Call answering and ringing settings

Use Settings → Voice & Telephony to choose how incoming customer calls reach your team. These settings apply to calls routed directly to human agents and calls handed off from an AI phone agent to your team.

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Before you start

Telephony must be enabled for your organization. Anyone with Voice settings write permission can open Settings → Voice & Telephony and turn on Enable telephony. This setting is available to every organization. This control grants access to telephony; numbers, routing, teams and agent availability still need to be configured. Turning it off does not cancel existing calls or release phone numbers. To edit call answering settings, you need the Voice settings write permission. Agents also need the normal permissions and availability required to receive and accept calls.

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Automatically answer after a short ring

1. Open Settings → Voice & Telephony.
2. Turn on Auto-answer calls.
3. Set Answer after to a whole number from 1 to 20 seconds.
4. Leave the field or press Enter to save. The auto-answer switch saves immediately.
5. Each agent opens their dashboard and allows microphone access when the browser requests it. The dashboard prepares automatic answering when the agent is available for calls, without a separate setup card. If the browser requires interaction to enable audio, click anywhere in the dashboard.

Auto-answer is off by default. The saved delay defaults to 2 seconds. When enabled, the countdown starts when the call begins ringing your team. A ready agent’s visible dashboard tab accepts the call at the end of the countdown without another click. The first successful acceptance connects; other agents stop ringing. While the automatic-answer countdown is active, the incoming-call notification stays visible and its Accept and Reject controls are hidden. Manual controls remain available if automatic answering cannot prepare the microphone or the call has no automatic-answer deadline. There is no agent-level pause or opt-out; auto-answer is controlled by the organization setting. Settings are captured when each call starts ringing; changes apply to new rings. A busy agent or a call that has ended will not be automatically accepted. If preparation fails, the incoming call shows the problem. Allow microphone access in your browser and click in the dashboard to retry, or use Accept manually. Automatic answering does not bypass routing, availability or call permissions.

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Ring a percentage of available agents

Set Available agents to ring to a whole percentage from 1 to 100, then leave the field or press Enter to save. The default is 100%, preserving the behavior of ringing everyone eligible. The percentage applies after the existing team, availability, busy and online checks. It is based on the agents eligible for that call, not total team membership. Open rounds up so there is at least one recipient whenever an eligible agent exists. Agents already ringing for another call are excluded. Simultaneous incoming calls select separate available agents. Agents who were rung least recently are preferred. A call keeps the same selected recipients if their dashboards reconnect. With team telephony pacing off, this setting does not add successive ringing waves or expand to the rest of the team after a timeout. Unanswered calls follow the existing timeout or transfer-failure behavior.

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Team queues and telephony pacing

Open Settings → Teams, edit a support-enabled team, and find Telephony pacing below Assignment pacing. You need Teams write permission to change these settings. Route calls to a team transfer destination for its policy to apply. Turn on Telephony pacing to offer each call to one available teammate at a time. Multiple calls can ring different teammates concurrently. If everyone is busy, calls wait for that team in arrival order; they do not spill into other teams. An agent already ringing, on a call, unavailable, or in wrap-up is excluded. Teammates must have Available for calls enabled and their dashboard open. Chat session capacity limits do not prevent eligible teammates from receiving phone calls. Longest available prioritizes the teammate who has been available and free from calls longest. Fewest answered calls today prioritizes the lowest number of connected calls for this team since midnight in your organization’s timezone; ties use longest available. Unanswered offers do not count as answered calls. Daily totals do not adjust for different shift lengths. If an offer is declined or expires, the call can be offered to another eligible teammate. The missed teammate has a 30-second cooldown. Queue processing can take approximately two seconds between offers. The maximum wait includes time spent ringing agents; when it expires, the unanswered call ends. This setting does not add position announcements, hold music, automatic callbacks, or overflow destinations. With pacing on, the team offers each call to one agent regardless of Available agents to ring. Auto-answer starts a fresh countdown for each offer. If the remaining offer window is too short for that countdown, the agent can still answer manually. Calls already queued keep the timing and distribution settings captured when they entered the queue, even if pacing is subsequently switched off.

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Finishing wrap-up from a mini app

An approved mini app can save a wrap-up code, close the phone session, then finish that session’s wrap-up for the viewing teammate. This must be explicitly configured in the app: saving a structured field alone does not close a session or finish wrap-up. The action leaves unavailable teammates unavailable and cannot release wrap-up for a different session.

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Team wrap-up time

Leave Use organization wrap-up time on to inherit the setting in Voice & Telephony. Turn it off to enter a team-specific duration in seconds, including 0 for no wrap-up. Team wrap-up works with or without telephony pacing. Save the team to apply your changes. The effective wrap-up duration is captured when human ringing starts. After the call ends, it prevents the teammate from receiving calls from any team during that window. Calls without a team use the organization default. The wrap-up strip counts elapsed time up from 0:00. Extending the window keeps the same start time, and reloading restores it from the completed call. If older call data has no start time, the strip shows the remaining window instead. Agents can still finish wrap-up early with I’m ready.

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Team call recording

Turn off Record calls to stop calls answered by this team’s teammates from being recorded. It applies to calls routed to the team, with or without telephony pacing. Save the team to apply your changes; they take effect the next time a teammate answers a call. When a phone agent or call flow has already started recording before the call reaches the team, that recording keeps running. Turning Record calls on never records a call that the phone agent, call flow, or teammate’s dialer choice leaves unrecorded. Live transcripts follow the workspace setting either way. See Recordings and transcripts.

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Team call languages

Pick Call languages to keep live transcripts of calls this team answers in those languages, for example Danish and English for a Danish support line. Leave it empty to use the organization’s Default call languages from Settings → Voice & Telephony → Live transcripts. A language your call flow set on the session with a Set Session Language step, or an agent set in the inbox, takes precedence. See Call languages.

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Default phone answer-time policy

Choose a Default answer-time SLA on this page to grade how quickly callers waiting for an agent are answered. It applies to calls rung without a team and to teams that have no phone SLA policy of their own. Only policies with a phone answer-time target can be selected. See Phone answer-time SLA for how waits are measured and reported.

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Test your setup

Start with a small team of available agents. Open one dashboard and allow microphone access, call a number routed to that team, and confirm that the countdown matches your saved delay and both sides can hear each other. Then turn off auto-answer in organization settings and confirm manual Accept still works. Test the ring percentage with several available agents and check that only the expected number of dashboards ring. For a paced team, place two calls with one available teammate: the second should wait. Decline the first offer with another teammate available and confirm it moves to them. Complete a call and verify the team’s wrap-up duration.

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Additional telephony options

The Voice & Telephony page also lists routing, assistance, IVR, queue, recording, reliability, after-hours, monitoring, dialer and integration options. Options marked Contact us open an email to your account team with the feature name included. They do not change call behavior. Contact your account team to discuss availability and setup. Links for existing capabilities open their current settings or calling surface.