I am building an inbound IVR flow that offers a callback. The flow uses a ‘Call Data Action’ to hit the POST /api/v2/outbound/contactlists/{contactListId}/contacts endpoint to add the caller’s ANI directly into our Outbound Campaign list.
This works perfectly for 10-digit US numbers. However, when an international caller calls in, their ANI starts with a + (e.g., +44...). The Data Action fails instantly with a 400 Bad Request. I looked at the execution details, and it seems the JSON payload or the contact list regex is rejecting the + character. Is there a specific encoding required for international E.164 numbers when adding them to a contact list via a Data Action?
I ran into this exact headache when integrating Bold360 data!
The problem isn’t the Outbound API itself; it’s how the Data Action templating engine handles the + sign. In standard HTTP form-encoding, a + is often interpreted as a space. If your Data Action’s Request Configuration is using esc.jsonString(input.PhoneNumber) or similar string replacement, it might be improperly escaping the character before it hits the Outbound service.
You should ensure that your Outbound Contact List column is explicitly set to ‘Phone Number’ type (not just ‘Text’), and in your Data Action Request Template, make sure you are not stripping special characters. Sometimes just passing it as a raw string "${input.PhoneNumber}" instead of using the Velocity macro fixes the parsing issue.
I’m not technical, but my 30 agents deal with international callbacks all the time.
Before you rip apart the code, check the Contact List settings in the UI! If you go into the Admin → Outbound → List Management, there is a setting on the actual list for ‘Attempt Limits’ and ‘Phone Number Types’. Make sure the list itself doesn’t have a rigid formatting rule that requires exactly 10 digits. We had a list set up for ‘US Mobile’ that rejected all UK numbers until we changed the column validation to allow free-form text.