A telephone number (10 digit number) is just an identifier used to deliver a call to your phone system.  How you route those phone calls is up to you.  Essentially you have 5 broad options to choose from for routing a call:

  1. Voice Menu / IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
  2. Ring Group / Call Queue (i.e. a group of users)
  3. Direct to a specific extension (sometimes called a direct dial number)
  4. Voicemail box
  5. External numbers (on call cell phone, for example)


If you tell us what you're wanting to do, we can probably make it happen.  Just write out a literal script, and we'll help you get the messages recorded and get everything configured properly.  See this article for more details on recording messages.


In your script, make sure you consider the following things:

  • What do you want the system to do if nobody answers?
  • Do you want to set office hours?  Do you want to do anything special for breaks or holdays?
  • What do you want the system to do after hours?
  • What do you want to do if the phone company or the phone system or your Internet connection go offline?


These questions are deceptively simple - there are a lot of different combinations of times/callers/employees/situations to be considered.