What Are Phound Flows?
Phound Flows is the visual call routing builder inside Phound. It works as a smart IVR (interactive voice response) and auto-attendant, so callers to your business number can be greeted, given a menu of options, and routed to the right person or team automatically, even when nobody is available to answer.
Instead of every call ringing one phone, a Flow answers for you: "Press 1 for sales, press 2 for support." Callers get where they need to go, and your team stops playing receptionist.
What You Can Build with a Flow
A Flow is a chain of actions connected on a visual canvas. Each action does one job, and you decide what happens next at every step:
- Menu: Offer keypad options ("Press 1 for...") and send each choice down its own path. Menus can repeat when a caller presses the repeat key, and you control the timeout and how many times the menu loops.
- Go To: Redirect the call to another menu in the same Flow or to the beginning of another Flow.
- Dial Someone: Ring a specific person or group. Group dialing supports ringing everyone at once, ringing in sequence, or distributing calls across the team.
- Play Message: Play a spoken message to the caller, like a welcome greeting or holiday announcement. Phound reads your text aloud with a natural voice, or you can supply audio.
- Direction and Hours: Read out your business address and open hours automatically.
- Company Directory: Let callers browse an approved team directory and reach a specific person.
- Record Voicemail: Capture a message to a chosen voicemail owner, so the right person follows up.
- Connect to Meeting: Drop the caller directly into a Phound meeting, with a fallback path if the meeting is unavailable.
- Condition: Branch the call based on a schedule. The most common use is a business hours check that sends daytime callers to your full menu and after-hours callers to voicemail or an urgent on-call option.
- Notification: Send a configured message to the caller, an email address, phone number, or Phound user when the call reaches that action. Messaging charges may apply.
- Podcast: Play audio from an RSS feed and give callers keypad playback controls.
- Wait: Insert a defined period of silence before the next action.
These are the 12 actions currently shown in Add action. Account-specific actions still need real destinations after import; placing an action on the graph does not automatically make it ready for live calls.
Flow Settings
Flow Settings apply across the entire Flow rather than to one graph action. They control the text-to-speech voice, global dial timeout, maximum menu loops, menu timeout, repeat key, and the prompts for no input, unsupported input, maximum attempts, and internal errors.
Two settings deserve extra care:
- Notification on hangup sends a message after every completed call. It is separate from the Notification graph action.
- Admin PIN lets an authorized caller re-record Play Message actions over the phone. The PIN is included in an exported
.phflowfile, so never put a reusable or production PIN in a public template.
What You Need
- A Business plan. Flows is included with Phound's Business tier. See the subscription plans overview for details.
- A Phound number. Custom Flows work with numbers purchased through Phound or ported into Phound. Linked numbers cannot be assigned a custom Flow.
How to Activate a Flow
Creating a Flow does not make it live. To answer real calls, the Flow must be assigned to a Persona's incoming call handling:
- Go to Account → Personas and select the Persona that owns your business number.
- Open Incoming Calls.
- Choose Custom Flow and select your Flow.
From that moment, every incoming call to that number runs through the Flow. Learn more about how numbers and Personas connect in What Are Personas?
Start from a Template
You do not have to build from a blank canvas. Phound Flow templates give you a complete, professionally structured call flow that you download, import, and customize with your own team and greetings.
Browse the Flow Templates library to get started, use the General Business Line template for a flexible all-purpose setup, or choose the Law Firm, Restaurant, Car & Truck Dealership, Dental Office, or Medical Office industry guide.
Test Before You Go Live
Always call your Phound number from a different phone and walk through every menu option before pointing customers at it. Test valid keys, invalid keys, no input, maximum attempts, answered and unanswered dialing, messages, text notifications, RSS playback, Wait timing, Go To returns, meetings, directories, voicemails, and business-hours boundaries. Confirm every destination belongs to the intended account before activation.