Overview
The Voice channel brings phone call support into the platform. Calls are logged alongside the contact's other conversations, with history, assignment, internal notes and reports — unifying voice and text in the same operation.
Beyond telephony calls, the platform offers AI calls: a Maestro AI agent answers the incoming call instead of the team. That setting does not live in the Voice inbox — you configure it in the Calls tab of a WhatsApp inbox, under the AI agent field. Both modes feed the same history and the same panel.
The whole history is available in two places: the Calls panel in the sidebar, which gathers the account's calls with filters and pagination; and the call block in the contact panel inside each conversation. WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Cloud calls show up in the same panel as telephony calls — there are no separate lists per provider.
Twilio Voice in Community edition
Twilio telephony uses the installation operator's account-level Twilio Voice feature. It requires neither an Enterprise license nor WhatsApp Inbox Suite. For WhatsApp calls, enable WhatsApp Inbox Suite and configure the corresponding WhatsApp inbox.
Disabling Twilio Voice prevents new calls and new phone access tokens. Existing calls can still be ended, and their events and recordings continue to be processed. Telephony history remains in conversations; the global Calls dashboard described below remains specific to installations that provide it.
With the Media Library enabled, recording imports include native Twilio and WhatsApp calls. A recording that arrives after a call ends can be included in the next import; existing files are reused without an additional copy.
Prerequisites
- An administrator profile to create and configure the Voice inbox.
- The Voice channel enabled for your account — it's an optional feature; if it doesn't appear, confirm with an administrator.
- The voice provider's credentials/integration required by the channel setup.
- For AI calls: a WhatsApp inbox, the WhatsApp Inbox Suite feature enabled for the account (or a WhatsApp Web channel), and a Maestro AI agent already created.
- For the Calls panel: at least one inbox with voice enabled. With none, the page shows the Make and receive calls in one place invitation with the Set up voice channel button (available to administrators).
Step by step
- Under Settings → Inboxes, create a new inbox and choose Voice.
- Enter the inbox name and the voice provider's integration details.
- Define how calls behave (receiving, forwarding and logging).
- To use AI, open a WhatsApp inbox, go to the Calls tab and pick the AI agent that should answer. Leave the field empty (No AI agent (ring agents)) to ring the team directly.
- Make a test call and confirm it is logged in the contact's conversation.
- Open Calls in the sidebar to see the call in the account list, with its status, who answered it, the originating inbox and the date.
- Inside the conversation, open the contact side panel and check the call history block, with duration, agent and transcript when available.
Settings & options
- Calls: receive and place calls, logged into the contact's conversation.
- AI calls: in the Calls tab of a WhatsApp inbox, besides the AI agent you switch recording on or off and cap the per-call duration. Saving is allowed only for people who manage inboxes.
- Assignment and teams: define who handles calls from that inbox.
- Logging and reports: each call is tied to the contact and feeds the reports.
Calls panel
The Calls item in the sidebar opens the account's call list. It is available on Cloud and Enterprise installations.
- Quick filters: Missed and No reply are always visible. Other activity holds Incoming, Outgoing and In progress.
- Assignee: an administrator-only filter, with an All assignees option. Non-administrators already see only their own calls, so the filter isn't offered to them.
- More filters: filter by Inbox, with All inboxes as the default. The list only offers inboxes with voice enabled.
- State in the URL: the activity filter, the assignee, the inbox and the page are written to the address, so a shared link reopens exactly the same view.
- Pagination: 25 calls per page. With no activity filter, the header reads All Calls (N); with a filter active, the total appears inside the filter chip itself.
- What each row shows: the contact (name or phone number), a status badge (Ongoing, Incoming, Outgoing, Missed, No reply, Failed), Picked by or Dialed by with the agent, or the outcome when no agent took it (No agent answered this call, Contact did not answer, This call could not be connected), the inbox icon and name, the date, and a shortcut to the conversation by its number.
- Recording: when the call has a recording, the row itself shows the audio player.
- Who sees what: administrators and users allowed to manage reports see the whole account. Everyone else sees only the calls they answered, within conversations they can still access.
History inside the conversation
In the contact side panel, the call block lists that contact's calls newest first, with direction, status, duration, agent and an expandable transcript when one exists. It refreshes in real time as the call progresses. In Community, this read-only history stays available even when new calling is disabled. It includes WhatsApp (Cloud and Web) and Twilio calls from conversations you can access. Enterprise history retains its existing behavior.
Use cases
- Serve customers by phone without losing the history of their text conversations.
- Use AI to assist triage and call handling at high volume.
- Centralize voice, WhatsApp and other channels in the same queue and the same reports.
- Review the day's Missed calls and call people back before they go to a competitor.
- Share a pre-filtered link with leadership (for example, no-reply calls from one inbox) ahead of a follow-up meeting.
Tips, limits & best practices
- Test audio (input and output) before putting the channel into production.
- Combine the Voice channel with assignment rules to distribute calls fairly.
- When using AI calls, review the assistant's behavior periodically.
- Treat Missed and No reply as two different things: Missed are inbound calls nobody answered; No reply are calls your team placed and the contact didn't answer.
- The block inside the conversation shows up to 100 calls for that contact. For long histories, use the Calls panel with filters and pagination.
Troubleshooting
- Calls don't connect: verify the provider integration and the credentials entered.
- I don't see the Voice option: the channel may not be enabled for your account — talk to an administrator.
- AI doesn't act on calls: the AI agent answers WhatsApp calls. Check that the Calls tab of that inbox has an AI agent selected — left empty, the call rings human agents directly.
- The panel shows the setup screen even though calls exist: the page only lists calls when the voice feature is enabled on the account and at least one inbox has voice enabled. Re-enable voice on the inbox and reload.
- I see fewer calls than my teammates: without an administrator profile or the report-management permission, the list only shows the calls you answered.
- The list is empty after filtering: the No calls found message means that filter combination returned nothing. Go back to All assignees and All inboxes to check.
- I don't see the call block inside the conversation: it depends on the WhatsApp Inbox Suite feature being enabled for the account. Ask an administrator to enable it.
- A row says "Deleted contact": the call stays on record even after the contact is removed from the database.