Answer overflow & after-hours calls

← Phase 1: Initial Configuration

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Phase 2: Overflow & After Hours

Concept Replacing your static, passive voicemail box with an active AI agent that answers calls, takes intelligent messages, and creates tickets when your team is unavailable. Value This eliminates “phone tag” and ensures you never miss a revenue opportunity or urgent issue. You get 24/7 coverage without additional staffing costs, and clients feel heard rather than ignored. Use Cases

• After Hours Coverage: Forward your calls to the Overflow number after work hours and on holidays (controlled by Microsoft hours).
• Front Desk Overflow: Use overflow as a front desk where technicians take no calls; they simply call back based on the ticket. This allows you to understand and prioritize responses at your own pace, saving dispatchers and techs time.

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How to Get a Number

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Customize the Agent

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Greeting

Customize your greeting so that your callers understand what to expect. We have found a key reason that callers might get frustrated is a lack of understanding of how this agent fits into your process.

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Note Escalation Requests

Overflow doesn’t escalate calls, but it can note escalation words in the ticket. This does not automatically change ticket priority.

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Additional Questions

The voice agent will automatically ask the caller what their issue is, but you can customize any additional questions you want to ask. We don’t recommend adding more than 2-3 questions as the call can get quite lengthy and callers can get frustrated.

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Choose a Default Board and Source

Set your default board and source. Ideally, you have created a unique Source in your PSA called “Voice AI” (or similar) as covered in Phase 1. Click Save!

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Set Up After Hours (Optional)

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Test Your Agent

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Before connecting to your phone system, thoroughly test your agent:

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Expected Call Flow:

1. Caller dials the Overflow number.
2. AI greets the caller with your custom greeting.
3. AI asks what they need help with.
4. AI asks any additional custom questions you configured.
5. AI confirms the information and thanks the caller.
6. Call ends and ticket is automatically created in your PSA.

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How To Configure Your VoIP/PBX

This step determines when the AI picks up the phone. Configure your phone system to forward calls to the Thread Overflow number you received above.

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Common Setup:

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Routing Gotchas

A few phone-system patterns cause avoidable problems — check these before you go live:

• Don’t create a double-ticket loop. If your Attendant already rolls unanswered calls to Overflow (via Use Overflow when no one is available in Attendant settings), do not also point your PBX ring-group “no answer” rollover back at a Thread Voice number. Doing both sends the unanswered call back in as a brand-new inbound call that Thread can’t tell is the same call — producing two tickets and, in some cases, two agents on the line. Let the Attendant’s own overflow handle the rollover.
• There’s no “answer but skip the AI” toggle for business hours. Voice AI doesn’t have a setting to pick up a call during business hours without running the AI. Control this at the phone-system level: route to your team during business hours and forward to the Thread number only after hours.
• Microsoft Teams overflow needs Pay-As-You-Go. If a Microsoft Teams Call Queue or Auto Attendant redirects to your Thread number, the resource account needs Pay-As-You-Go / Communication Credits — since November 1, 2025 Microsoft no longer allows outbound PSTN from resource accounts on Calling Plan licenses, and the redirect silently fails without it. See Microsoft Teams Pay-As-You-Go resource account calling.

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