> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.open.cx/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Phone answer-time SLA

> Measure how many callers waiting for an agent were answered within your target. Set a phone answer-time policy, apply it per team, and report on it.

A phone answer-time SLA states a goal such as *75% of callers waiting for an agent are answered within 30 seconds*. OpenCX records every wait for an agent and grades it against the policy that applies, so you can report compliance, outcomes, and answer times by day, hour, team, and agent.

## How answer time is measured

The clock starts when a caller begins waiting for an agent: when the call enters a team queue or starts ringing agents, after any menu, greeting, or AI conversation. It stops when an agent accepts the call, not when the agent first speaks.

Only time inside the policy's office hours counts, the same as chat SLAs. A policy without office hours counts all waiting time.

A caller can wait more than once in a session, for example when a call is handed back to the AI agent and transferred again. Each wait is graded on its own.

Each wait ends with one outcome:

| Outcome | Meaning |
| - | - |
| Answered | An agent accepted the call. |
| Caller hung up | The caller left while waiting. |
| Timed out | The maximum queue wait or ring window ran out. |
| No agents available | Nobody was available to ring. |
| Voicemail | The caller was sent to voicemail. |
| Call failed | The call dropped for a connection or setup problem, not because the caller left. It is not graded and does not count toward the abandon rate. |

## Create a phone answer-time policy

Open **Settings → SLA** and create or edit a policy. You need **SLA** write permission. Add a phone answer-time target alongside the reply and resolution targets, or create a policy with only a phone target. A policy with only a phone target grades calls alone: it can't be applied to sessions, and workflows don't offer it.

| Setting | Effect |
| - | - |
| Answer within (seconds) | The answer-time target. Required for a phone target. |
| Goal (%) | The share of graded waits that must be answered within the target, for example 75%. Optional: leave it empty to grade waits without a goal. |
| Count mode | By default every caller who waited is graded, so callers who were never answered count as missed. Switch to answered calls only to grade answered calls alone. |
| Short abandon (seconds) | Callers who hang up within this many seconds of starting to wait are left out of the SLA in either mode. This counts the whole wait, including time outside office hours. |

Editing a policy only affects callers who start waiting afterwards. Waits already recorded keep the grade they received, and deleting a policy keeps its name on the waits it graded.

## Choose which policy applies

OpenCX grades each wait with the first policy it finds:

1. The team's **Phone answer-time SLA**, set in **Settings → Teams** on the team whose queue the caller is waiting in.
2. Otherwise, the **Default answer-time SLA**, set in **[Settings → Voice & Telephony](https://platform.open.cx/settings/telephony)**.

Calls rung without a team use the workspace default. With neither policy, waits are still recorded with their outcome and answer time, but they are not graded and do not count toward compliance.

## How agents are judged

Every ring an agent receives is recorded as answered, declined, missed (their ring ran out), or canceled (another agent answered or the caller left). Agents are judged only on their own rings:

* **Answer rate** = answered ÷ (answered + declined + missed). Canceled rings are not held against anyone.
* **Time to answer** runs from the agent's ring to their accept. The queue time before their ring is never charged to them.
* **Answered within target** counts the agent's answers whose own ring-to-accept time was within the target. A wait can miss the team's SLA while the agent who finally answered it is credited.

When a teammate's account is deleted, their past rings still count in the totals but no longer appear in the per-agent report.

## Report on answer time

Ask Companion, or have it build a mini app, for the view you need: compliance against the goal, outcomes and abandon rate, average and p90 answer time, breakdowns by day, hour of day (to find understaffed hours), team, and agent. Mini apps read two reporting tables:

* `report_phone_queue_waits`: one row per finished wait, with its team, outcome, wait in seconds, who answered, the policy and target it was graded on, and the result (`met`, `missed`, `excluded`, or empty when no policy applied or the call failed).
* `report_phone_ring_attempts`: one row per ring an agent received, with its result, ring length, and the grade of the wait it belonged to.

The same figures are available in the [Phone answer-time analytics API](/api-reference/sla-analytics/phone-overview) and in the MCP tools `get_phone_answer_analytics_overview`, `get_phone_answer_analytics_breakdown`, and `get_phone_answer_analytics_agents`. Rates are returned as fractions from 0 to 1.

**Reports → Data Export** includes phone answer columns per session: the number of waits, the first wait in seconds, who answered first, and the worst answer-time SLA result in the session.

## Limitations

* Answer time measures the accept click. It does not include time the caller spent in a menu or with the AI agent before waiting.
* Per-call evidence for workflows stays in [Get Phone Call Details](/phone/call-outcomes#read-evidence-for-a-specific-call). Answer-time reporting aggregates waits; it does not change those fields.


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