Call routing

Decide who rings when a number is called, what happens outside opening hours, and how a keypad menu sends callers to the right team.

Open Settings → Call routing to say what happens when someone dials one of the practice's numbers. It needs the owner or manager role.

Each number is configured on its own, so a general line and a whitening-campaign number can behave completely differently.

Ring groups

A ring group is the set of people a call rings. Build them once in the Ring groups card, then point numbers at them.

Click Add ring group and give it a name — Front desk, for example.

Under Who rings, choose Selected members and pick people, or A location's staff and pick the Location. A location's staff are the members assigned to that site on Settings → Team members who have calling enabled.

Click Save.

A location's staff is worth preferring for a site's main line: someone who joins the practice later starts ringing as soon as they are given that location on the Team page and enable calling — the group itself never changes. The Ring groups card lists such a group as Staff at the location. A member can work at several locations and then rings for each of them; a member with no location belongs to no location's staff, so reach them through Selected members. See Give each member a location.

A group can only be deleted when no number's routing still points at it — the page says which one is using it. In the same way, a location that a location's-staff group still rings cannot be archived: repoint or delete the group first.

A device rings only while it is registered and not on do-not-disturb, and a member who is already on a call is left out of the ring altogether. A device that has gone quiet — its browser tab closed, the desk app shut down — may still be dialled for a moment before the platform learns it is gone; the call simply waits for the rest of the group. A group whose members have all closed the CRM is treated as nobody answering, so the call moves on to voicemail rather than ringing into silence.

Opening hours

For each number, set Opening hours to:

A location's hours — follow a site's opening hours, so changing them in one place changes the phone too. Pick the site under Location.
Always open — the number behaves the same at 3am as at 3pm.
Custom hours — hours that belong to this number only, edited on the same card. Custom hours need a timezone: pick one on the card (it starts as your practice's timezone) or choose a location, whose timezone is used instead. Saving custom hours without either is refused, because hours with no zone would count as closed around the clock.

When a number follows a location's hours, the card shows that location's weekly hours next to it, so what the phone will do is never a guess. A location whose hours have not been set yet cannot be followed — saving is refused with a pointer to the Locations page — because empty hours would count as closed around the clock.

Closed today

A number that follows a location's hours also follows that location's closures. Click Closed today on the card to close the location for the rest of the day: calls take the while closed action, the online booking page offers no slots there, and the AI receptionist tells callers the practice is closed. Reopen today undoes it. Longer closures — a bank holiday week, a training day next month — and the text callers hear on those days are set through the API (POST /voice/routing/closures, with an optional spokenText); the card shows a closure that covers today and when it ends.

What callers hear at a dead end

Every route that ends in voicemail speaks a short notice before the tone, and the notice names the real reason:

Closed — the “while closed” action is voicemail: a closure's own spoken text if today is a closure with one, else your after-hours greeting if you set one, else the voicemail greeting, else “The practice is closed right now.”
Nobody could answer during opening hours (no one online, no answer, everyone declined, an empty ring group, a menu with no valid choice): your voicemail greeting, else “Nobody is able to take your call at the moment.”
All lines in use — more callers than your line limit: the built-in “All of our lines are busy at the moment” notice.
A number still being ported in with no routing yet: a plain “Thank you for calling” and the tone. Callers are never told the line has changed.

A custom greeting that does not already ask the caller to leave a message gets “Please leave a message after the tone” appended automatically. Every notice is read in a voice matched to the practice's country — British for a UK practice, American for a US one.

What happens while open, and while closed

While open and While closed each take one of six actions:

Ring a group — ring the chosen group. Use Ring timeout (seconds) (10–60) to say how long before the call gives up. If nobody answers picks what happens then: voicemail (the default), another group, a forward to a phone, or an announcement — one extra step, never a chain.
AI agent — the practice's AI receptionist answers in natural conversation.
Keypad menu — read a short prompt and let the caller press a digit.
Forward to a phone — send the call to a phone outside SmileLine (see Forward to the on-call dentist).
Announcement, then hang up — read the caller a message and end the call, with no voicemail: “We are closed today. For emergencies, call 111.” The call is still logged as missed, so a missed-call text-back still goes out if you have one configured.
Voicemail — go straight to voicemail with the greeting below.

A typical setup is Ring a group while open and Voicemail while closed — or, with the AI voice agent add-on, AI agent while closed so after-hours callers are answered instead of leaving a message. Without the add-on the AI agent option is shown but can't be selected; a number already routed to it keeps that setting and takes its fallback until the add-on is on again.

Keypad menus

Choose Keypad menu to read callers a prompt and route on the digit they press.

Type the Menu prompt (spoken) — for example, "Press 1 for appointments, 2 for accounts."

Add a row per digit, and set each digit to ring a group, go to voicemail, forward to a phone, or play an announcement.

Click Save.

A menu can have up to ten digits, and each digit goes straight to its action — menus do not lead to further menus. If a caller presses something that is not on the menu, the prompt repeats; after three attempts the call goes to voicemail.

New-patient line

Turn on New-patient line for a menu option to make it your lead line: a caller who presses that digit becomes a lead in SmileLine — a patient record and an open journey — whatever happens next on the call, whether the team answers, the call rings out or the caller leaves a voicemail. If the caller is already a patient with an open journey, the call attaches to that journey instead of creating a second one.

The lead is created with the AI voice agent's default treatment (Settings → AI voice agent → Tools), so a new-patient line needs one set — saving a menu without it is refused, and that treatment cannot be archived while a new-patient line uses it. A missed call on a new-patient line also gets any missed-call followup you have configured. A caller who withholds their number cannot become a lead; the call appears in Review instead so a person can listen and follow up.

AI receptionist answering

Choose AI agent to have the practice's AI voice agent answer the call — while open, while closed, or both. Under If the AI can't take it, pick where the call goes instead — a ring group or voicemail. That fallback is used whenever the AI is unavailable: its daily minutes budget is spent, all its concurrent calls are busy, or the add-on has lapsed.

The agent itself — persona, greetings, what it may do on a call — is configured on AI receptionist.

Forward to the on-call dentist

Choose Forward to a phone — while closed, as a menu digit, or under If nobody answers — to send the call to a mobile or landline outside SmileLine, in your practice's country. Type the number as you would dial it (07700 900123 is fine). Under That phone sees, choose whether the forwarded phone shows the caller's own number or this practice number.

The call rings that phone for the number's Ring timeout; if nobody answers, the call goes to voicemail. Unlike the backup number below, a forwarded call stays inside SmileLine: it is logged, recorded like any other answered call, and counts towards missed-call follow-ups.

A forward can't point at another SmileLine number — that would send the call straight back into the same routing. Route that number instead.

Caller rules

Each number's card carries Caller rules, applied before the open or closed action:

Blocked numbers — callers on this list get a busy tone and never ring anyone. The call is still written to the call log, so a mistake is visible.
Withheld numbers go straight to voicemail — a caller who hides their number skips the ring and the menu.
Known patients with an open enquiry — a caller SmileLine recognises as a patient with an open journey skips the keypad menu and takes the route you pick here (a group, voicemail, a forward or an announcement) instead of pressing digits. Leave it at Take the normal route to keep the menu for everyone.

Voicemail greeting

Voicemail greeting is what callers hear before the beep. Leave it empty and SmileLine reads a neutral message instead. Recorded messages appear in Voicemail.

Recorded greeting replaces the spoken text with your own recording. After you have saved the number's routing, upload an MP3 or WAV (up to 5 MiB) under Recorded greeting on the same card; callers then hear that recording instead of the typed greeting, so make sure it ends by asking them to leave a message. Play lets you check it and Remove goes back to the text. The after-hours greeting, when you set one, is still spoken as text.

When routing is incomplete

Routing always fails towards voicemail, never towards a dropped call:

A number with no routing configured rings everyone with calling enabled — or, once the number has a location on the Phone numbers page, that location's staff. Its card says so, and Configure opens the form with that default filled in; nothing changes until you click Save routing.
Hours that cannot be read as valid hours are treated as closed.
A half-finished action falls back to voicemail.

So a mistake here makes callers leave a message. It never makes the phone ring out to nothing.

Backup number

Each number's card carries a Backup number — a mobile or landline you control, outside SmileLine, in your practice's country, typed as you would dial it. If SmileLine can't take a call to the number, the caller is forwarded there instead of letting the line ring out.

A forwarded call bypasses everything on this page: no ring groups, menus, voicemail, recording, AI receptionist — and it won't appear in call history. It is a safety net for outages, not a routing feature.

Each forwarded call is written to Review queue within the hour, so you know a rescue happened and can see who was forwarded where.