Problems updating International phone numbers

Ben Regier

I'm having some issues updating international phone number using the Patch Phone endpoint.


My first question is whether there is a way to set a phone type so that it will accept both US and Canadian phone numbers.  The type I'm trying to update sometimes fails (more on the 'sometimes' in a minute) with the error message: "The phone type is configured with a format that does not support international phone numbers."  So I tried to find the settings where I could configure it to allow international numbers, but so far have not found it.


The challenge is that it will sometimes accept Canadian numbers, and sometimes will throw the error I posted above.  I've been running tests to try to find a pattern, and I don't have it completely locked down yet.


If I submit a Canadian number using the format (xxx)xxx-xxxx, it always fails.  But if I submit the Canadian number using the format +1 xxx-xxx-xxxx, it works some of the time.  Other times, it gives me the same error message about international numbers (even when submitting exactly the same number, same phone type, even same phone_id).  I think it may have something to do with whether the number that I am updating was entered in web view or database view, but I haven't confirmed that yet.


Can anyone point me to information that would help clear this up?  Either information relating to how to configure phone types to accept international phone numbers, or information that would help me work out why my updates are failing sometimes but not others.


Thanks,


-Ben

Ben Regier

I've done some more testing.


Our company only recently moved over to NXT, and as far as I can tell, I can update phone numbers with Canadian numbers as long as that phone number has not been modified since we moved to NXT.   As soon as the number has been modified (either in the web view or database view), I can no longer update it with a Canadian number.


Could this be related to this issue? 


I'm not sure what my next steps are here.  About 25% of my users are Canadian, so this is causing headaches for them as they try to update their data.  Currently I have it notifying us every time an update fails and we're updating the numbers manually (in database view - we can't add Canadian number in web view because of the issue that I linked to above).  But this isn't sustainable long-term.


Anyone know of work-arounds?  Is this an issue that BB is planning to fix, or is it working as intended and the errors I'm seeing are because I'm using it incorrectly?

Ben Regier

I found a solution.


It sounds like RE Web view and RE Database view each has their own system for validating phone numbers, and if the validation is set up in Database view, it can cause issues when entering numbers in Web view or via SKY API.


So the solution to this problem turned out to be opening database view, finding the Phone type I'm dealing with in the Config area, and setting the validation to None.  After doing this, all my requests go through as expected.


The downside of course is that now there's no validation for people entering phone numbers (of that type) manually in Database view.  So they can add them as (xxx) xxx-xxxx, xxx.xxx.xxxx or whatever they want.  We're hoping our users are conscientious enough that this won't be a problem, but we'll see!