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Set up transfer destinations

Give a Call Assistant somewhere to send callers, and control which request lands where.

When a caller asks for a person or a department, the assistant uses its Transfer Call tool and looks for a matching transfer destination. Destinations belong to one assistant, so each assistant carries its own map of where callers can go.

Prerequisites

  • The assistant is saved. The card tells you to save first on a brand-new assistant, because a destination has to attach to something.
  • Transfer Call is enabled on the assistant’s Enabled Tools card. The Transfer Destinations card only appears when it is.
  • The extensions, call groups, or call menus you intend to transfer to already exist.

Add a destination

  1. Open the assistant and scroll to Transfer Destinations.
  2. Select + Add Destination.
  3. Enter a Name that describes the endpoint the way your team says it out loud — Front desk, Billing, Service manager. The name is also used for matching, so keep it natural.
  4. Choose a Type and then its Target:
    • Extension — one extension; the phones assigned to it ring.
    • Call Group — a group of extensions.
    • Call Menu — hands the caller to a menu.
    • Phone Number — any outside number, entered in international format such as +15551234567.
    • Remote Phone System — an entity in another phone system, offered only when your system belongs to a group. Pick the system, the kind of target, then the target itself.
  5. Decide how the destination is chosen:
    • Leave Catch All off and add one or more Keywords. Type a keyword and select Add; select a keyword badge to remove it.
    • Or turn Catch All on to take every transfer that no other destination matched. Turning it on clears the keywords, and only one destination per assistant can be the catch all.
  6. For an extension or remote destination, optionally turn on Whisper Summary. The person answering then hears a short spoken summary of who is calling and why before the caller is connected.
  7. Leave Enabled on, and select Create.

Repeat for each place a caller might ask for. Give every assistant a catch all so an unusual request still reaches a human.

How the assistant picks a destination

At transfer time the assistant works through your enabled destinations in list order and stops at the first match:

  1. A destination whose keyword and the caller’s request contain one another, ignoring case. billing matches “I have a billing question” and “bill”.
  2. Failing that, a destination whose name and the request contain one another. Catch-all destinations are skipped in this pass.
  3. Failing that, the catch all.

Disabled destinations are skipped entirely. If nothing matches, the transfer fails and the assistant tells the caller it could not transfer them, so a catch all is the difference between a dead end and a person.

Order matters whenever keywords overlap. Use the up and down arrows on a row to move it; the list is evaluated top to bottom.

Edit, reorder, or remove

  • Change any field on a row and select Save. Save is only active once something differs from what is stored, and Reset puts the row back.
  • Changing Type clears the target you had chosen, since the previous value means nothing under a new type. Re-pick the target before saving.
  • Turn Enabled off to take a destination out of service without losing its keywords.
  • Delete removes the row immediately.

Expected result

The card lists your destinations in evaluation order, each with a target, keywords or the catch-all flag, and its enabled state. The assistant’s card in the Assistants list no longer warns that no transfer destinations are defined, and a test call that asks for each department reaches the right place.

Troubleshooting

  • The Transfer Destinations card is missing: the assistant does not have Transfer Call enabled, or the tools it inherits from its Profile do not include it.
  • “Save the assistant first to start adding transfer destinations”: create the assistant, then come back to the card.
  • Create stays disabled: a required piece is missing — a name, a target, and either at least one keyword or Catch All.
  • Catch All cannot be turned on: another destination already holds it. The row says which state it is in; turn it off there first.
  • “Enter a valid E.164 number”: a phone-number destination needs international format, starting with + and the country code.
  • A caller is transferred to the wrong place: two destinations have overlapping keywords. Tighten the keywords or move the more specific destination above the other.
  • Transfers fail on live calls: confirm at least one destination is enabled, and that its target still exists and has a phone that can ring.
  • “Reorder partially failed”: one of the two rows in a swap did not update. The list refreshes itself; check the order and move the row again.