Lync – UK +44 (0) Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt

A common problem in the UK is that companies Active Directory telephone numbers will be populated in the format:

+44 (0) 123 456 7891 or +44(0)1234567891

If you were to dial these numbers in the UK you would omit the +44 and just dial the 0.  If you are abroad you would dial +44 and omit the 0 (E164 format).

As part of the default Lync normalization rules it will remove all spaces and brackets ().  When using Lync click to call from a users contact card this normalizes the number to +4401234567891 which is invalid.  Therefore you need to either correct all numbers in AD to E164 format or add a normalization rule to the Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt file on your Lync File Share.  This is already well documented here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb936613(v=office.12).aspx

http://blog.schertz.name/2010/09/lync-2010-address-book-normalization/

I did find some other posts about stripping the brackets and zero but I found these rules didn’t account for if there was a space before or after the brackets and anywhere else in the number.  This is the normalization rule I use:

Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt

# Normalize UK numbers that have a +44 (0) prefix with or without spaces
# +44 (0) 123 456 7891 would become +441234567891
# +44(0)1234567891 would become +441234567891
^\+44[\s]*\(0\)[\s]*([\d \ ]*)$
+44$1

Chris Hayward

Technical Architect at Symity