The Call Flow Designer or CFD feature allows you to set up different phone trees to route and manage calls efficiently.

User Level:

Admin

Configure Numbers for Inbound Calls

Video Overview

Check out this video for a visual overview of our call flow designer. While it features our legacy dashboard, the call flow design feature is the same.

Refer to our pricing page to learn more about what action types are available on each plan.

Inbound Numbers

From the Dashboard menu, go to the Numbers tab. A list of all your phone numbers will appear. You can configure each phone number individually by clicking on the blue pencil icon.

Edit Number Settings

Within our legacy dashboard, the call flow designer is the first page you see when editing a number. See Number Settings—Legacy, below.

When you select the blue pencil icon next to a number, you will be able to edit the configuration of that number.

Basic settings

Internal name: Give a name to your phone number for admin, analysts, and supervisors to recognize. This label will make it easier to track multiple phone numbers while editing, viewing statistics and reports, and searching through call records.
VIP Phone number: Toggle On to send VIP tagged contacts to the front of the queue for Call to Group steps which have been assigned these VIP tags.
Sequence of steps for incoming call: Select Configure call flow to access the call flow designer (below section).
Allowed international calling: Select Manage to create limitations for international calls on this number. For security reasons, we recommend only enabling countries that are necessary for business.
- This can also be done in Account > Settings > International Calls.

Business Hours

When Business hours is toggled On, you can configure the business hour rules for this number:

Holidays: Toggle On to change availability based on national holidays recognized by the country associated with this number's country prefix.
- You can use this setting in combination with Exceptions to specify limited holiday availability.

Type: Set what will happen to the incoming call when someone calls this number outside business hours.
Your business hours: Add or edit rules by day and time range.
Exceptions: These are rules which overwrite your business hours rules on specific days or holidays.

Configuring business hours or international calls for a number will overwrite the company defaults for that number. If left alone, the number will behave according to the defaults set in Account > Settings.

Number Settings — Legacy

Click the ⚙️ icon to change settings for a number or step. Editing the number opens the Call number settings.

In Call number settings, you can enable/disable call recording and mandatory call tagging as necessary, or use company settings. Select to Configure Business Hours or Configure International Calls for this number.

Design Your Call Flow

While in the call flow designer, you can select the + icon on a step to insert a new action into your call flow. The action you choose will insert just after the step you have selected the + icon for.

Different actions may become available or unavailable depending on where in a branch you are trying to insert them, and some action types imply certain followup steps.

You should know that you can insert actions at any point in your call flow design. Forgot to add a welcome message before your IVR? Just press the + icon on the previous step to insert your recorded playback right where you need it.

Call Flow Actions

Action	What will it do?
Call to agent	Route all calls to a single agent.
Call to favorite agent	If a caller has a favorite agent listed on their contact, route to this agent. Otherwise, skip this step.
Call to group	Route calls to the selected group of agents.
Playback	Play a pre-recorded message or music for callers. *Tip: You can upload new sounds through Account > Sounds > `+ Add Sound`.*
Voicemail	Route calls to the voicemail of an assigned group or agent. *Tips:* Voicemails assigned to a group will send a voicemail notification email to the group email address when Send voicemails* options are set to Yes.* We recommend using a Playback* in the previous step that prompts callers to leave a message.*
Redirect to external number *Essential, Expert & Custom users	Redirect a business-critical call to a number outside CloudTalk. *Tips*: A redirected call appears as a new outbound call in data and is charged with outbound rates. (These outbound minutes will not be counted toward call packages assigned to specific agents.) CloudTalk will attempt to use the original caller-id, which may conflict with country restrictions or CLIR.
Call recording	Record a specific branch of the call flow. If this step is not added, use default recording options chosen in Settings.
Fax	Enable this number to receive fax messages. Automatically send all fax messages to the email account set. *Tip*: This step cannot be combined with other steps.
Conference	Assign this number as a conference room which can be reached by public phone numbers. *Tip*: This step cannot be combined with other steps.
Change of the outbound caller name *Essential, Expert & Custom users	Change the outbound caller ID - for example, before a Redirect to external number step. *Tips*: This action will result in the loss of the caller's number info. Use this when you want customers to recognize a forwarded call as your business. Otherwise, the outbound ID for forwarded calls defaults to the original inbound caller's number.
Get and dial an extension	Allow callers to type in the extension code of a particular agent. *Tip: Add a Playback** step before this to list the possible extensions.*
IVR *Essential, Expert & Custom users	Allow callers to navigate to the most appropriate group or agent by prompting them to type in numbers on their keypad for a desired call branch.
Time Route *Essential, Expert & Custom users	Route calls based on the day or time they come in. *Tips*: You can set custom paths for holidays or varying operation hours which exist for different locations of your business branches. The failover option covers any time not specified.
Go to *Expert & Custom users	Use a predefined call flow or branch from any of your CloudTalk numbers.
Condition splitter *Essential, Expert & Custom users	Filter calls through a series of conditions, branching calls to different routes depending on select details about the call, contact, or HTTP request response object. *Tip*: This step uses `AND` as an operator in cases with multiple conditions.
HTTP Request *Essential, Expert & Custom users	Send a custom HTTP request when this step is reached.
Collect input from caller	Prompt callers to use their keypad and input a response after hearing a pre-recorded message. *Tips:* The Pattern* defines the expected format of the input. It can be a constant value (like a password) or a RegEx function, along with a confirm character.* The result of the caller's input can be referenced within the map function of other actions.
Mark call as resolved	Automatically mark calls which reach this point as "resolved" in the system. *Tip*: This can improve the accuracy of your missed call data.
Copy call flow / Add saved flow	Allow admin to select one or more connected actions (or entire branches) in a call flow for copying, to paste into other call flow branches. *Tip: This is an alternative for users who do not have the Go to** step in their plan.*

What about my other action types? External API, Custom dial plan, and Webhook actions are legacy features that have been effectively replaced with our HTTP Request action for new call flow designs. (Don't worry, your existing call flows with these steps will still work as intended).

Delete a Step

Click the ⚙️icon to open settings for the step you want to delete.
Select the trashcan 🗑️to follow through with deletion.
Choose whether to delete only this step or all subsequent actions.
1. Be aware that If you delete an IVR or Time route step from your call flow, all subsequent actions will be deleted automatically due to the associated routing logic.

Example Call Flow Designs

Now that you have a basic grasp of how the designer works, let's look at some traditional routing practices.

The main aim of the Call Flow Designer is to avoid missed calls and to ensure your customers efficiently reach the agents who can be most helpful to them. Below are some straightforward examples of how to achieve that.

Basic Call to Group

A customer calling in through this number would be greeted with a welcome message (Playback step) before the call was routed to the "Agents" group (Call to group step).

If no agent from the "Agents" group answers, the customer is redirected to voicemail. If the call is answered, we mark the call as resolved.

IVR Route to Groups

In this slightly more advanced example, our customer again calls in to be greeted with a welcome message. The following IVR step will prompt the customer to type in a number on their keypad, which will decide what happens next for their call.

If they dial 1, they are routed to "Group A". Dialing 2 routes calls to "Group B". Finally, they can dial 3 to leave a voicemail for the billing department. As in the simpler example above, answered calls get marked as resolved and unanswered calls are routed to the group-associated voicemail.

Tips For a Successful IVR Step

Make sure the numbers your recorded message tells callers to press match the appropriate branch numbers on your call flow design.
Consider checking the Failover for no key pressed option in case the caller does not successfully pick something.
Give your customers enough time to listen to directions and dial a response. We recommend at least 20 Seconds to wait on this step.