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We have set-up our Flex, and stuck on one of the last steps. We are a small office, and have a main number that clients call us on. If they ask for a specific employee, more importantly, if the specific employee is required to answer the client issue, and they are marked UNAVAILABLE, it doesn't appear we have access to send the call to voicemail (the transfer button is grayed out).

Is there a work around? A way to direct call the VM? Do we need to tweak our flow? If not, it appears we need to be logged in 24/7 to have access to VM's. A fairly inefficient and expensive option.

Gregory D Gardner CFP
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  • How have you set up the voicemail in the first place? – philnash Feb 16 '22 at 00:12
  • Yes, VM is fully operational. HOWEVER, the person that answers the call can only transfer a call to someone's VM when they are 'available'. I want to be able to directly transfer call to VM box, regardless of agent's status. – Gregory D Gardner CFP Feb 18 '22 at 17:15
  • Ok, so how have you set this up so far? How does it work? Is there a tutorial you have followed for this? – philnash Feb 20 '22 at 06:31
  • Yes. It works.....UNLESS I'm out of the office/Offline – Gregory D Gardner CFP Mar 03 '22 at 20:27
  • Hi Gregory, I am unable to help you unless you tell me what you've already done. Please let me know how you set this voicemail up. – philnash Mar 03 '22 at 22:31
  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/13gRxNeZL4keVwld288bK-arnKZyrVJWn/view?usp=sharing – Gregory D Gardner CFP Mar 07 '22 at 14:36
  • Ok, that's the studio flow when someone calls your phone number, but you're talking about transferring to voicemail from within Flex. How did you set up to transfer to voicemail from within Flex? As far as I know, Flex allows you to transfer calls to other active agents, because they can answer them, and that's why you can't transfer a call to an agent that is unavailable. But you want to transfer it directly to their voicemail? – philnash Mar 07 '22 at 22:17
  • Yes, correct. Is there not a way to get a call to a particular agent's VM is that agent is not marked AVAILABLE? what about the 'record call' feature, or send to a VM box outside of Flex? How do other organizations do this? Do I even technically need Flex, or could I get all the features I need with just Twilio Voice? Thanks for your insight. – Gregory D Gardner CFP Mar 09 '22 at 01:15

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OK, I think I know what the issue is. A call comes through to one agent in Flex, but they need to transfer it to the other agent. If the other agent is also available, they can transfer the call no problem. If the other agent is not available, you would like to transfer the call to that agent's voicemail, but there's no way to do that right now.

The issue is that Flex is built around available agents and doesn't have voicemail built in. You've added voicemail as part of the Studio Flow, but this is not integrated to the Flex interface at all.

I would solve this with a Flex plugin that does a couple of things:

  • Add a button to the agent transfer list for unavailable agents to send to their voicemail.
  • That button would trigger a request to a Twilio Function, sending it the Call's Sid and the agent you want to transfer to.
  • The Function could then use the calls API to update the call, redirecting it to the existing voicemail handlers that you have for your agents.

I'm afraid I don't have example code for this plugin, but there is great documentation on building Flex plugins that you can follow to get up to speed.

philnash
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  • Appreciate the offer, but I work at Twilio and don't do consultancy work on this stuff. I'm just here to try to help. If you can get a developer to work on this, they should be able to sort this out for you. – philnash Mar 10 '22 at 22:26