How a call reaches the Finn
Every Finn call runs over the phone network through a carrier. The chain is:
- A phone number in your workspace.
- The carrier that owns the number, which places or receives the call.
- Finn's voice service, which runs the conversation.
- An end: a hang-up or a transfer.
When a call fails before anyone speaks, the problem is usually in the first two links, not the Finn. This page says which page to open for each.
Carriers
| Carrier | How you use it |
|---|---|
| Plivo | Rent Indian numbers. Also available as a custom provider. |
| Exotel | Rent Indian numbers. Also available as a custom provider. |
| Twilio | Rent numbers outside India. Also available as a custom provider. |
| Telnyx | Custom provider only. |
A custom provider means calls from one of your numbers use your own carrier account's credentials instead of your workspace's. See byo-numbers.
Inbound and outbound
The same Finn configuration works in both directions. What differs is how the number is attached.
| Inbound | Outbound | |
|---|---|---|
| Who dials | The caller | Finn, from your deployment |
| Number attached by | An inbound deployment of the Finn on that number | An outbound deployment, using one or more of your numbers |
| Numbers per deployment | One | One or more. Max parallel calls can't exceed 5 per number. |
| Needs an audience | No | Yes |
Deployments are created from the dashboard or the Deployments API. See inbound-routing and outbound-campaigns, or start from quickstart-inbound and quickstart-outbound.
Getting numbers
You rent numbers in Settings → Phone numbers → Rent a number, or with the Phone Numbers API.
- Indian numbers come from Plivo or Exotel. Numbers in other countries come from Twilio.
- Renting any number needs an approved compliance application for your workspace. See phone-numbers.
- The rent is deducted from your wallet.
To use a number that is already on your own carrier account, see byo-numbers.
Finn does not port numbers, does not offer a SIP trunk setup, and does not register numbers or caller ID names with carriers.
See phone-numbers for the full flow and number-capabilities for voice and SMS support.
How carriers treat your calls
Carriers decide how an outbound call is shown to the person you're calling. A number that places many short or unanswered calls can start to be labeled as spam, and answer rates drop.
Finn's Health column in Settings → Phone numbers scores each number over the last 7 days from its connect rate, short calls and failures, and lets you pause, isolate or replace a number. See spam-labeling.
Capacity
Each number carries at most 5 concurrent calls in an outbound deployment. To dial more calls at once, deploy with more numbers. See number-pools.
Your plan also sets how many calls your workspace runs at once. See concurrency.
How a call ends
Every call ends with a status: completed, failed, busy, no-answer or canceled. See call-outcomes and call-logs.
A Finn can hand a call to a person with the Call Transfer tool. The transfer is cold, and there is no configurable fallback if the person doesn't answer. See tools-transfer.
For symptom-first diagnosis, go to troubleshooting.