Configure inbound calls

Inbound calls are great for having local visibility in various markets around the world. These types of calls are initiated by your customers dialing a voice number. Your business leases this number from Infobip, and Infobip lets you define what should happen with incoming calls.

Voice numbers

Voice numbers are phone numbers that can receive incoming calls on the Infobip platform.

If you plan on using inbound calls, you must have a Voice number. Also, if you want to have a dedicated caller ID with outbound calls, you need a Voice number.

Voice numbers are purchased, or rather, leased from Infobip. You can acquire new numbers from the web interface or API.

Buy numbers via the web interface

1. If you already have an Infobip account, log in to the web interface. You can buy numbers from Channels & Numbers > Numbers > Buy number, or Channels & Numbers > Voice > Buy number.
2. Select the number you want to buy (lease). Select the country. If you are buying a number from Channels & Numbers > Numbers > Buy number, make sure to select Voice.
3. If this number will be used to answer inbound calls, follow how to set up voice actions on your number.

Buy numbers via API

Infobip API allows you to buy numbers without using the web interface letting you automate the process when needed.

To buy a number via API, refer to Numbers API documentation.

Set up inbound call actions

Inbound call actions over web interface

Log in to your account, and navigate to Channels and Numbers > Voice. When you click on any of your acquired voice numbers, a slider opens up on the right part of the screen, allowing you to define the action that will be executed when a new incoming call is received on that number.

The available actions are:

• Forward to phone number – Forward all incoming calls to your business phone number.

• Trigger Number Masking – This is a special case of forwarding a call to a phone number. The number Infobip forwards the call to is defined in a response Infobip receives from your platform as an answer to our number masking API request. The Number Masking feature guarantees security and anonymity. Refer to Number Masking for more details.

• Use Conversations – Forward incoming calls directly to Infobip Conversations.

• Forward to applications – Forward incoming calls to your Calls API application.

• Missed call – This is a special type of inbound calls where an inbound call reaches the Infobip platform but the call is not answered. Instead, the Infobip platform rejects the call and sends your platform information about a received call using an API request. Due to telecom regulatory sensitivity, this feature is available in a limited number of markets. For details, contact our Sales team.

• No action – The incoming call won't trigger any configuration nor will it be forwarded.

Forward call to phone number

To forward all incoming calls to one predefined phone number, from the drop-down menu, select Forward to phone number and enter the number starting with country code (without 00 or +).

Enter the parameters and click SAVE.

This is what the high-level overview looks like:

Missed call

When you have the Missed call service configured on your Voice number, the Infobip platform receives the inbound calls from your customers. The call is not answered and Infobip sends you the information about this missed call via an HTTP request. It contains the end-user's caller ID, the Voice number that was dialed, and the time stamp of the call.

This is what the high-level overview looks like:

What you do with this missed call depends on how you set up your business logic.

How this works is your end users call this number to get certain information. Now, how will you distribute this information to them is up to you. For example, you can set up an SMS or either a text-to-speech or pre-recorded audio call trigger on Infobip API endpoints.

Missed call automated replies

Missed call automated replies enable you to set up additional communication with your end users using your preferred channel of communication. For now, you can send an e-mail or SMS, and even initiate an outbound call.

When the Infobip platform receives a call on the Voice number that has Missed Call configuration, we send an outbound communication to the end user who initially made an inbound call toward the Voice number.

This is how you can set up automated replies in the Missed Call element.

Navigate to the Moments module on the web interface, then click Create flow > Start from scratch and select Inbound Call.

On the Inbound Call side panel, select the number to be used to receive missed calls. Turn on the Missed call toggle.

If there are no Voice numbers available in the drop-down menu, you can purchase numbers in the Channels and Numbers module located at the bottom left > Voice > Buy number. 

Note that the Missed Call feature may not be available in all countries. If you don't see it on your account, contact our Sales team to enable this. 

If you want your platform to receive a missed call alert, you need to define the setup name, your platform URL, and ringing time. Do not fill in these fields if you want the Infobip platform to send an automated reply to your end users.

Just close the side panel and in the entry point canvas on the left side, click the arrow on the Inbound call to define the next action in your flow.

Once done, validate your flow to send communication to your end users.

Check the dedicated Moments documentation section to learn more about available elements.

Inbound call actions over API

To set up an action for inbound calls via API, use the Number management methods. 

The typical flow is:

• Retrieve the numberKey of your purchased number. You can use the List purchase numbers method to retrieve this reference.
• Create a voice setup, specifying both the retrieved numberKey and desired action type for your request.