Spruce Call Flows (Communicator Plan)

Note: Call flows can only be created when using on the web or through the Spruce desktop app. 

To create a new call flow, navigate to Settings > Phone System > Call Flows. Then click the New Call Flow button in the upper right. 

Call Flow Settings 

First, give your call flow a name that is descriptive and easy to remember. This name is only visible to team members within your organization. It is not shared publicly or with patients.

Then choose who will be able to edit the call flow. Note that organization administrators will always be able to edit all call flows.

Call Flow Actions - What happens when there is an incoming call? 

Next choose the initial call flow action from the dropdown menu. Call flow actions determine what happens when there’s an incoming call to a Spruce number. 

Ring Phones

Select “Ring Phones” as the call flow action if you want phones to ring when there’s an incoming call to your Spruce number. The incoming call will ring a saved ring list of teammates, teams or VoIP desk phones. All phones in the saved ring list will ring simultaneously and the first person to answer will get the call.  Learn more about saved ring lists. 

How to configure Ring Phones

1. Choose which phones will ring - From the dropdown menu under “Saved Ring List” select an existing saved ring list or create a new saved ring list. 
2. Choose what happens when the call is missed - From the dropdown menu under “Missed Call Action” select what should happen next for the caller if the call is missed. Options include recording a voicemail, ringing a second set of phones, accessing a menu of options, and more. 

Advanced Ring Settings 

These advanced settings allow you to further customize the call experience. 

• Welcome Greeting - This will play a greeting that the caller will hear before phones begin to ring. By default, there is no welcome greeting. 
• Timeout - This is the number of seconds that phones will ring before the call is considered unanswered. We recommend that the total number of ring seconds does not exceed 30s. 

Record a Voicemail 

Select “Record a Voicemail” as the call flow action if you want to send the caller directly to voicemail and have them leave a message. No phones will ring when Record a Voicemail is the primary call flow action. 

How to configure Record a Voicemail 

Select the type of greeting you would like the caller to hear before the beep to begin recording. For the best patient experience, we recommend that greetings do not exceed 45 seconds. 

The greeting types available are: 

1. Custom Greeting - Create or upload audio recordings. We recommend this greeting type for a more personalized patient experience. All audio recordings you upload are saved in your Audio Library. 
2. AI Text-to-Speech -  Type a custom message that will be read aloud by an AI voice. This option is a good choice if you haven’t created your custom audio recording yet. 
3. Legacy Text-to-speech - Type a custom message that will be spoken by our legacy automated voice. 
4. Default - An automated voice will announce the name of your organization followed by a beep. 
5. None - No greeting will play. Callers will only hear a beep to indicate recording has begun.

Play a Greeting With a Menu of Options (Phone Tree) 

Select “Play a Greeting with a Menu of Options” as the call flow action if you want to present callers with a menu of options to select from. This is often called a phone tree or auto-attendant. 

Learn how to optimize your organization’s phone tree for the best caller experience in our article on call flows best practices and call flow examples. 

How to configure Play a Greeting With a Menu of Options

1. Set up the main menu - Choose the greeting that describes the available options to the caller. Then decide what should happen if the caller does not select an option. 
2. Set up your menu options - Give your menu option a descriptive name. This name will appear in the call log to indicate which option the caller selected. Then decide what happens when the caller selects an option from the menu. 

The available actions for menu options are: 

• Ring Phones - Choose this action if you want phones to ring after the caller selects the menu option. 
• Record a Voicemail - Choose this action if you want the caller to leave a voicemail message after selecting the menu option. No phones will ring before the caller is prompted to leave voicemail.
• Play a Greeting with a Menu of Options (Phone Tree) - Choose this action if you’d like to present the caller with a secondary menu. 
• Play a Message - Choose this action if you'd like to play a message for the caller. No phones will ring or voicemail will be recorded after the message plays. This option is useful for playing a message about office hours and location. 
• Repeat the Menu Greeting - Choose this action to repeat the menu greeting for the caller. 
• End the Call - choose this option to automatically end the call and hang up on the caller.
• Transfer the Call to a Spruce Number Within Your Organization - Choose this action to transfer the call to another Spruce phone number in your organization. After the call is transferred, the destination phone number manages the call handling and voicemail recording options. This is useful if different teammates have their own direct numbers and you wish to maintain privacy restrictions or other settings applied to those numbers.
• Forward the Call to a Number Outside of Your Spruce Organization - Choose this action to forward the call to a number outside of your Spruce organization. For example, an answering service or crisis hotline. Voicemails will not be recorded or accessible in Spruce. 

Play a Message and End the Call 

Select “Play a Message and End the Call ” as the call flow action if you want to play a message for the caller before ending the call. 

How to configure Play a Message and End the Call 

1. Select the type of greeting message you would like the caller to hear. 
2. Decide if you’d like to give the caller the ability to press a key to repeat the message. This is optional. If you do choose a key press to repeat the message, please make sure your greeting includes instructions to the caller on which key to press.

Transfer the Call to a Spruce Number Within Your Organization 

Select “Transfer the Call to a Spruce Number Within Your Organization” as the call flow action if you want to transfer the caller to another Spruce phone number in your organization. 

Important Things to Note About Transferring Calls  

• After the call is transferred, the call is managed by the transfer number where its settings for voicemail, auto-assignment, membership, and workflow rules take over. 
• The call is logged in the conversations for both numbers, but voicemail is only accessible from the transferred number’s conversation.
• Post-call actions cannot be applied to a transferred call. 

How to configure Transfer the Call to a Spruce Number Within Your Organization 

1. Select "Transfer the Call to a Spruce Number Within Your Organization" as the call flow action. 
2. Select the Spruce number from the dropdown that you would like to transfer the call to. 

Forward the Call to a Number Outside of Your Spruce Organization

Select “Forward the Call to a Number Outside of Your Spruce Organization” as the call flow action if you want to forward the call to a number outside of your Spruce organization. 

Important Things to Note About Forwarding Calls Outside of Your Organization   

• The forwarding number must be a 10-digit phone number. Short numbers like “988” will not be accepted. 
• Voicemail messages left at the forwarding number won't be accessible in Spruce. 
• Calls cannot be forwarded to the personal cell phone number of teammates in your organization. If you want calls to ring a teammate, use the “Ring Phones” option instead. 

How to Configure Forwarding the Call to a Number Outside of Your Spruce Organization

1. Enter the phone number that calls should forward to. You can optionally give this number a label or name that’s easy to recognize. 
2. Select what should happen if the call fails to forward. If you are forwarding potentially urgent calls, we recommend that you choose the option to “Play a Message and End Call” so that you can provide a recorded message to assist the caller. For example, “Your call could not be completed as dialed. Please dial 988 to seek immediate help.”

Post-Call Actions - What happens after the call ends? 

Post-call actions enable you to automate tasks by setting up “if-this-then-that” rules to run after calls end. Rules can be created for each step of a call flow, but only the rules associated with a call's exact ending point will be executed. 

For example, you could set up a post-call action to be: "If a call is missed and a voicemail is recorded, then add a tag to the conversation." 

The following actions are available to automate after the call ends: 

Send the caller an automated text-back

Automatically send an SMS text response to the caller. This action is helpful if you’d like to direct the caller to text with your practice instead of calling. 

Post an internal note

This automatically adds an internal note to the conversation. @Pages can be added to the note to page team members or teams. 

Send an SMS text notification to a teammate, team, or saved ring list

Automatically send an SMS text message notification to a teammate’s cell phone. This is often used for urgent escalation, for example: “If a call is missed and a voicemail is recorded, then send a text message with ‘Urgent Voicemail in the Spruce App’  to the ‘On-Call Ring List.’”

Add tags

Automatically applies tags to a conversation or contact. 

Assign the conversation

Automatically assigns the conversation to a teammate or team. When a conversation is assigned, it is moved out of the “All” Inbox filter and into the “Assigned” Inbox filter for the teammate or team. 

Because conversations can only be assigned to one person or team at a time, if a conversation is assigned through a post-call action, it will override auto-assignment to the phone number owner. If not already a member of the conversation, the selected team or teammate will be added to this conversation and granted access upon assignment.

Assignment is only available to organizations with more than one member. Learn more about Auto-Assignment.

Utilizing a custom workflow automation

In call flows, you can attach a custom workflow automation created by the Spruce Support team. This can be useful if you need to throttle actions to occur less frequently or apply advanced conditions. To use a custom workflow in call flows, you must first request its creation from the Spruce Support team. Once created, you'll see your custom workflow as an option in your call flow builder for any conditions that match what's included in the workflow. 

For more info on workflow automations, including how to request them, read here.

Viewing a Visualization of Your Call Flow

After you save your call flow, there are two ways to view the call flow you just created. 

1. On the Call Flows settings page, located in Settings > Phone System > Call Flows, click the “View” button next to the name of the call flow you’d like to view. This will show a read only view of the call flow. 
2. From the view window you opened in the previous step, click the “Visualization” card to view your call flow in a flow chart display. 

Applying a Call Flow to a Phone Number

Once a call flow has been created, it must be applied to a phone number’s call handling to be active.

To apply a call flow to a phone number:

1. Using the Spruce desktop app, navigate to Phone System > Phone Numbers and select the phone number where you want to use the call flow. 
2. Click the “Manage” button on the “Call Flows” card. 
3. In the call flows dialog, toggle “Answer Incoming Calls with a Call Flow” to ON. 
4. Then select the call flow you want to use on this phone number. 

This will set the call flow to handle incoming calls for the phone number 24/7. You can also choose to have your call flow managed with a schedule and automatically handle incoming calls differently depending on the time of day.

Using Call Flows With Schedules 

You can also choose to have your call flow managed with a schedule and automatically handle incoming calls differently depending on the time of day. For example, a schedule could be used to have different call flows and call behaviors for your practice during business hours, after hours, or holidays. Learn about how to create and manage schedules.

To apply a call flow to a phone number using a schedule:

1. Using the Spruce desktop app, navigate to Phone System > Phone Numbers and select the phone number where you want to use the call flow. 
2. Click the “Manage” button on the “Call Flows” card. 
3. In the call flows dialog, toggle “Answer Incoming Calls with a Call Flow” to ON. 
4. Toggle “Manage Call Flows with a Schedule” to ON
5. Then choose the call flow you want to be active during each schedule period. 

Schedule Override 

In the event of an office emergency or disruption, you can temporarily override the current call flow schedule for a single schedule period. Once the schedule period ends, the normal schedule will resume. 

For example, if your practice is closing early one day, you could apply an override to use your “After Hours” call flow, which will stay active for the remainder of the business day and until your normal “Business Hours” is set to become active the following day at its regularly scheduled time. 

To apply a temporary schedule override:

1. Using the Spruce desktop app, navigate to Settings > Phone System > Phone Numbers and select the phone number where you want to override the schedule.
2. Click the Override button shown to the right of the current status. 
3. Select the call flow to use for the temporary override. 

If you need to apply longer-term schedule changes, turn off schedule management or edit the schedule that manages the call flow.

Holidays & Schedule Exceptions 

If there’s a holiday where your practice will be closed, you have the ability to add those hours to your Schedule ahead of time (up to a year in advance) and configure which call flow will be active during the holiday schedule period. 

You can also create one-time and recurring schedule exceptions (e.g. lunch hour) that can have call flows assigned during the exception schedule period. 

Learn more about how to create holidays and exceptions in your schedule.

Editing a Call Flow

Note: Call flows can only be edited when using Spruce in a web browser or through the Spruce desktop app. 

To edit an existing call flow: 

1. Using Spruce on a desktop, go to Settings > Phone System > Call Flows.
2. Locate the call flow you would like to edit in the list.
3. Click the Edit button in the upper right of the card. 
4. Make changes and save the call flow. 

If the call flow you are editing is in use on one or more phone numbers, any changes you make to the call flow will be applied to all the phone numbers where the call flow is currently in use. If you do not want the edits to apply to all phone numbers using the call flow, you can duplicate the call flow to make a copy to work from instead. 

Editing Permissions

Call flows can only be edited by those in the organization with editing permission for that call flow. All organization administrators have the ability to edit any call flow regardless of the call flow’s editing permissions. 

Only one person in an organization can edit a call flow at any given time. If someone else is editing a call flow, a warning will be displayed and no changes can be made until the other person finishes editing. 

Duplicating a Call Flow

To duplicate a call flow: 

1. Using Spruce on a desktop computer, go to Settings > Phone System > Call Flows.
2. Locate the call flow you would like to duplicate in the list.
3. Click the button with three dots in the upper right of the card. 
4. Select “Duplicate Call Flow” from the menu. 

Replacing Audio Files for an Existing Call Flow

If you only need to update the audio files for an existing call flow, without any changes to the call flow structure, you can replace the audio file from Settings > Phone System > Audio Library.

Learn how to add or replace audio files.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a call flow in Spruce?

A call flow is a tool for configuring the experience a caller has when they call your Spruce number. This includes the option for a configurable IVR phone tree that greets callers with a menu and routes them to the right team or inbox based on their selection - no live receptionist needed for initial routing.

Is the call flows feature available on the Basic plan?

No. Call flows (including auto-attendant phone trees / IVR) are a Communicator plan feature.

How do I build a call flow in Spruce?

Navigate to Settings > Phone System > Call Flows and use the visual editor to create menu options, record or upload prompts, and define routing rules for each selection.