Set up phone and SMS

Configure where calls and texts arrive. A line may support voice, SMS, or both; check its capabilities in Phone numbers.

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Before you start

Confirm the number your team intends to use and have a team-controlled phone available. An administrator should review number setup and incoming-call routing.

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Connect and test

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Review your numbers

Open Settings > Phone numbers and select the line. Review the displayed number, connection status, and available capabilities. Workspace lines serve team communication; numbers assigned to agents may have a different purpose. If the number is missing, ask your Trellis administrator or support contact to add it.

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Choose where new contacts arrive

Review the line’s default Inbox. This helps classify an incoming SMS or call from a previously unknown contact. Choose the team or contact type that owns that line, and check the actual receiving number when several lines are connected.

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Check incoming calls

Open the line’s Call flow to review who should ring and what happens if no one answers. Save and publish the intended flow when it is ready. Each teammate who should receive calls also needs the relevant access and their personal incoming-call preference enabled; see Settings. Call the line from the test phone. Confirm that the intended team receives it and that the call appears in the call history. For an SMS-enabled line, send a short text and confirm it arrives in Inbox under the correct contact and number. Reply once from Trellis and check the result on the phone.

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Choose how phones ring

Open the phone number’s call flow and select the block that rings your team. Choose how the selected people receive incoming calls:

• Ring everyone together starts every selected person’s phone at once.
• Ring one person at a time stops the previous attempt before calling the next person.
• Add people progressively keeps earlier phones ringing while adding the next person.

Progressive ringing adds the next person every 15 seconds by default. Reorder the people and adjust each step’s delay in the block. After the last person is added, everyone keeps ringing for the Final ring time, at least 30 seconds, before the fallback. For example, three people join at 0, 15, and 30 seconds, and the fallback starts at 60 seconds if nobody answers. If a person can’t take calls at that moment, Trellis skips them and gives the final ring to the last person it can reach. When both the app and a phone number are enabled for a person, they ring together at that person’s step. The total wait is capped at four minutes. Answering the call or ending it stops later attempts. Progressive ringing is available for phone-line routing. It is not available for WhatsApp calls or AI-to-team handoffs.

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Set what the AI says on calls

When a call flow sends callers to the AI agent, the call flow can set the greeting and phone instructions the AI uses on those calls:

1. Open the phone number’s call flow and select the AI agent block.
2. Under Greeting and phone instructions, write the greeting for the selected language and the instructions the AI follows on this flow’s calls.
3. To adjust them for one menu option or caller group, select that route and fill in Greeting and instructions for this route.
4. Publish the call flow.

These settings replace the agent’s own voice greeting and phone instructions only on calls this flow routes, so one agent can answer several numbers differently. A route’s greeting replaces the flow’s greeting, and its instructions are added after the flow’s. Leave the fields empty to keep the agent’s voice settings. Name the agent and your company in the greeting. The greeting and phone instructions on the agent’s Voice settings apply to outbound calls and to numbers that don’t use a call flow.

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Recover a disconnected number

Return to Settings > Phone numbers and read the line’s status or setup warning. Ask an administrator to resolve the indicated issue, then repeat the affected inbound test. Avoid repeated outbound attempts while the previous result is uncertain.

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Common problems

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Related articles

• Inbox — review messages and call history.
• Settings — incoming-call and notification preferences.
• Connect WhatsApp — configure WhatsApp calling separately.