Make & receive phone calls

A step by step guide to make & receive phone calls with Retell managed numbers & imported numbers

From previous guides, you already have numbers purchased or imported. This guide will walk through how to assign agents, and make and receive phone calls.

​Bind Voice Agents

• Only when you bind agents to a number will the number be able to receive and make calls.

• You can assign different inbound and outbound agent to the number.

• You can leave agent unset to disable inbound / outbound (for example, you are doing outbound and don’t want callbacks, you can leave inbound_agent_id unset)

After binding an agent for inbound, you should be able to receive inbound calls already.

​Make Outbound Call

If you are using a number purchased from Retell, right now it’s not able to make international calls. This restriction does not apply to imported numbers, as you have to set geo location permissions yourself at your telephony provider.

Check out Create Phone Call API Reference for all the parameters you can use.

• from_number is the e.164 string format of the number you purchased earlier.

• to_number is the phone number you want to call in e.164 string format.

NodePython

const registerCallResponse = await retell.call.createPhoneCall({
  from_number: '[phone]', // replace with the number you purchased
  to_number: '[phone]',  // replace with the number you want to call
});
console.log(registerCallResponse);

​Update the Voice Agent Bound to A Number

Check out Update Phone Number API Reference for all the parameters you can use to update the inbound and outbound agent who handles the phone. You can also turn off the inbound calls for the number by setting inbound_agent_id to null.

​Get Call Detail

• API: You can use Get Call API to get information like transcript, recording, latency tracking, etc.
• Webhook: You can also setup webhooks to receive real time updates when call is initiated, ends, and analyzed. Read more at Call Webhook Guide.