How an incoming call is routed
The order the phone system decides in — emergency callbacks, screening, the schedule, the destination, and the chain that runs when nobody answers.
Most routing questions are really ordering questions: which setting wins when two of them disagree. This page is the order the phone system actually decides in, so you can predict the outcome before placing a test call and know which page to change when the outcome is wrong.
The order of decisions
- Emergency callback window. If the dialed number is inside an open callback window, the call goes straight to the phone that placed the emergency call and nothing else on this list runs.
- Route resolution. The phone system finds the number, reads the clock in its own time zone, resolves the time period, and looks up the action saved for that number and period.
- Spam screening. The caller is scored once, on first contact. While screening is enforcing, a caller over your enforcement threshold takes your override action instead of the resolved destination.
- Delivery. The destination runs — phones ring, a menu plays, or an assistant answers.
- The no-answer chain. If nobody answers, the destination’s own unanswered route runs, and so on until something answers, records a message, or the chain ends.
The time period is resolved once, at the start of the call. Every later step in the same call — an unanswered hand-off, a menu choice — uses the period the call started in, so a call that begins one minute before closing keeps following your open-hours routing all the way through.
Emergency callbacks bypass routing
When someone dials 911 from an extension, the number shown to the emergency operator gets a 60-minute callback window, so a call back from emergency services reaches the person who called rather than your main greeting.
While the window is open, an inbound call to that number rings the exact phone that placed the emergency call, for up to 60 seconds. It does not follow the schedule, the incoming action, a call menu, or spam screening, and no recording announcement is played. The window opens only for a number this phone system can receive calls on, and it closes by itself 60 minutes after the emergency call. It cannot be opened, extended, or cancelled from the dashboard.
Expect to see a call handled this way in your records with no relation to the routing you configured. That is the feature working.
What each destination does
| Destination | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Extension | Rings every phone assigned to it, for its own no-answer timeout |
| Call group | Rings every assigned extension at once, for the group’s no-answer timeout |
| Call menu | Plays the greeting, collects a digit, and runs the matching button’s action sequence |
| Call Assistant | An AI voice assistant answers and handles the conversation |
| Voicemail | Records a message to the company, extension, or call group mailbox |
| External forward | Dials the outside number you entered |
| Routing rules | Evaluates your conditions and takes the first match, or the default |
| Remote system | Hands the call to a destination on another of your phone systems |
An extension with no phones assigned never rings. The call immediately follows that extension’s own If Unanswered route for the current time period, which is what makes such an extension useful as a routing hub — a single place to change where a published extension number sends people. If it has no usable unanswered route, the caller is told the extension is not available and the call ends.
A call menu waits briefly after its greeting. The greeting plays as many times as Max Repeats allows within one listening window; after that the No-Input Action runs. There is no second prompt, so a caller hears the greeting exactly the number of times you configured and then the call moves on.
When nobody answers
An unanswered extension or call group hands the call to the If Unanswered action saved for the current time period. That action can itself be an extension, a call group, a menu, an assistant, a voicemail box, an external number, a rule set, or a destination on another phone system — so the chain can continue.
Two things stop it:
- A hop budget. Each hand-off counts. Steer Phones sets the maximum for your phone system — five unless it has been changed for you — and hand-offs to another phone system draw on the same budget, so a call cannot bounce between shops indefinitely.
- A final fallback. When the budget runs out, or when a step has no unanswered route configured, the call goes to the mailbox of the last extension or call group it tried. If there is no mailbox to fall back to, the caller hears a goodbye and the call ends.
If the caller hangs up before anyone answers, no unanswered routing runs at all; the call is recorded as abandoned.
Expected result
Given a number, a time, and a caller, you can predict the destination: check for an open emergency callback window, then the time period the schedule resolves, then that period’s action, then the screening outcome, then the unanswered route of whatever it rang. A test call placed at a known time should land where that walk-through says it will.