Send alerts when calls need attention

Route call, voicemail, and analysis events to SMS, email, Slack, or Teams with conditions and rate limits that keep alerts useful.

An alert rule watches for one kind of event, narrows it with conditions, and delivers a message. The two pages under Settings > Notifications split that job: Channels holds the Slack and Teams destinations you have connected, and Rules decides what gets sent and when. Alerts that go to a phone number or an email address need no channel — those recipients are typed into the rule itself.

Connect a Slack or Teams channel

1. Open Settings > Notifications > Channels and select Add Channel.
2. Name the channel for the room it posts to, so a rule author can recognize it in a list.
3. Choose Slack or Microsoft Teams. The type is fixed once the channel is created.
4. Paste the incoming webhook URL you created on that platform. It must begin with https://.
5. Optionally set a Default Channel, such as #front-desk. A rule action can override it.
6. Save, then select Test. A successful test marks the channel Verified and records the time under Last Tested.

The stored webhook URL is never displayed again. To rotate it, edit the channel and select Replace, then paste the new URL. Deleting a channel disables any rule action that pointed at it, so repoint those rules first. A channel listed as operator managed was set up by Steer Phones and cannot be edited from the dashboard.

Create an alert rule

1. Open Settings > Notifications > Rules and select Add Rule.
2. Name the rule for the situation it covers, such as Negative call escalation.
3. Choose the Trigger Event.
4. Add conditions if the trigger alone would be too noisy.
5. Add at least one action. A rule with no action is saved but delivers nothing.
6. Set a rate limit and leave the status active.
7. Select Create.

The list then shows each rule’s trigger, its enabled actions, and its rate limit. Select the status badge to pause or resume a rule without deleting it, use the duplicate control to build a variant, and remember that deleting a rule also removes its notification history.

Every active rule for a trigger is evaluated independently, so two rules on the same trigger both fire. Priority only orders that evaluation, higher first — it does not stop a lower-priority rule from sending.

Trigger events

Incoming and after-hours calls fire at the start of a call, so nothing about the conversation is known yet — conditions about sentiment, category, or score belong on the analysis trigger, which fires once those values exist.

Narrow with conditions

Conditions are optional. Without them the rule fires for every event of the selected type, which the editor warns you about on the two triggers that are usually too broad on their own.

Each condition is a field, an operator, and a value. Available fields depend on what the event carries:

• Voicemail — voicemail type (company, extension, or call group), the receiving extension, or the receiving call group.
• Classification and sentiment — call category, overall sentiment, customer sentiment, employee sentiment.
• Scoring — the scorecard score, or which scorecard was used.
• Routing and call info — the answering extension, the call group that routed the call, direction, or duration in seconds.
• Outcome — whether the call converted, or the specific business outcome reached.

Operators follow the field. Text and number fields offer comparisons including greater than, less than, and between; list-style fields offer is, is not, is any of, and is not any of. The conversion field offers only Is, with an explicit Converted or Not Converted value, so a rule can never match unanalyzed calls by accident.

With more than one condition, choose whether the rule needs all of them or any of them.

Choose how the alert is delivered

Add one or more actions; each can be enabled or disabled without being removed. The editor lists the placeholder tokens available for the selected trigger, so a message can name the caller, the extension, or the call.

If the type you want has no channel yet, the action says so and links you to the Channels page. A rule may also carry operator-managed actions that are not shown in the editor; the form tells you how many and preserves them when you save.

Limit how often a rule fires

Rate Limit Count and Rate Limit Window cap deliveries — for example three per fifteen minutes. Set the count to 0 for no limit. The window options run from one minute to 24 hours.

The limit is counted per rule. Once a rule reaches its count inside the current window, further matching events are dropped rather than queued: they are not delivered late when the window rolls over. Set the cap to the number of alerts a person can actually act on.

The Emergency 911 rule

Your phone system carries an emergency notification rule that Steer Phones creates and maintains. It is listed with the other rules and shows what it will send, but it opens read-only: it cannot be edited, paused, or deleted from the dashboard, and its status badge is marked as the emergency rule.

If that badge shows the rule as paused, emergency alerts are not being sent. Contact support — this is not something to work around with a rule of your own.

Expected result

A test post reaches your Slack or Teams room, the rule list shows the trigger, actions, and rate limit you intended, and matching events deliver at the frequency you capped them at.

Troubleshooting

• A test fails: The webhook URL is wrong, revoked, or points at a deleted room. Edit the channel, select Replace, and paste a current URL.
• The channel list is empty when adding a Slack or Teams action: Create the channel first; actions can only reference channels that already exist and are active.
• A rule never fires: Confirm the rule is active, that the trigger really carries the field you filtered on, and that an all-conditions rule is not asking for a combination that never occurs.
• A sentiment or score condition on an incoming-call rule never matches: Those values do not exist yet when a call arrives. Move the rule to the analysis-complete trigger.
• Alerts stop partway through a busy period: The rule hit its rate limit. Raise the count, widen the window, or tighten the conditions.
• Alerts arrive twice: Two active rules match the same event. Check for a duplicate rule on the same trigger.
• A colleague stopped receiving email or SMS alerts: Recipients live on the action, not on user accounts. Edit the action’s recipient list.

Related guidance

• Score calls with scorecards.
• Configure call categories, sentiment, and handlers.
• Review and manage voicemail messages.
• Configure business hours and incoming call routing.
• Assign E911 emergency addresses.