What this page covers
Call setup settings control the mechanics of the conversation rather than its content: how long the agent tolerates silence, what it says to break that silence, and when the call is cut off regardless of what is happening.
These are configured in the dashboard, on the editor's Call setup tab (or the Voice & call behavior tab when you build a Finn from a playbook). Through the API, Max call duration, Idle reminder message, Reminder message frequency and End call on silence are max_call_duration_minutes, idle_reminder_message, idle_reminder_after_seconds and end_call_on_silence_seconds. They apply to calls from deployments, not to single calls placed with POST /calls. See api-finns.
For what the agent says, see prompting and guardrails.
Fields
| Field | What it controls | Default when you create a Finn |
|---|---|---|
| Reminder message frequency (Speech settings) | How many seconds of silence before the Finn re-prompts | 30 seconds |
| Idle reminder message | What the Finn says during a re-prompt | None. The option offered is "I'm still here. Do you have any questions?" |
| Max call duration | Hard ceiling on call length | 5 mins |
handoff_number | Number to transfer to if escalation triggers | (optional) |
The builder's Call setup tab adds End call on silence, which hangs up after prolonged silence. The re-prompt delay is set by Reminder message frequency.
Silence and re-prompts
When the caller stops speaking, the agent waits the Reminder message frequency before saying the Idle reminder message. The trade-off is direct and there is no setting that avoids it.
Set it too high and callers sit through long dead air. They assume the line dropped and hang up, which shows up in your logs as a short call with no clear outcome rather than as a silence problem. Set it too low and the agent talks over people who are thinking, reading a number off a card, or fetching a document. That reads as rude and pushes callers into repeating themselves.
If you see long awkward silences in call logs, lower Reminder message frequency. If callers complain about being rushed, raise it.
Write the Idle reminder message to match the agent's identity. The built-in option "I'm still here. Do you have any questions?" is neutral but generic. A reminder that references the pending question tends to recover the conversation faster, for example "Take your time. I just need the appointment date."
The reminder repeats on the same timer while the silence continues, with no fixed count. To end a call that has gone silent, use End call on silence.
Call length
Max call duration is a hard ceiling. When it is reached, the call ends. The agent does not get a graceful closing turn, and any task that had not yet fired may not fire.
The default is 5 minutes. That is short for anything involving multi-step intake or a knowledge base lookup chain. Before raising it, check what your longest successful calls actually run to, then set the ceiling above that with margin rather than at the average.
Two consequences worth planning for:
- Post-call analysis on truncated calls. Fields extract from the transcript. A call cut off before the caller confirmed anything leaves those fields blank or wrong. See post-call analysis.
- Tasks that never run. If a booking or webhook task fires at end of call, a hard cutoff can skip it. See tasks.
Very short calls have their own effect on reporting. Some metrics filter out calls under 5 seconds and treat them as no-answer, so a run of instant hangups can make analytics look emptier than the raw call log.
Escalation
handoff_number is optional. On its own it doesn't let the Finn transfer: tools only run on a Finn with a call flow, so a Finn without one can't connect the caller anywhere, whatever its prompt says. If the prompt promises a transfer the Finn can't perform, that is worse than telling the caller it cannot help.
To transfer, build a call flow and attach the Call Transfer tool to the step where escalation happens. See transfer.
Applying changes
Edits apply to new calls only. Calls already in flight finish under the configuration they started with. If you change the reminder timing mid-campaign, expect mixed behaviour in the same deployment's logs for the length of the longest in-flight call.
Test the change before launching. Test → Phone call exercises real timing including silence and barge-in. Simulation chat does not, since there is no audio channel and no silence to measure. See testing.