📞 Voice and calling
Forwarding, voicemail, business hours, and the dialer.
Voice on TelBuddy is a set of small, ordinary behaviours that the carrier console makes unreasonably hard to arrange: ring this phone, then that one, then take a message, and do something different after hours.
The order to set things up
- Forwarding first, with a primary and a backup, so calls reach a human before anything clever happens.
- Voicemail, so a missed call still leaves something behind.
- Business hours, so the after-hours path is deliberate rather than whatever forwarding happens to do at 9pm.
- Phone menus only once the above works, and only if callers genuinely need to choose a department.
Worth knowing
- A whisper message plays to whoever answers before the caller is connected, so they know it is a business call.
- Queues hold callers in order with music instead of a busy signal, and agents press 1 to accept so a mobile's voicemail cannot swallow the call.
- The dialer rings your own phone first, then bridges. It is not a browser softphone and needs no microphone permission.
What happens to a call, in order
Most routing problems turn out to be one step firing before another, so it helps to picture the chain:
- The call reaches your carrier, on the number you own.
- The carrier hands it to TelBuddy, because syncing the number pointed its voice notifications here.
- Business hours decide which path applies right now.
- A phone menu, if you built one, lets the caller choose a department.
- Forwarding rings the destination for that path, then the backup.
- Voicemail catches whatever is left, and the recording and transcript land in the dashboard.
The one that catches everyone
When forwarding sends a call to a mobile, that mobile's own voicemail is competing with yours. Whichever answers first wins, and a handset that is switched off or out of signal answers instantly. That is why a call you expected to find in the dashboard sometimes ends up in a personal voicemail box nobody checks.
Two ways out. Shorten the ring time so the call comes back before the handset gives up, or use a queue, where whoever answers has to press a key to accept it. A voicemail system cannot press a key, so the call cannot be swallowed.