Call flows and ring groups

A call flow decides what happens when someone calls one of your numbers: whether your team's phones ring first, for how long, and when the AI agent answers. Every number has one. You build it visually, and you can check what a call would do at any moment before a caller ever finds out.

flowchart LR
  c[A call comes in] --> s{The number's schedule<br/>at this moment}
  s -- a part that rings your team --> r[Ring a ring group<br/>for up to 25 s]
  s -- a part for the AI agent --> a[AI agent answers]
  r -- someone presses 1 --> t[A team member<br/>takes the call]
  r -- nobody accepts in time --> a2[AI agent answers:<br/>thanks for waiting]
  r -- caller hangs up --> m[Missed call:<br/>your team is told]

Every call is recorded the same way, whoever answers it, under your recording settings. With the notetaker on, the AI also takes the notes on calls your team answers.

Ring groups#

A ring group is the people a number rings before the AI agent answers. Each community has its own. Owners, admins and the community's managers can add and change them.

1. Open the community's Ring groups

   Go to Communities, open the community, and choose Ring groups. Press New ring group.

2. Choose how it rings

   Choice	What happens
   Ring everyone at once	Every phone rings together. The first person to accept takes the call.
   Ring in order	One phone at a time, top to bottom, for the seconds you choose. Good when one person should always get first chance.
   Take turns	One at a time, but each call starts with the next person, so calls are shared out evenly.

3. Add who rings

   Add team members: they ring on the direct phone they saved under My calls. Add any other phone number too, like a front desk, with a label. Use the arrows to set the order. The timeline shows when each phone rings.

   

4. Check the two switches

   Ask people to press 1 to take the call is on by default. Whoever picks up hears who the call is for and presses 1 to take it. A voicemail never presses 1, so it can never take a caller. Only turn it off for desk phones without voicemail.

   Only ring team members inside their own working hours skips anyone whose hours under My availability do not cover the moment of the call.

History on a ring group lists every saved version: who was in it, in what order, and how it rang, with the date. The number's own history says which parts of its schedule rang a ring group, so you can always answer "who did this number ring on the 14th?". Every change is also in your account's audit log.

With Take turns, the ring group's card says who the next call starts with, so you can see it is sharing calls out. The call itself still skips anyone who is Away or on a call at that moment.

A team member is skipped, and the next person rings, when they have no direct phone saved, have switched themselves to Away, or are already on a call. If nobody can be rung, the AI agent answers straight away: the caller never waits through ringing that cannot succeed.

Build a number's call flow#

Open Phone numbers and press the call flow icon at the end of a number's row (or open it from the community's Numbers section). The call flow reads left to right, as the call moves.

1. Start from the schedule

   The schedule lists each part of the number's day in the order it is checked: holidays and closures, while the community is closed, the weekly time slots, and All other times. The first part that matches answers. Add parts with + Time slot, + Holiday and + While closed.

2. Choose who answers each part

   Click a part of the schedule. In the panel on the right, set Who answers: The AI agent, straight away, or Ring a ring group first, then the AI agent, and how long to ring for (25 seconds unless you choose otherwise, up to 60).

   

3. Pick the AI agent's playbook

   Each part also says which playbook the agent answers with, always the latest or pinned to a version, as on Phone numbers. Click an AI agent answers box to change the playbook for every part that uses it.

4. Save

   Press Save call flow. Nothing changes for callers until you do. Discard takes you back to what callers get now. A part that is not finished, such as a holiday without a name, is flagged and must be fixed before you can save.

Click the ring step to see who rings and when at the moment you are checking, or to edit the ring group itself.

Check what happens at any moment#

The What happens at bar answers "what would a call do right now?" or at any date and time you pick, in the community's time zone. The part that answers, the ring step and where the call can end up are highlighted, and one sentence says it all.

It uses each team member's Away switch. Turn on Assume everyone is available to see the plan as if everyone could answer. Once saved, it also checks each person's working hours and whether they are already on a call. You can share a moment as a link: add ?at=2026-12-24T16:00 to the call flow's address.

The list view#

List view shows the same call flow as a list, with the same settings. Use it with a keyboard or a screen reader, or on a phone.

What callers and your team hear#

Write what callers hear#

Two lines are yours to write. Both are optional: without them, plain defaults are used.

• Before the phones ring. Write it once for every location in the playbook (Persona, under When your team is rung first), and give a location its own on its Profile if it needs one. It is not the AI agent speaking, so it must not say it is an AI. When calls are recorded it must say so, and it must say "recorded and transcribed" for the notetaker to take notes on calls your team answers. Without one, callers hear "Thanks for calling your location. This call is recorded and transcribed."
• When the agent answers after ringing. Said instead of the agent's usual opening when nobody took the call, for example "Hi, I'm Ava, Sunrise's AI assistant. Our team is with other families right now, so I can help you get started." It must still say it is an AI in its first sentence.

A notice that does not fit a call is never said: if it leaves out the recording on a recorded call, or claims one on a call that is not recorded, the plain default is said instead.

Missed calls#

When a caller hangs up while your team's phones ring, the people on the location's human backup list get a missed-call notice by email (and by text, when set up), and your CRM gets a task to call them back. Hidden numbers and spam are skipped. To stop it for a location, turn off Follow up missed calls on its Human backup tab.

When the AI agent hands a caller over#

When a caller asks for a person (or a booking rule says to hand them over), the AI agent rings the location's human backup. Instead of one or two numbers, the backup can ring a whole ring group: on the location's Human backup tab, under Who takes transfers, choose it in Ring a ring group instead.

• The caller hears the transfer line, then hold music while the ring group rings, in its own order and with press 1 if it asks for it. It rings for Wait for an answer, between 10 and 60 seconds.
• Whoever picks up hears who the call is for and that the caller asked for a person, and presses 1. They are put straight through to the caller; the call stays recorded, with live notes when the notetaker is on, and shows up on their My calls.
• When nobody takes it, the AI agent says the unavailable line and takes a callback, as when a backup number does not answer.
• The backup numbers stay saved but are not rung while a ring group is chosen. They are rung instead when the ring group cannot ring: on a test call, or when the outbound line is off.
• Hand-offs to a nearby location ring that location's own backup number, never this ring group.
• Copying a community does not copy its ring groups, so the copy's hand-offs ring its backup numbers until you choose one of its own.

The call's page shows a Rang the backup ring group card with each phone rung and what happened, apart from Rang the team first.

On the call page#

A call that rang your team first says who answered it, and shows a Rang the team first card: the ring group and the version of it that rang, each phone in the order it rang, how long it rang and what happened (took the call, declined, voicemail, no answer, could not be rung). The recording's key moments mark when the phones started ringing and when someone answered, so you can skip the ringing. In the Calls list, calls your team took read Rep answered, and calls the caller hung up on while it rang read Missed call.

Direct lines for your team#

Give a team member a number of their own: callers who dial it ring that person first, then the AI agent answers with the number's playbook if they do not pick up. On Team, choose Direct line beside them, pick a number your account already has in a location, and how long to ring them. Every part of that number's schedule then rings them first; its playbooks and hours stay as they were. Remove puts it back to the AI agent answering straight away. Calls to a direct line are recorded and reported like every other call.

To get another number, ask your account manager.

How your team is doing#

The Scorecard's Calls part has Your team answering first whenever a number rings your team: for each ring group, how many calls it was offered, how many your team took (and how fast), how many fell to the AI agent, and how many callers hung up while it rang; and for each person, how often their phone rang, how many they took, declined or missed, and their talk minutes. A ring group whose calls mostly fall to the agent is marked: it usually means too few people are taking calls at those times.

The AI agent's own figures (connected calls, booking rate, transfer rate) leave out calls your team answered and missed calls: the agent never spoke on them.

For your team: Taking calls or Away#

Each team member switches themselves on My calls. Away skips them in every ring group, so new callers go to their teammates or the AI agent. Calls they answer when your team is rung are on their My calls too, marked "You answered when the team was rung", with the live notes when the notetaker is on. It does not stop transfers the agent makes to them on the human backup plan.

Good to know#

• Ringing your team needs the platform's outbound phone line. Until your account manager has switched it on, the call flow says so and the AI agent answers every call.
• A call flow can only ring its own community's ring groups. A number whose call flow rings a ring group cannot be moved to another community until those parts are changed to let the AI agent answer; the move says which parts.
• A direct line's ring group holds just that person: change or remove the line on Team, not on the ring group.
• With Ring in order or Take turns, someone who declines or whose phone fails passes the call straight to the next person, who still gets their full turn, as far as the ring time allows.
• A ring group a number still rings cannot be archived. Change the number's call flow first. The same goes for a ring group the location's human backup rings on hand-offs: choose another backup first.
• Changing a ring group applies to every number that rings it, on the next call. The ring group's page lists those numbers.
• Saving a call flow stops any experiment running on that number.
• Calls your team answers are billed as rep minutes, apart from the AI agent's minutes. Your plan includes an allowance. The AI agent's minutes on a call it takes after ringing start when it answers, not while the phones ring.

• Test calls skip the ringing and go straight to the AI agent, so nobody is rung by a test by accident. To test the ringing too, open your test number's call flow and turn on Ring your team on test calls: calls to it then ring your team as its call flow says, hand-offs to a ring group included. Turn it off when you are done. A test call is never billed, and a tester hanging up while it rings is not a missed call. Browser test calls never ring anyone: they test a playbook, not a number.

  

If something goes wrong#