Manage your Spruce Phone Number

Introduction to your Spruce Phone Number

Your Spruce phone number can accept calls and text messages from any other 10-digit phone number. The patient does not need the Sprucea pp to call or SMS text you. If someone texts your Spruce phone number, you can view and reply to these texts by logging into your Spruce account. You can elect for incoming Spruce calls to ring your cell phone, Spruce VoIP desk phones or multiple numbers or phones simultaneously. You can record a personalized voicemail greeting that a caller will hear if they call your Spruce phone number and you do not answer or if you choose to send the call directly to voicemail. Any voicemail left for you on your Spruce number will be captured through Spruce – the voicemail recording and transcription (if enabled) will appear in a conversation associated with the caller's Spruce contact, not on your personal cell phone or desk phone. 

Should you want to put a phone tree or routing on your phone numbers, you can do that on our Communicator plan. This would include having one voicemail automatically play during the day and another after hours or options like extensions. Read more about phone trees here. 

Patients do not need the Spruce app to call or SMS your Spruce number. 

Manage Call Forwarding 

In order to answer inbound calls to your Spruce phone number, you must set your Spruce number to forward to a physical cell phone, landline or Spruce VoIP phone. If you list multiple phone numbers, all the phone numbers listed will ring simultaneously and the first phone to answer will be connected to the caller. If no phone numbers are listed in your forwarding list, then inbound calls to your Spruce number will go directly to voicemail. 

How to set up call forwarding without a phone tree

Mobile: Go to settings (gear icon) and select "Phone and SMS" then select your phone number and select "Numbers to Ring" and select "Add Number" and either "Select Teammate, Group or VOIP phone" or you can enter a number manually above. To remove one click "Edit" or toggle them off. 

Web: Go to settings (gear icon) and select "Phone and SMS" then select your phone number and go to "Numbers to Ring" and choose to "Add Number", Add team or teammate"  or "Add VOIP phone." To remove one click the three vertical dots and remove. 

Within Numbers to Ring, you can add or remove phone numbers. When your Spruce number is called, all the numbers toggled ON in the list (blue toggle), will ring. Please note, if you put a phone number it will ring that number but all voicemails will be captured in Spruce, not on that phone's voicemail. If you need to forward calls and voicemails to a 3rd party please reach out to Spruce Support as this must be set up within a phone tree. 

How to set up call forwarding with a phone tree

With a phone tree on the account you will follow a different procedure to determine what numbers will ring by going into another setting called "Ring Groups" or "Contact Groups". To learn how to manage call forwarding in each branch of your phone tree please see here. 

Customize Voicemail Settings 

Custom Voicemail Greeting

One benefit of Spruce is the ability to maintain a separate professional voicemail greeting, distinct from the personal greeting that lives on your cell phone. As a default, before you've recorded your custom greeting, your Spruce account will play an automated voicemail greeting that names your practice (as you've indicated in your Settings):

“You have reached [Practice Name]. Please leave a message after the tone.”

You can customize your voicemail greeting by recording a greeting or uploading one.  

Steps to record your custom greeting

Voicemail playback/transcription 

You can listen to any voicemails left for you on Spruce. When a new voicemail is recorded, you will receive a notification of new activity in Spruce. The voicemail will be captured in the conversation associated with the phone number that contacted you. 

Spruce also offers automated HIPAA-compliant voicemail transcription. While the automated transcription will not always be a perfect copy of what was said on the voicemail, it's often a helpful tool. 

To use this feature:

• Select the Settings / Gear icon to view your Settings
• Select "Phone and SMS”
• If on web, you will need to select "Phone System Settings”, and toggle on (blue) or off (gray) "Voicemail Transcription"
• If on mobile, scroll down to "Voicemail Transcription" there you can Enable or Disable by tapping

Unlike the other settings mentioned, which could be set up differently for each potential Spruce number on the account, the setting to enable transcription will apply to all Spruce phone numbers on the account. 

Send Calls Directly to Voicemail 

If you do not wish for anyone to answer inbound calls, you can opt to Send Calls Directly to Voicemail. This setting will result in all inbound calls going to your Spruce number to be immediately sent to voicemail without ringing you. This is often used for periods of time when you do not want to receive inbound calls from your Spruce number, but still want callers to leave a voicemail. 

Of note, if you silence the call from your phone, the caller will still hear ringing for the 15 seconds that all calls are set to ring.

To Send Calls to Voicemail on a specific phone number:

• Select Settings and then “Phone and SMS”.
• Select “Phone Numbers” and then select the phone number you’d like to use.
• Scroll down the page to see the “Voicemail Settings” card. Control the “Send Calls Directly to Voicemail” feature by turning the toggle ON (blue) or OFF (gray).

Without a Phone Tree:

When "Send Calls to Voicemail" is ON (blue): Inbound calls will not ring, and callers will be sent directly to voicemail. Your callers will also not hear a ring, but will instead be immediately prompted to leave a voicemail.

• Please note, when your Spruce number is set to NOT ring, that means none of the phone(s) listed in your numbers to ring list or ring groups will receive inbound calls. The setting is most commonly used to control after-hours calls once your practice has closed for the day.

When "Send Calls to Voicemail" is OFF (blue): Inbound calls will ring to the phones designated in your "Numbers to Ring" settings or in your Ring Groups. 

With a Phone Tree:

When "Send Calls to Voicemail" is ON (blue) AND you have a Phone Tree ON:

• When turned on, callers will still hear your phone tree options. Any menu option that typically rings phones will instead be sent straight to voicemail. No phones will ring.

When "Send Calls to Voicemail" is OFF (gray) AND you have a Phone Tree ON:

• Inbound calls will ring your phone tree and callers will hear all your phone tree options. All options that ring a phone number will ring phones as normal. 

Silence Unknown Callers

This feature allows users to automatically send all inbound calls from unsaved contacts straight to voicemail and can be extremely valuable in reducing the amount of spam calls that ring through to your phones. You must enable / disable this feature on a per phone number basis.

To configure silence unknown callers:

• Navigate to your Spruce settings and select "Phone & SMS"
• Select the phone number you want to configure
• Turn the "Silence Unknown Callers" toggle on / off

If you have a phone tree enabled, any menu option in your phone tree that typically rings phones will send unsaved contacts and unknown numbers straight to voicemail. No phones will ring. 

Additional Spruce phone numbers 

Spruce allows you to have multiple phone numbers associated with your organization. Multiple numbers can be useful for many purposes, such as enabling some or all of your teammates to have personal lines, while continuing to share a main practice number for general use. Multiple numbers can also be used to create direct lines for specific purposes, such as a phone number for billing issues or a new-patient line.

When you have multiple numbers, Spruce makes it simple to control the privacy and behavior of each line independently. Your numbers can operate on their own separate schedules, with different voicemail greetings and phone trees, and they can ring distinct groups of people and physical phones. Advanced features, such as automatic text-backs and welcome messages, are also configurable on a per-line basis, as are all conversation privacy and visibility settings.

The exact number of phone lines that Spruce allows for your organization will depend on your Spruce plan, the number of teammates in your organization, and whether you entered a business registration number during your organization's phone registration. 

If you entered a business registration number during phone registration: 

• On Spruce's Basic plan, your organization can have one number per teammate, plus one additional number. So if you have 3 teammates, you can have 4 total phone numbers, as 3+1=4.
• On Spruce's Communicator plan, your organization can have two numbers per teammate, plus one additional number. So if you have 3 teammates, you can have 7 total phone numbers, as 3*2+1=7.

If you did NOT enter a business registration number during phone registration: 

• Your organization can only have one total phone number. This is a limitation that has been set by the telecom carriers and that Spruce cannot control. If you require more than one phone number, you must obtain a business registration number, such as an EIN (or BN, if you are in Canada).

Managing ownership and membership for teams 

We've created a few tools that will help you and your team manage your Spruce numbers for additional privacy and efficiency. Read on to learn about the tools at your disposal. 

Managing "ownership" 

If you decide to move forward with additional Spruce numbers, because you have a team, you can determine who is the owner of a specific phone number and restrict who can view conversations using specific phone numbers. If someone is an owner, this means that they will be able to see all communication related to this phone number. They'll be able to initiate phone calls and text messages from this phone number and will see any incoming calls, voicemails, and text messages to this phone number. Non-owners or non-members will not have access to correspondence regarding this phone number. They will not be able to see incoming call, voicemails, or text messages to this number. This is helpful if patient data needs to remain private and between the patient and a specific member of your team. 

To define the owner of a specific phone number: 

1. Visit your settings 
2. Select Phone and SMS 
3. Click into any of your Spruce Numbers
4. Choose the owner under "Owned By" on mobile or "Owner" on web. Please note that you will need to select "Edit" on web before you can change or choose an owner.

The owner can be an individual or a "Team" that you created within Spruce. If you choose a Team, then all members of that team will have access to the phone number. Read more about Teams here.

If you choose to change the owner later on, the new owner will be updated on all conversations in the system and will now be able to view all of those conversations. Please note: if someone is listed as an owner in the settings for a phone number, you will not be able to remove them from any specific conversations. 

Managing "additional members" 

You'll notice when defining the owner of a phone number that there is a field for "Additional Members" if the whole organization isn't the owner. An additional member is also an owner of the phone number. They will have access to incoming calls, texts, and voicemails to that number the same way the owner does and they'll be able to initiate new communication from this number. Add additional members when you need someone to cover for you or if you're sharing a phone number.

To add additional members: 

1. Visit your settings 
2. Select Phone and SMS 
3. Click into any of your Spruce Numbers
4. Choose additional members under "Additional Members" on mobile or "Additional Internal Members" on web. Please note that you will need to select "Edit" on web before you can change or choose members.

You can edit the owner and additional members at any time as long as you are an admin. Read more about who is an  admin here. 

If you choose to change the additional members later on, the new members will be updated on all conversations in the system and will now be able to view all of those conversations. Please note: if someone is listed as an additional member in the settings for a phone number, you will not be able to remove them from any specific conversations. 

Adding contact and conversation tags 

You'll notice when editing the owner and additional members that you also have the option to add contact and conversation tags. You can learn more about contact and conversation tags here. To summarize, any conversation tags you add to the phone number will get applied to every patient conversation initiated with that phone number. They'll also get applied when someone reaches out to that phone number. If you remove the tag, the tag will no longer be applied to these conversations.

Adding a contact tag will add that tag to any contacts that are created by interacting with that phone number.

Tagging is helpful when you'd like to categorize patients or indicate that particular conversations belong to a specific provider. You can also create new inbox filters that show you conversations with a specific tag. Learn more about conversation filters here. 

To add tags: 

1. Visit your settings 
2. Select Phone and SMS 
3. Click into any of your Spruce Numbers
4. Scroll down to apply tags, and choose which tags you'd like to apply where.

Using automatic assignment for phone numbers 

If you choose a specific teammate or Team to be the owner of a phone number, you'll also have the option of turning on "Auto-Assign." This means that anytime someone calls, texts, or leaves a voicemail for that specific number, the conversation will automatically get assigned to the owner of that phone number . This means that the conversation will fall in their "Mine" or "Assigned to Me" inbox filter if the owner is an individual and the "Assigned to X Team" if the owner is a team. These conversations will not land in the main inbox. This is helpful if only particular teammates need to see incoming communication to that phone number. You can learn more about Conversation Assignment here. 

To turn on auto-assignment for specific phone numbers: 

1. Visit your settings 
2. Select Phone and SMS 
3. Click into any of your Spruce Numbers (click Edit if on Web)
4. Click on the owner of the phone number and select the person you want to own the number
5. On mobile you will be back in the phone number setting so click back into "Owned By" and you will see the next step. 
6. Toggle on "Auto-Assign" conversations. If it's blue, then it is turned on.
7. If you're on web, be sure to select "Edit" first

We created these videos showing you how to do this from web version of Spruce and mobile.