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Course

Building your phone menu

Draw the menu your callers hear, send each choice to the right people, and publish it without cutting off anyone already on the line.

  • 3 lessons
  • About 4 min of reading
  • For whoever sets up the phone menu

Written by John, Owner and CEO. Last reviewed September 15, 2026.

Screen and button names are quoted as the portal shows them.

Lesson 1

Start from a ready-made menu

1 min read

By the end, you can

  • Choose the right kind of flow.
  • Start from one of the six ready-made menus.
  • Send a number to your flow.

Steps

  1. Open IVR Flows and create a flow. Say what it is for: answering a number, running while a caller waits in a queue, or a shared piece other flows can run. This cannot be changed later.
  2. Under “Start from”, pick a template or an empty canvas. The templates are Greeting, then your team; Open and closed hours; Main menu; English and French; Look the caller up first; and While the caller waits.
  3. Add steps and connect each exit to the next step. Use Tidy to line the canvas up, and Undo when a change goes wrong.
  4. Once the flow is published, open Phone Numbers and send the number to that call flow under “Inbound calls go to”.

A waiting flow runs again and again while the caller is on hold, and publish refuses a step that cannot work there.

Read more

Check what you learned

Your answers are checked in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

  1. You want something to play while callers wait for Support. Which kind of flow do you create?
  2. Can you change a flow's kind after creating it?

Show the answers
  1. One that runs while a caller waits in a queue The waiting kind is the one a team plays under “While callers wait”.
  2. No: create a new flow of the kind you need The form warns that the kind cannot be changed later.

Lesson 2

The steps a menu is made of

1 min read

By the end, you can

  • Build a menu that sends each key to the right place.
  • Handle a caller who presses nothing, or the wrong key.
  • Offer voicemail when nobody is free.

Steps

  1. Greet the caller with Play message, or with Play audio file for a recording you uploaded.
  2. Add Collect digits / Menu. Wire each “Press N” exit, then wire No input and Invalid key so nobody is left in silence.
  3. Send a choice to a team with Transfer to queue, or to one person with Transfer to a person. Wire the “No agent / timeout” exit too.
  4. Offer Voicemail when nobody is free. It records up to 120 seconds by default and can transcribe the message.
  5. Use Language selection so the caller picks French or English once, and Business hours to split open from closed.

Steps that reach outside, such as API / HTTP request and Webhook, can only call https addresses your organization has approved in advance.

Read more

Check what you learned

Your answers are checked in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

  1. A caller presses 7 on a menu that offers 1 to 3. Where do they go?
  2. Which exit of Transfer to queue handles nobody picking up?

Show the answers
  1. Wherever you wired the Invalid key exit Collect digits has its own exits for no input and for an invalid key. Wire both.
  2. No agent / timeout Send that exit to voicemail, a callback offer or another team, so the caller always has somewhere to go.

Lesson 3

Publish, go back, and handle a bad day

2 min read

By the end, you can

  • Publish a flow and fix what publish reports.
  • Go back to an earlier version.
  • Replace the whole flow with one announcement when something goes wrong.

Steps

  1. Press Publish. Errors, such as a missing Start step or a required setting left blank, stop the publish; warnings, such as an exit with nothing connected or a step nobody can reach, let it go ahead. Use “Go to the next problem block” to jump to each one.
  2. Callers already on the line finish on the version they started with. Only new calls get the version you just published.
  3. To undo a published change, open Version history and revert. Reverting creates a new version from the old one, so the history stays complete.
  4. If something goes wrong on the day, open Safety settings. Choose what happens if a step fails, and turn on the emergency announcement: a message every caller hears instead of the flow, followed by ending the call or taking a message.
  5. Turn the announcement off when you are done. It is recorded with who turned it on and when.

The portal has no way to rehearse a call against a flow before you publish. The free phone menu builder on this site lets you act as the caller on a draft of your menu first.

Read more

Check what you learned

Your answers are checked in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

  1. You publish a new menu while five people are on the line. What do they hear?
  2. A water leak closes the office. Which control replaces the whole flow with one message, without a publish?

Show the answers
  1. The version they started with, until their call ends Each call keeps the version it started on.
  2. The emergency announcement in Safety settings The announcement plays to every caller instead of the flow, and a flow still used by a number cannot be deleted anyway.

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