How a call reaches the right person

The decisions a phone system makes between a caller dialing a business number and someone answering — the schedule, the destination, the no-answer chain, and the record the call leaves.

Most questions about a business phone system are really questions about order: which setting wins when two of them point different ways. This page describes the sequence a phone system works through between a caller dialing a number and somebody — or something — answering. It explains the model rather than the screens, so it is the background to have before reading any configuration guidance.

The path a call takes

  caller dials a business number
            |
            v
  which time period is it?          (date override -> weekly schedule -> default)
            |
            v
  should this caller be screened?   (flag, divert, or carry on)
            |
            v
  the destination for that number
  in that period                    (extension, group, menu, assistant, mailbox, ...)
            |
     answered? --- yes ---> the conversation happens
            |
            no
            v
  the destination's own no-answer route, and so on
            |
            v
  a mailbox, or a spoken goodbye

1. The number. Each phone number a business owns carries its own routing, so two numbers on the same phone system can behave completely differently.
2. The time period. The phone system reads the clock in its own time zone and works out which time period applies — a date override for today first, then the weekly schedule, then the default period. This is resolved once, when the call starts, and the whole call follows the period it began in. A call that arrives a minute before closing keeps its open-hours treatment all the way through.
3. Screening. Where spam screening is enabled, an inbound caller from an outside number is scored once, on first contact. A caller past the business’s flag threshold is marked for review but still connects; a caller past the enforcement threshold can be diverted instead. Screening never fails a call closed — when no score can be produced, the call routes normally.
4. The destination. The action saved for that number and that time period runs: phones ring, a menu plays, an assistant answers, or a message is recorded.
5. The no-answer chain. If nobody picks up within the destination’s timeout, that destination’s own unanswered route runs, and the same question is asked again of whatever it reached.
6. The ending. The call is answered, the caller leaves a message, or the caller hears a closing message and the call ends.

Where a call can end up

A destination is anything the phone system can hand a call to. The same list is available for the route a number takes at a given hour, for what happens when a destination goes unanswered, and for what a call menu digit does.

Conditional rules are what make a route depend on something other than the clock — where the caller is calling from, which number they dialed, or which location sent the call. Everything else on the list is a place; a rule set is a decision that picks one.

When nobody answers

Coverage is the part of a phone system that gets designed last and matters most, because it is what runs on the calls a business would otherwise miss.

Each extension and call group has its own no-answer timeout and its own unanswered route, and that route is configured per time period — so a group can drop to its own mailbox during open hours and forward to an answering service after close. Because the unanswered route can itself be another extension, group, menu, assistant, or linked location, coverage forms a chain rather than a single fallback.

Two things stop that chain from running forever:

• A hop budget. Every hand-off counts against a limit set for the phone system, including hand-offs to another location, so a call cannot bounce between destinations indefinitely.
• A final fallback. When the budget is spent, or a step has no unanswered route at all, the call falls to the mailbox of the last extension or group it tried. With no mailbox to fall back to, the caller hears a closing message and the call ends.

The practical implication is to design a chain that terminates somewhere that always answers — a mailbox or a menu — rather than relying on the limit to catch it.

A caller who hangs up before anyone answers stops the process entirely; no unanswered routing runs, and the call is recorded as abandoned.

What the call leaves behind

The call record exists as soon as the call does. Its audio, transcript, and analysis catch up afterwards, in that order, and each stage can lag the one before it. That is why a call can be listened to before it can be read, and read before it has been scored.

A call that crosses between two linked phone systems is recorded by both: each system logs and records its own part of the conversation, which is worth knowing when a recording seems to cover only half of what was said.

For what those records contain and what the terms in them mean, see Core concepts and vocabulary.

Related guidance

• Core concepts and vocabulary.
• Steer Phones documentation.