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 to ring everyone at a site who has 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 with no configuration change.
A group can only be deleted when no number's routing still points at it — the page says which one is using it.
Only devices that are registered, available and currently connected ring. 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.
What happens while open, and while closed
While open and While closed each take one of four actions:
- Ring a group — ring the chosen group. Use Ring timeout (seconds) (10–60) to say how long before the call gives up and goes to voicemail.
- AI agent — the practice's AI receptionist answers in natural conversation.
- Keypad menu — read a short prompt and let the caller press a digit.
- 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 or go to voicemail.
Click Save.
A menu can have up to ten digits, and each digit goes straight to a group or to voicemail — 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.
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.
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.
- 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. 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.
Numbers on a desk phone
A number moved to a physical desk phone doesn't route through SmileLine at all — its card here swaps to the desk-phone panel, and the routing settings on this page no longer apply to it.
Next steps
Phone numbers
Complete UK verification, order the numbers callers dial, bring your existing numbers in, pick the outbound caller ID, and understand what happens to a number when Voice is switched off.
Voicemail
Hear what callers left when nobody could answer, read the transcript, and see which messages are still new.