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Call flow how-tos

Edit a call flow, save a draft, place a test call, publish it, and point a phone number at it.

Updated October 28, 20263 min readFor owners and admins

A call flow decides what happens to a call: play a greeting, offer a menu, check your hours, ring a team, take a voicemail. You build it on a canvas by connecting nodes.

You don't need a flow for simple setups. A number can ring one person or a queue directly. Use a flow when you want more, like a menu or after-hours handling.

Start a flow

Open Call flows. You'll see Active flows, Drafts, Templates and Archived.

  • Start from a template. Open a template and click Customize. You get your own editable copy, and the original keeps getting updates from Hey Quad.
  • Start from scratch. Click New flow.

Edit a flow

  1. Open the flow.
  2. Use the Add node panel to find a node, and drag it onto the canvas.
  3. Click a node to change its settings.
  4. Connect nodes by dragging from a handle on one node to the next node. Each handle is one outcome, like Prompt finished, No answer or Caller hung up.

Your changes save as a draft as you go. The draft isn't live. Callers keep getting the published flow until you publish.

A node with a problem is highlighted, and you can't publish until it's fixed.

Test before you publish

  1. Click Test in the editor.
  2. Pick where to ring you, and optionally a Caller ID.
  3. Click Place test call.
  4. Answer your phone. The call runs the flow as it is in the editor, including changes you haven't published.

You can fill in Variables to try different cases, and save them as a preset.

Publish

  1. Click Publish….
  2. Review the list of problems (if any), what changed, and where the flow is used: Numbers, Extensions and other flows.
  3. Add a short note about what you changed, if you like.
  4. Click Publish (or Publish to live callers when real numbers use it).

Changed your mind before publishing? Open the More actions menu and click Discard draft.

To see or go back to an older version, open More actions and click Version history.

Point a phone number at a flow

  1. Open Phone numbers and click the number.
  2. Under Routing, pick the flow from Your flows.

Calls use the flow right away.

To make a flow the starting point for numbers you buy or port in later, choose it as the Default flow on the Phone numbers page.

You can also run a flow from a short number: create a System — a call flow extension. See Extensions and devices.

Common nodes

To do thisUse
Play a greeting or messagePlay prompt or audio
Offer a "press 1" menuCollect digits. See Build a phone menu
Do something different after hoursCheck business hours. See Business hours
Ring a person or several peopleRequest agent
Send callers to a team's waiting lineSend to queue. See Build a call queue
Let your AI receptionist answerAI receptionist
Take a messageVoicemail
Look up the caller in your contactsLook up contact
Send data to another systemCall an API. See Connect an integration
End the callEnd call

Every node has its own page in the node reference.

Common questions

  • I changed the flow but callers hear the old one. You haven't published. Click Publish….
  • The flow won't publish. Fix the highlighted nodes first. The publish window lists each problem and takes you to it.
  • I deleted a flow by mistake. Archived flows can be restored from Archived. A deleted flow can't be brought back.