Telephony
Your PBX rings. An agent answers.
An agent answers the phone through your PBX. Nothing is installed on the PBX and nothing of it is changed: Sidekick Agents has a SIP gateway of its own, and the PBX sees it as either one of its own extensions or a trunk.
Connect
Three ways in, one for every PBX.
Which one fits depends on what your PBX will let you set up.
One PBX address belongs to one trunk
A call that arrives from an address is taken for the trunk that names it, so the platform refuses to let a second trunk, in any workspace, claim an address that is taken. A PBX that several workspaces share is connected by signing in, or with credentials: those are told apart by what they sign in with.
Sidekick PBX
With Sidekick PBX, as one of its extensions.
Sidekick PBX is the sister phone system of Sidekick Agents. An agent signs in to it the way a desk phone would. The app walks through these steps.
What the trunk then shows
- Signed in
- The PBX accepted the sign-in. Calls to the extension reach the agent.
- Not signed in yet
- The PBX has not answered. It is tried again every 30 seconds.
- Refused
- The PBX refused the user name or password.
Create an extension with no person attached
In the PBX’s admin. Give it a free number, for example 7001. That is what people will dial to reach the agent.
Generate its desk-phone credentials
The PBX gives a user name, a password, a SIP domain, and the address and transport to use.
Enter them, and choose the agent
Under Telephony in Sidekick Agents. The password is stored encrypted and never shown again.
Dial the extension
From any phone on the PBX. The agent answers.
One extension for each agent
A PBX does not tell a desk phone which number was dialled, so an extension cannot be shared between agents. Follow the steps again for each agent.
Who the person sees calling
When an agent hands a caller to somebody, the gateway places a second call through the PBX as the agent’s extension and joins the two. The person sees the extension’s identity, not the caller’s: say who is calling in the handover’s briefing.
Any other PBX
With any PBX that speaks SIP.
Add a trunk under Telephony, then choose how it connects.
By address
On the PBX, add a SIP trunk pointing at the gateway’s address and port. No registration, no credentials.
In Sidekick Agents, add a trunk by address and enter the PBX’s address, or addresses.
On the PBX, route a number to that trunk. Give the same number to an agent.
With credentials
In Sidekick Agents, add a trunk with credentials. A user name and password are issued, and shown once.
On the PBX, add a trunk that registers to the gateway’s address with them.
Route numbers to it, and give them to agents.
Over TLS
Choose TLS as the trunk’s transport and point the PBX at the gateway’s TLS port. Audio can be encrypted as well: switch it on for the trunk on both sides.
The path of a call
From the caller’s phone to the flow, and back.
Each part does one thing. The voice worker hears and speaks, and decides nothing. The runtime decides: it runs the flow, the model and the tools.
What it speaks
Transports, codecs, keys and encryption.
Read from the product’s catalogue as this page loaded.
What to open on the server
- SIP
- 5060 UDP and TCP, 5061 TCP for TLS
- Call audio
- 40000–41999 UDP
On a server set up by the runbook. Each call uses two audio ports.
Speech
Heard, answered, and spoken.
A voice worker hears the caller, takes turns, lets the caller interrupt, and reports exactly what the caller heard.
Local speech ships with it
Speech recognition and voices that run on your own hardware come with the platform, and have been verified on real calls.
Or a speech service of your choice
The cloud speech services in the catalogue are wired to their published interfaces. Each stays marked unverified until a key has been used on a call.
One measurement
Measured on a development machine, with the local speech that ships with the platform: a caller hears the answer about three seconds after they stop speaking, on a laptop’s CPU. That is one measurement, not a benchmark.
Handover
Handing the call to a person.
A flow’s Hand over step names a person or a team, and says whether the agent puts the caller through and leaves, briefs the person privately first, or brings them in and stays on the line.
What the agent does once a person has joined
And back again
The person can hand the call back to the agent.
No dead ends
Nobody answering, a busy line and a declined call each continue the flow.
Stepping in
Somebody watching a live call can have a person brought into it in any of these ways, whatever its flow was doing, or hang it up. Who stepped in is on the audit log.
The people a call can go to
Each is an extension or a number on one of your trunks, with a name such as Support. The flow names the target; who that rings can change without touching the flow.
Calls it places
It rings a person only to hand over.
The platform dials nothing of its own accord: only destinations a workspace set up by name, under per-trunk rules on where and how often.
Extensions only, to begin with
A trunk’s limits start by allowing the PBX’s own extensions and no outside numbers.
Rules for each trunk
Where calls may be placed, and how often, is set on the trunk they are placed through.
Your PBX’s rules still apply
Where an agent’s extension may call is also decided by the PBX’s own rules for that extension.
Start with a workspace of your own.
Create an account, connect a model, and make your first agent from a template.