Set Call Routing Rules for Contact Centers

Mark

Updated September 11, 2026 21:38

Optimize your Contact Center with custom call routing rules. Manage time zones, priorities, and volume to connect every caller to the right agent.

Who can use this

You must be a Company Admin or Supervisor to set routing rules for contact centers. Refer to our Pricing Page to see if you have access to this feature. If you have any questions about your plan, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Dialpad Customer Care.

Set Contact Center call routing

Once you've set your business hours for a Contact Center, it's time to configure the call routing rules for when it’s open and closed.

To set your Contact Center call routing, go to your Dialpad Admin Settings.

Navigate to Contact Centers > select the desired Contact Center
Go to Business Hours & Call Handling
Select Call Routing > Select Edit Call Routing

If you've set specific (normal or split) business hours for a Contact Center, you'll need to go through some of these steps twice for both open hours and closed hours.

Tip

Select the Prioritize call routing to the last agent who handled that contact checkbox to route inbound and outbound calls back to the last agent who assisted the caller.

If that agent is unavailable, the call will follow your business and holiday hours routing rules.
There is no time limit or expiration to this setting — the last agent prioritization will be in effect indefinitely for the contact.

Open or closed hours

Choose different routing options based on your hours of operation.

Open Hours Routing determines call routing options for the hours that your Contact Center is open.
Closed Hours Routing determines call routing options for the hours when your Contact Center is closed.

Vier of the Call Routing settings page for a Contact Center.

Unless your Contact Center is set as open 24/7, you will need to configure both open and closed hours routing.

Route calls to agents

There are five different ways to route calls to agents:

Longest idle	Agents are rung individually based on whoever has been idle the longest.
Fixed order (same fixed order)	Agents are listed in the order they should be rung every single time. The priority never changes.
Round robin (rotating fixed order)	Agents are listed in a prioritized order for which they should be rung. When a call comes in, the first agent that answers is moved to the end of that list. If an agent misses a call because they’re on another call, they will be moved to the bottom of the list — this is intentional and ensures the list order is maintained.
Skills-based	Agents are called individually from the highest to the lowest skill level.
Random	Agents are rung sequentially from a randomized list of all agents, which is refreshed each time the list is completed.

View of the Call Routing settings page for a Contact Center. The agent routing options are highlighted.

Note

Simultaneous Ring routing is available through an Early Adopter Program. Learn more here.

By sending calls to agents, you can also set how long calls ring out before defaulting to your second option, such as a hold queue.

Unanswered calls are routed to your fallback option. While Dialpad determines the next available agent, the call is sent back to the queue so that your callers are not stuck listening to endless ringing. While they wait, the caller will hear hold music and DTMF menu options that allow them to request a callback or leave a voicemail (if enabled) before being routed to the next available agent.

To change this, please reach out to our Customer Care Team.

Note

If you choose Round Robin, the routing resets any time the agents are re-ordered or an agent is added or removed. This means the next incoming call will go to the agent with rank 1.

No operator options

Select No operator if you prefer to route calls to a voicemail, a message, a workflow, an AI agent, or another team member or shared line.

View of the Call Routing settings page for a contact center. The options for when an operator is not available are highlighted.

No operator options include the following:

Directly to voicemail	Agents receive notifications when voicemails are left.
To a message (no voicemail)	Default or custom message.
To another department, office, contact center, or geo router	Choose another shared line to send calls to.
To a team member/room phone/number	Choose another team member, room, phone, or number (including outside Dialpad; contact our Customer Care Team first) to send calls to.
To an automated response menu	Options include dial by name directory (Office), dial by extension directory, dial by name directory (Company), forward to a Department/Contact Center/Office, forward to a person or number, leave a voicemail, recorded message, operator, and disabled. If you forward to another Department or Contact Center using an automated response menu, you can choose one that is located in another office within the entire company. By default, calls will end if the caller doesn't choose an option after the hearing the menu twice. To avoid this, set one of the options as the default instead (this also applies if you've set one of the options to ring operators and the operators do not answer). When using the automated response menu, the recorded message that plays is uninterruptible, and all DTMF entries will be ignored. When the recorded message is completed, the call will return to the same automated response playing the initial greeting.
To a workflow(voice)	Route calls through a customized workflow. Learn more about workflows in this Help Center article.
To Google Conversational Agents	Choose a Google Conversational Agent to send calls to.
To an AI Agent	Choose an AI Agent to send calls to.

Note

Each Contact Center can have only one routing type.

Dial-By directories

Use Dial By directories to let users use the keypad to enter a name or an extension of a user. Dial-by directories can be set up for a specific Office, or across the entire Company.

Welcome greeting

Set a welcome greeting for callers during open or closed hours.

Choose to record your own welcome greeting, or upload your existing audio file.

Setting to choose a welcome greeting during open hours

To hear the existing greeting, press the play icon.

To remove a greeting, select the red X.

Ring duration

Set how long a call will ring before Dialpad assumes an agent is unavailable.
Ring duration slider for how long a call rings before it's sent to the hold queue.

Changes here will be reflected in your open and closed hours.

To set your ring duration, move the slider left or right.

Note

When a call reaches an agent’s device, Dialpad applies a separate auto-answer timer for Contact Centers instead of the standard ring duration before returning the call to the queue. This helps minimize calls being marked as missed due to slow device response times or unstable network connections.

Hold queue

Set a hold queue for when all Contact Center agents are busy on other calls. As agents become available, calls will route to them.

Adjust your Contact Center's hold queue by customizing key details such as queue size, hold music, and delayed greetings.

Hold queue size

Determine the maximum number of people that can be in the hold queue at the same time. Dialpad limits a Contact Center's hold queue to 500 callers on the Advanced plan and 1,000 callers on the Premium plan.

You can also set the maximum time people can wait in the hold queue (choose from 10 seconds, all the way up to 300 minutes).

Hold greeting

Select the greeting callers hear when placed on hold — this greeting plays once before the hold music begins.

Choose to record or upload your own custom greeting, or use Dialpad's default hold greeting.

Note

If you're using our default greeting, your Contact Center name will be read to the caller — if your Contact Center has an unusual name, such as 'Calm Down Angry Clients, ' we recommend recording or uploading a custom greeting so that the Contact Center name does not play.

Use a Delay greeting to keep callers active while they wait in the hold queue. Choose how frequently the delay greeting message plays by adjusting the interval, the minimum time option is 30 seconds.

Estimated wait time announcement

Use Estimated wait time announcement to tell callers approximately how long they’ll wait in the hold queue, instead of only sharing their place in line.

When this setting is turned on, the IVR announces the estimated wait time when the caller first enters the queue. The pre‑recorded IVR message uses 5-minute time ranges, for example:

“Your estimated wait time is less than 5 minutes.”
“Your estimated wait time is between 5 and 10 minutes.”
“Your estimated wait time is between 10 and 20 minutes.”

This continues in 5-minute increments to the maximum wait time you select. If the estimated wait time exceeds your selected maximum, callers hear that their wait time is longer than that number of minutes. If there isn’t enough data to calculate an estimate, callers hear that their estimated wait time is less than 5 minutes.

Note

Callback behavior is not affected by this setting — in-queue callbacks are still based on the caller’s place in the queue, not the estimated wait time.

Advanced hold queue settings

Use the advanced hold queue features to further enhance the caller experience by turning on (or off) these settings.

Allow callers to be placed in your hold queue when no agents are available	Callers will be placed in your hold queue even if no agents are on duty — don't forget to set a hold queue limit to avoid long wait times.
Allow existing calls to stay in queue after contact center has closed	Allows agents to answer calls that were in your queue before the Contact Center closed. Don't worry, calls will still respect your defined maximum queue wait time, and will follow the closed hours fallback option if the call times out.
Let callers know their place in the queue	Gives callers an idea of how long they might have to wait. This option is not available when a maximum queue wait time of less than 2 minutes is selected.
Allow callers to exit the hold queue to voicemail	Let callers leave the hold queue and leave a voicemail by pressing the specified key. When this setting is enabled, callers hear the hold greeting and hold music during the first round of queue announcements, but they don't hear the prompt to leave a voicemail. The voicemail prompt plays starting with the second round and continues with later queue announcements. Callers can still press the voicemail exit key during the first round even though Dialpad doesn't play the prompt.
Allow callers to request a callback when the queue has a certain number of callers	Callers can request a callback when there are more than a specific number of callers in the queue. Connect to agent before calling back customer: The callback will first connect to an available agent before dialing the customer.
Let callers know their estimated wait time. Maximum time to announce: __	This option announces the estimated wait time to callers while they are in the queue, and if it exceeds the maximum you set, they will be told it is longer than this time. Use the dropdown to choose the maximum wait time to announce (5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 minutes). The default maximum is 30 minutes when this feature is enabled. Let callers know their estimated wait time and Let callers know their place in the queue are either/or announcements — you can let callers know their place in the queue, or their estimated wait time, but not both at the same time.

Hold music

Set hold music to entertain your callers while they wait to connect to an agent.

Upload your own custom hold music, or select one of Dialpad's queue songs.

Select the play icon to hear each song once you've selected it from the drop-down menu.

Voicemail greeting

Set a message (greeting) to play to your callers before they leave a voicemail. Choose to use Dialpad's default voicemail greeting, record your own greeting, or upload an mp3 file.

Voicemail greetings will only play during the hours that your Contact Center is open.

Fallback options

Any calls that go unanswered will be routed to your fallback option.
A view of the call fallback options if a call isn't picked up by an agent.

Note

You’ll only see fallback options if you select Route Calls to Agents (fallback options are not available if Other Routing Options are implemented).

If a call reached its maximum queue wait time during Contact Center open hours or if it’s still queued when the Contact Center closes, it will be sent to the appropriate fallback option.

Fallback options let you choose to send callers:

Directly to voicemail	Agents receive notifications when voicemails are left.
To a message (no voicemail)	Default or custom message.
To another department, office, contact center or geo. router	Choose another shared line to send calls to.
To a team member, room phone, or external number	Choose another team member, room, phone, or number (including outside Dialpad; as before, this will require contacting our support team to enable it first) to send calls to.
To an automated response menu	Options include dial by name directory, dial by extension directory, forward to a Department, forward to a person or number, leave a voicemail, recorded message, and disabled.
To a workflow(voice)	Choose a voice workflow to send callers to.
To Google Conversational Agents	Choose a Google Conversational Agent to send calls to.
To an AI Agent	Choose an AI Agent to send calls to.

Transfer fallback options

If an agent misses or rejects a transferred call from an agent, it’s routed to your transfer fallback options.

Transfer fallback options let you choose to send callers:

Note

If Auto-assign voicemail to agent is enabled and a transferred queue call goes to Contact Center voicemail because an agent is unavailable, the voicemail is automatically assigned to the intended transfer target.

The assigned user receives both a Dialbot notification and an email.