ID as provided by your SIP trunk provider. Give your location a relevant friendly name that is easy to identify. Multiple locations can be created per trunk. Save your settings.

4. Navigate to “Users” and edit the user you want to assign a location to. Go to the “Options” tab and locate the “E911 Geolocations” menu.
5. Select a location previously created and click the “Save” Button. The same menu allows additional information like a floor, hotel room or office number. This information will be appended to the geolocation header and sent encoded to the SIP trunk provider.
6. Navigate to “System”>”Emergency” and add an emergency rule. Add your emergency number and the SIP trunk you created as the route. Make sure you set up the correct caller ID to be sent.
7. Test the emergency rule with your SIP Trunk provider to make sure everything is working correctly.

Note: You can use the same location name to create locations in different SIP Trunks. For example you create location A under SIP Trunk A. You can also use location A to create a location under SIP Trunk B.

The  “Geolocation URI/ID” must be unique for each trunk to allow you to have multiple routes in your emergency rules and ensure that the correct location is sent even if the emergency call fails to go through the first route.

Voxtelesys

1. Access your Voxtelsys customer portal and navigate to “Emergency Services” > “Emergency Geolocations” tab.

2. If the service is not enabled then you need to contact Voxtelesys support so they can enable the option for you. You can do so by clicking on “Submit a Support Ticket”.

3. Click on the add button and select or create an address. Your address will be validated and a new Emergency geolocation will be created.
4. Copy the unique ID from the portal.
5. In 3CX, navigate to your Voxtelesys trunk’s “Options” tab and locate the “E911 Geolocation” menu.
6. Click on the “Add” button and select or add a new location.
7. Under the “Geolocation URI / ID” enter “https://emergency.voxtelesys.com/locations/{GUID}”. Replace the {GUID} with the ID you copied from your Voxtelesys portal.
8. Click “OK” and “Save” and your trunk configuration is all done.  

Generic Templates

The option “E911 Geolocation” is available for the 2 Generic templates “Generic SIP Trunk (IP Based)” and “Generic VoIP Provider (Registration)” so they can be used to add Geolocation emergency rules to unsupported providers.

However, the provider needs to be compatible with the 3CX implementation and adhere to the same rules.

All testing needs to be done from the user in cooperation with the VoIP Provider. 3CX does not support such configurations.

See Also

• Configuring a SIP Trunk
• Configuring Emergency Numbers

Last Updated

This document was last updated 22 August 2024 

https://www.3cx.com/docs/e911-geolocation/