Can a Default Holiday Group IVR route to an external phone number?

We have successfully tested and begun deploying Default Holiday Groups to centralize holiday handling for our Auto Receptionists. Overall, the feature has worked very well and has significantly simplified our holiday administration.

We have one remaining scenario that we haven't been able to solve.

One of our Auto Receptionists includes IVR options that forward callers to external phone numbers (one local number and one toll-free number).

When configuring the IVR within the Default Holiday Group, the Phone Number action is disabled with the following message:

"The current extension has no number and cannot be used to forward to phone number."

The Auto Receptionist assigned as the Holiday Group target does have an assigned DID and calling plan.

We have confirmed that:

• The Holiday Group is correctly assigned to the target Auto Receptionist.
• The Auto Receptionist inherits the Holiday Group holidays and call handling as expected.
• Internal routing (Auto Receptionist, User, Call Queue, etc.) works correctly.
• Only the Phone Number action is unavailable.

My questions are:

1. Is this expected behavior?
2. Does the Holiday Group IVR execute as its own internal object rather than inheriting the outbound calling capability of the targeted Auto Receptionist?
3. If this is by design, what is the recommended method for routing callers from a Holiday Group IVR to an external phone number?

We considered using External Contacts, but it appears they ultimately resolve to an external PSTN destination as well, so I'm not sure they would avoid this limitation. If anyone has tested that scenario, I'd appreciate hearing the results.

Thanks in advance for any guidance.