When telephoneer forwards an incoming call it uses a Dial Action to tell it how to proceed. Dial Actions contain instructions like what number (or numbers) to call, how long to wait for an answer and what to do with the call if it isn’t picked up.
Adding a new Dial Action is simple but before you start you need to have added (and verified) contacts you want to forward calls to, and set up a voice mailbox if you want to send unanswered calls to voicemail.
This post shows you how to add and verify new contacts, while this post shows you how to set up a new voice mailbox.
Adding a Dial Action
Log in to the telephoneer web app and navigate to the Actions tab. Click on the DIAL tab if you’re not already there.
Click on the Add (+) button in the top left corner to display the New Dial Action dialogue.
Let’s take a look at the available fields:
Name
Choose a meaningful name for the action. I recommend prefixing the name with “Dial”, for example “Dial Support” so its easy to pick out in lists later on.
Contacts
You need to add at least one contact to the dial action by choosing from the drop down list. Once you’ve chosen the first contact you can click the ADD CONTACT button to that appears to include up to three additional contacts. These are the numbers that will be dialled when an incoming call is received.
Dialling Method
Choose between Call contacts simultaneously and Call contacts in sequence to either dial everyone on the list all at once or one after the other in order.
Dialling Timeout
The dialling timeout tells telephoneer how long to wait for the call to be answered before taking the “If the call is not answered” action (see below). If you want telephoneer to handle voicemail for unanswered calls you’ll want to turn on call waiting on your mobile and make sure the dialling timeout is LESS than the ring time on the receiving phone service. These settings are discussed in more detail in this post.
Caller ID
This sets which phone number appears on the contact’s phone as the caller ID. You can choose Use the service number for Caller ID or Use the caller’s number for Caller ID. If you use the service number (ie. the number of your virtual landline) you’ll know that the call came through the virtual landline. If you use the caller’s number, you’ll know who is calling, but you won’t know if they called your mobile direct or came through the virtual landline.
Note that trial accounts always display the caller’s ID regardless of this setting. Once you upgrade to a full account, this setting will take effect with no further action on your part.
When call starts say
This setting allows you to choose a Say action to play a message to the caller before forwarding the call. This is useful if you’re forwarding to multiple numbers and you want to tell the caller something like “your call will be answered shortly”.
If the call is not answered
This setting allows you to choose a voice mailbox to handle unanswered calls. If you don’t want to use voicemail, select Hangup
Fill in the form and click the ADD button to save the new Dial Action.
You’re done! You can now set this action as your main call handler or use it in the Schedule or as a Voice Menu option.
