E.164 Phone Numbers

Question

Good afternoon,

I've been asked to change our phone number fields to be E.164 compliant. I have come up with the following Regular Expressions for the Phone (with extension), Fax, and mobile device numbers. I wanted to check with the experts here that the regular expressions made sense before applying them.

I am also wondering if changing the property patterns to accept E.164 and not the current format will cause any issues. Will the users lose data, or will the property pattern simply take effect next time the user changes their number?

The current Regular expressions, resulting in a phone number format of 555.123.4567 ext 12345

([\]{1}[0-9]{3}[\]{1}[\.]{1}[0-9]{3}[\.]{1}[0-9]{4}([\ ]{1}[\bext\b]{3}[\ ]{1}[0-9]{3,5})?)$

I'll be changing the expression to the following, to result in a format of 15551234567 ext 12345

/^\+?[1-9]\d{1,14}([\ ]{1}[\bext\b]{3}[\ ]{1}[0-9]{3,5})?

Answer 1

Hello,

The following expression should do the job:

^\+?\d{11} ext \d{5}$

Will the users lose data, or will the property pattern simply take effect next time the user changes their number?

The users won't lose their data, but the next time they try to modify their phone number, they will be forced to use the new format. Also, if the Telephone Number field is present anywhere on the Web Interface page for modifying users, users will be forced to adjust the telephone number to the new format even if they don't modify it. When you modify a user via the Web Interface, all values present on the page are checked against Property Patterns.