Call routing

Call routing is where you say where calls go. It has three parts on one screen, and they are not alternatives to each other:

• Departments: the places a call can land, and who rings when it does.
• Phone menus: the keypad tree a caller hears before the receptionist picks up.
• Keypad shortcuts: keys a caller can press mid-conversation with the receptionist.

Find it at Call routing in the sidebar, between Calls and Messages. It is not admin only.

Build them in that order. A menu option cannot point at a department that does not exist yet, and a menu cannot go on a number until it has been published.

Departments#

A department is what everything else routes to. Without any, every transfer goes to your main line no matter what the caller asked for.

A department has a name, and a slug derived from it. You never type the slug, because menu options and routing rules reference it, and changing it by hand would silently repoint them.

If you have more than one location, a department can belong to one location or serve the whole business.

Who rings#

Add up to 20 ring targets, of three kinds:

• A teammate's phone. Only teammates who have a phone number on file are offered, because one without a number never rings. Saving is refused if you get one in some other way, and a number removed from a teammate's record afterwards takes them out of the ring rather than leaving the department dialling nothing.
• Another number, any number in +15551234567 form.
• Browser agents, meaning everyone signed in to the dashboard.

Ring strategy is either Simultaneous, where every target rings at once and the first to pick up wins, or Sequential, where they ring in order, each for its own timeout. Simultaneous is the default. A sequential ring moves on only when a target does not answer: once someone picks up, the call is theirs and the rest of the list is not rung.

Ring timeout defaults to 25 seconds and accepts 5 to 120. That is how long the whole department rings before overflowing.

When nobody answers#

Every department must say what happens when nobody picks up. There are five choices: hand to the receptionist, take a voicemail, ring another number, try another department, or end the call. Handing to the receptionist is the default.

This is required on purpose. A department that cannot overflow is exactly how a caller ends up listening to silence.

A department cannot overflow to itself, and the form says so. If an overflow target has gone missing or been deactivated, the call falls through to the receptionist rather than dead-ending.

Departments that must reach a person#

Must always reach a person stops a department ever handing the caller to the AI, including on overflow. Use it for anything where an AI answering would be wrong.

You cannot turn it on while the overflow is the receptionist; pick something else first. If the combination arises later, the call goes to that department's voicemail instead, and the reason is recorded on the call.

Deleting one#

You cannot delete a department while anything still points at it. The message names how many keypad shortcuts, menu options, routing rules and other departments' overflows are still referencing it.

Phone menus#

A menu is what a caller hears before the receptionist: "press 1 for bookings, press 2 for accounts".

Versions#

A menu is a name and a history. Everything callers actually hear lives on a version, and a version is in one of three states:

• Draft: editable, and reachable only by a test call.
• Published: the one version live callers hear.
• Archived: superseded, kept so you can roll back.

Editing never touches what is on the air. New draft copies the published version, so the live menu keeps serving callers while you work on the copy. Only a draft can be edited; saving anything on a published or archived version is refused.

Creating a menu gives you version 1 as a draft with one step already in it, named Welcome.

Publishing and rolling back#

Publishing archives whatever was live and makes your draft the published version.

Rolling back is the same operation in reverse: open the older version and press Restore.

Publishing also renders every prompt to audio in the receptionist's voice, so the wait happens to you rather than to your first caller. Steps with an uploaded recording are left alone, and so are steps whose text has not changed. If a prompt fails to render, the publish still goes through and the caller hears the text spoken by the phone system instead.

Every publish is written to the audit log with who did it and which version.

Putting a menu on a number#

Menus attach per phone number. By default a number has no menu and hands callers straight to the receptionist.

You cannot attach a menu with nothing published: "That menu has nothing published yet, so callers would not hear it. Publish a version first."

Building a step#

A step is one thing the caller hears plus the keys they can press while hearing it.

• What the caller hears is required and capped at 600 characters.
• Changing the words clears the audio rendered from the old words, so the step speaks the new text at the next publish. An uploaded recording is left alone.
• You can upload your own recording: MP3 or WAV, up to 5 MB. Use the receptionist's voice deletes it and goes back to the synthesised voice.
• Wait for a key defaults to 6 seconds, between 2 and 30.
• A key can interrupt the prompt is on by default. Turn it off and the prompt finishes before the caller can press anything, which is what you want for a legal notice.

The first step carries the First step badge and cannot be deleted. Any other step can take over with Make this the first step.

Options#

An option is one key plus where it leads. Keys are 1 to 9. Each key can only be used once per step, and options can go to a department, another number, the receptionist, voicemail, another step, or end the call.

An option that goes to the receptionist tells the AI which option was chosen, so it opens knowing what the caller wanted.

Options save as you change them. Steps do not: each step has its own Save step button that stays disabled until something changes.

Silence and wrong keys#

Every step must say what happens when the caller says nothing, and what happens when they press a key that is not on the menu. Both default to the receptionist, and neither can be left empty, for the same reason overflow cannot: it is how callers end up stranded.

Repeats defaults to 1, and can be 0 to 5. One repeat means the caller hears the prompt twice in total before the fallback takes over. Setting it to 0 removes the second chance entirely.

The three keys you cannot assign#

On every step, three keys belong to the system:

Some detail worth knowing, because none of it is configurable:

• 0 inside a menu dials your main line. If you have not set one, the caller goes to the receptionist instead.
• 0 on a live call with the receptionist does something different: it pages your whole team, immediately.
• * costs a repeat. A caller leaning on it cannot stay in the menu forever, and with Repeats set to 0 the first press sends them to the fallback.
• # only works if the caller pressed a key to get to this step. If they arrived by falling through a timeout or a wrong key, there is no level to go back to and # is treated as a wrong key.

Test call#

Test call runs the real menu. Every keypress goes through the same code a live call does. Nothing is dialled, nothing is recorded, nothing is billed.

It works on a draft, and it is the only way to hear a draft before it goes live.

Press Say nothing and wait. That sends the silence case, which is the one that strands callers and the one nobody thinks to test.

What stops you publishing#

Publishing is refused if anything in the draft would strand a caller. The problems are listed one per line with the step they are on, and the same list appears in the editor as Not ready to publish before you try.

• The menu has no starting point.
• A step has nothing to say.
• A step offers no options, so there is nothing to press.
• An option has no name, no department, or no number.
• An option or a fallback points at a step that is not in this menu.
• A caller who says nothing is sent in a circle and can never get out.
• No caller can reach a step.

Where the menu sits in the order#

Routing decisions are made in a fixed order, and the menu is not first:

1. An explicit request naming a department.
2. A keypad shortcut.
3. A department overflow.
4. Your routing rules, in priority order.
5. Business hours and after-hours rules.
6. The menu on the number, for a call that has just come in.
7. Otherwise, the receptionist.

The menu sits below the hours rules deliberately. If you have said "after hours, forward everything", offering a menu of departments that are all closed would be worse than honouring that.

Step 6 applies to an inbound call and nothing else. A caller the receptionist is transferring, or one waiting on a department that did not pick up, is already somewhere: sending them to the menu would put them back at the top of a tree they have been through. Those reach the receptionist instead.

How step 1 matches#

The receptionist says what the caller needs in their own words, not where to send them, so a department is found by whole words rather than by an exact match. A caller with "a billing question" reaches Billing, and so does one who asks for "the billing department". Whole words, so "my account" does not reach a department called Count. Where two departments both fit, the more specific wins: "billing disputes" reaches Billing Disputes rather than Billing.

How step 4 matches#

A routing rule has a condition and an action, and the first rule whose condition holds wins, lowest priority number first. There are four kinds of condition:

new and returning are worked out from whether this business has taken a call from that number before, so they hold whether or not anyone made the caller a contact.

There is no screen for editing routing rules yet. They are set up during onboarding, and the receptionist can explain them to a caller, but it no longer decides whether to honour them.

Business hours#

Open means the current local time at the relevant location falls within that day's opening hours. Time zones come from the location, so a multi-location business behaves correctly in each.

During hours, an active business hours rule can forward or book an appointment. Outside hours, an after-hours rule can forward, take a voicemail, book an appointment, or take a message only.

A forward target that is one of your own Asisto numbers is refused, because it would put the caller straight back into the AI they were trying to get past.

There are no holidays#

There is no holiday or one-off closure feature. Hours are the weekly opening hours per location and nothing else. To close for a day you have to edit that day's hours and put them back afterwards.

Keypad shortcuts#

A shortcut is a key a caller can press while talking to the receptionist to jump somewhere. It is not a menu: nothing is announced and nothing waits for input, so pressing an unmapped key does nothing at all.

Keys are 1 to 9, one destination each, so nine at most. Destinations are a department, another number, voicemail, the receptionist, or end the call. There is no menu-step destination for a shortcut.

The receptionist is told your shortcut list and is instructed not to recite it, but to offer the relevant key when it is useful. It always knows that 0 reaches a person.

What gets recorded#

Every routing decision is appended to the call's route path with a timestamp, what triggered it, a short reason such as menu:option-2, after-hours or overflow:bookings, and where the call went.

This is what to look at when a caller says they ended up in the wrong place. The trail starts from the call's first hop, including calls that never reached the AI.

Voicemail from a routing destination records up to 120 seconds.