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Connecting your phone system

Send callers to your Telvana agent from an IVR option or a forwarding rule. There is no carrier change and no SIP project.

Telvana answers calls on its own phone numbers. Each agent has one, which we set up when we build the agent with you; you'll find it on the portal's Phone Numbers page. To bring callers to the agent, your phone system forwards or transfers calls to that number, the same way it would send a call to any outside number.

Choose where calls come from

Most teams start with one of these:

  • An IVR menu option, such as "Press 1 to talk to our AI assistant now", set as an external transfer to the agent's number. Callers who want to wait for a person still can.
  • A forwarding rule for after hours, so calls outside your opening times go to the agent.
  • An overflow rule, so callers who would otherwise wait in the hold queue go to the agent.
  • The agent's number on its own, published wherever you want callers to reach the agent directly.

The setting lives in your phone system's admin, under whatever it calls external transfers, call forwarding or routing to an outside number. Your phone system or carrier support can point you to it.

Test it

  1. Call your main number and take the path you configured, for example pressing 1.
  2. Check that the agent answers and the call sounds right.
  3. Open Conversations in the portal. The call appears there once it ends, with its transcript and summary.

When a caller needs a person

With Call Transfer turned on in the agent's settings, the agent can hand a caller to a person. Transfers go to the number you choose, such as your main queue, and we configure that with you when we build the agent.

A transfer is an ordinary call to that number. The person who picks up doesn't get a summary first, so if they need the details of the conversation, they can read it in the portal afterwards.

Transfer Caller ID, under Call Transfer, decides which number the person sees: the caller's phone number or the agent's. Through the API, the same settings are hasCallTransfer and transferCallerId (human or agent) on Update agent settings.

Calls the agent places

Outbound calls go out from the agent's number. To place them from your own software, see Placing outbound calls.