What takes effect when
Changes on Transfers take effect on your next call. Changes to a journey go live when you publish.
The reasoning is that a phone number is something you maintain — people join, leave and change phone, and you fix a wrong mobile in a hurry — while a journey is something you design, review and publish. So there’s no draft here and nothing to publish: each panel says Takes effect on your next call as you work, and a team saves as you change it.
Because the list is live, it is also the one place in the editor that can tell you no. A change that would leave a live journey with nobody to ring is refused at the moment you try it, rather than breaking a call later.
The two ways a caller reaches somebody
Both start in the Journeys section, as an action on a step. In the action list they sit together under Transferring callers:- Transfer to the person the caller asks for — your Receptionist listens for a name, finds that person in People, checks it has the right one, and rings them. Callers can ask for a person, not a team. There’s nothing to choose on the step, because it searches everybody on your list: its card reads Everyone in Transfers, with a count of your people and a Manage › link back to this section.
- Transfer to a person or team you pick — the step has a Who to ring list holding your People and your Teams; start typing a name to narrow it. Pick one person and every caller who reaches that step goes to them; pick a team and the call rings its numbers in order until somebody picks up. Under the list, the step shows who gets rung and how long a caller would wait, with the same Manage › link. Somebody who is away or whose number can’t be used is marked can’t be rung in the list, and a team with nobody to dial is marked nobody to ring — you can still pick them, but publishing is held until they can be rung. Until you’ve added anyone here, the step says there is nobody to ring and offers Add somebody › instead.
What the person who answers hears
When a transfer rings somebody and they pick up, your Receptionist introduces the call to them first. It speaks in the language your caller has been using on the call, which is one of the Languages you chose in Personality & voice. The introduction says who is calling and that they rang your business, and repeats nothing else from the call. It gives your caller’s name when your Receptionist has collected it on this step or an earlier one, and otherwise says “a caller”. If no step collects a name, the action card suggests collecting a “Name” detail on this or an earlier step. Both transfer actions have a checkbox on their card, Ask the person answering to accept the call, which is ticked by default and marked RECOMMENDED. It decides how the introduction ends:- Ticked — the introduction ends by asking them to press 1 or say yes to accept the call, or say no to decline it. They can press 1 or simply answer in their own words, in your caller’s language or in English; any other key declines. If their answer isn’t clear (“Who is it?”, say), they’re asked once more, which adds about ten seconds on the calls where it happens. If they decline, say nothing, or still aren’t clear the second time, your caller isn’t put through to them: the next number is tried, if there is one, and otherwise your Receptionist offers to take a message. A voicemail, answering machine or phone menu is never put through, in any language, because a machine can’t agree to take the call.
- Unticked — they hear the same introduction and are put through as soon as it ends, with nothing to press. The card warns you to “Only turn this off for numbers you know a person answers”: your Receptionist still listens for an answering machine, but that check isn’t perfect, and once your caller is put through your Receptionist has left the call and can’t step back in.
People: who callers can ask for by name
The People tab lists everyone a caller can ask for by name — and, because a journey step can be pointed at one person, everyone a journey can send a caller to directly. Its caption says as much: rung when a journey sends a caller to them, or when a caller asks for them by name. Each person is a row showing their name and number, with a verdict on the right saying whether we can ring it — Ready when we can. Search the list with the box at the top; longer lists are paged.1
Click Add a person
A row opens at the top of the list with two fields: their name, and their phone number.
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Type their name and number
The number field shows a country flag and dialling code, so you can type the number the way you’d write it at home. Give people the name a caller would actually say — the name is what your Receptionist listens for.
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Click Save
The row joins the list and takes effect on the next call. To change somebody later, click the pencil on their row, edit the same two fields, and click Update. Cancel closes a row without saving it.
What “Can we ring it?” is telling you
Every row is checked against the numbers we’re able to dial, and the verdict sits on the right of the row.
Click Fix this number on the row and it opens ready to correct, so you never have to work out which field to click.
A number you type here is checked as you save it: if we can’t ring it, the row isn’t saved at all and tells you why on the spot. Numbers that arrive from a spreadsheet behave differently — they’re saved and flagged, so nobody is lost over one bad cell — which is why rows with a verdict on them exist at all.
A dot appears on the People tab whenever somebody needs attention, so you can see it from the Teams tab. Click Only needing attention to filter the list down to those rows.
Switching somebody off, and removing them
When somebody is on holiday, on leave or off sick, use the switch on their row rather than deleting them. Their row greys out, the chip reads Away — not taking calls, and callers who ask for them are told they aren’t available and offered a message. Flick the switch back when they return and everything is as it was. The switch also reaches into your teams. If they’re in any, you’re asked to confirm first — “Priya is in 2 of your teams. Switching them off here also takes them out of Sales and Out of hours until you switch them back on.” Their place in each dial order is kept, so nothing has to be rebuilt. Removing somebody does the opposite, and the confirmation spells it out: callers can no longer ask for them by name, but each team they’re in keeps the number it already holds and goes on ringing it. The confirmation names those teams and the number each one keeps. To take somebody out of a team as well, edit the team. Somebody a live journey step rings directly is the exception to both: while that step points at them, switching them off or removing them is refused, and the row names the journey so you can point the step elsewhere and publish first. There’s one more case, and it hides the switch rather than refusing it: while we can’t ring somebody’s number, their row has no switch at all. Nothing would dial them in either position, so there is nothing for it to change — the row shows the verdict and Fix this number in its place, and correcting the number is what brings the switch back. Somebody switched off whose number we also can’t ring shows both: the Away — not taking calls chip, with the verdict and its fix underneath. An import can leave them that way, because it updates the numbers of people already on your list without changing who is switched off.Teams: numbers rung one after another
A team is a name and an ordered list of phones — your sales line, an on-call rota, a reception desk. Each team is a row showing its name, the journeys that use it, the order in full (1 · Priya → 2 · Sam → 3 · Reception) and what the order means for a caller, with a verdict on the right saying whether we can ring them.
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Click Add a team
A panel opens inside the list. Give it a name — Sales, Out of hours — in the required Name field.
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Add who it rings
Choose from your people picks somebody off your People list. Type a name and number adds a phone that isn’t a person on the list — a reception desk, an out-of-hours line, a contractor. Either way, every entry carries a name, so the order reads as “Priya, then Sam, then reception” rather than three numbers.
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Put them in the order you want them rung
The arrows on each entry move it up and down. Position 1 is rung first and gets the caller soonest. The × takes an entry out.
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Click Add team
A team needs both a name and somebody in it, and pressing the button marks whatever is missing: the Name field turns red and takes the cursor — “Give the team a name — it’s how you pick it on a journey step.” — and the line asking for the first person to ring turns red. From then on the panel saves as you change it — add somebody, reorder, rename — and each change takes effect on the next call. A rename saves when you leave the field and an empty one never saves at all, so clearing the name of a team you already have shows you that same message. Done just closes the panel.
What your caller hears
While you’re building or editing a team, a line called What your caller hears keeps count: “We ring these one after another until somebody picks up. About 20 seconds each — a caller waits up to two minutes, then your Receptionist takes a message.” It counts numbers rather than entries, and it skips anybody who can’t be rung right now, so it always describes the real wait. That’s the honest cost of a long dial order: the eleventh person in a team is several minutes of ringing away, and this is where you see it before a caller does.Entries that follow a person, and entries that don’t
An entry added with Choose from your people is marked linked to your people. It follows that person: their number, and their away switch. That’s what makes one switch do two jobs — switching Priya off for two weeks stops callers being offered her by name and makes her teams ring straight past her, with her position kept for when she’s back. A linked entry has no number of its own to correct, so it offers Change on People › instead of a pencil. That takes you to that person on the People tab with their row already open on their number — you don’t have to go looking for them. Correcting it there fixes it everywhere at once: the by-name search and every team she’s in. An entry you typed in holds its own number. Nothing else in the Transfers section changes it, and changing it here affects nothing else. If an entry that used to follow somebody no longer does — because they were removed, or replaced by an import — it’s marked no longer linked and carries on ringing the number it stored. Nothing is broken; the chip is there so the drift doesn’t go unnoticed. The same person can appear in a team more than once, and that’s deliberate: try my mobile, then the office, then my mobile again is a perfectly good order. Anyone already in the team still appears in the picker, with a note of how many times they’re in it, rather than being hidden. Somebody whose number can’t be rung is greyed out there and can’t be added until their number is fixed on People.What a team’s verdict means
A team’s verdict reads Ready, All 3 ready or 2 of 3 ready while there’s somebody to dial — a team with an away colleague or one bad number still works, it just rings fewer phones. Nobody to ring means a caller who reaches this team goes straight to a message. When one bad number is the cause, the row names it and offers the fix — Fix this number for an entry holding its own number, Fix it on People › for a linked one. Either way you land on the number itself, ready to correct, rather than on a list to search. Switched off means somebody has used the team’s switch; a switched-off team rings nobody, however healthy its entries, which is what makes it useful for a team you only want in service at certain times of year.Filling the list from a spreadsheet
If you already keep your staff numbers in a spreadsheet, you can load the whole list in one go from the People tab. Take a copy first: Export downloads your current list as a spreadsheet in exactly the shape the import accepts, which is the only way back if an import removes somebody you wanted.1
Click Import from a file
The panel opens where the rows were, holding the template and the drop zone — side by side, or one above the other when your window is too narrow for both.
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Start from the template
Download the template gives you two columns and nothing else: Name and Phone number. Your own file works too, as long as it has those two headings. Numbers work either way round,
+442079460018 or 02079460018 — but format the phone column as Text first, or your spreadsheet rounds long numbers into something we can’t read.3
Drop the file in, or choose it
A spreadsheet or a CSV file, either dragged onto the panel or picked with Choose a file. Nothing is saved yet — you get a preview of exactly what the file would do.
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Read the preview from the top
A count comes first — “12 added · 130 changing · 8 removed” — then what you lose: the people on your list who aren’t in your file, named one by one with their number and any team they’re in. Under that, a button — Show all 142 rows, say — opens the row-by-row detail, where a changed number shows old and new. A name can be corrected in place there, so a duplicate is fixable without going back to your spreadsheet. If the file would leave a switched-on team with nobody to ring, or would drop somebody a live journey step rings directly (or keep them with a number we can’t ring), the preview says so — naming the team, or the person and the journey — and Replace my people stays greyed out until you change the file, the team or the step.
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Click Replace my people
Your list now matches the file, live on the next call, and the People tab confirms what changed.
When a change is refused
One rule protects your live AI Receptionist: a live journey must always have somebody to ring. If a change here would leave a published step with nobody, it’s refused at the moment you try it — removing a team a live step rings, switching off or removing a person a live step rings directly, switching somebody off when they’re the last person a team can dial, correcting a number to one we can’t ring. The refusal appears in the row you were working in, with everything you typed still in place, and it gives you every reason at once rather than one at a time:- A sentence — “You can’t remove Priya Shah yet. One journey step would be left with nobody to ring — callers who get there would go straight to a message instead of reaching anybody.”
- A row for each thing in the way, naming the journey and where in it the step sits, or naming the team that would be left empty. Open › takes you straight to it.
- A line telling you what would make it possible — update that step so it rings somebody else, add somebody to that team, or switch the team off — “then come back.”
Moneypenny receptionists
The third sub-tab, Moneypenny receptionists, covers the one hand-off that isn’t your own numbers: when your AI Receptionist can’t finish a call, Moneypenny receptionists pick it up instead of your caller leaving a message. This is where you ask us to set that up, and where you switch it on for this Receptionist. On a journey step it’s the action Transfer to one of our receptionists, listed with the other hand-offs under Transferring callers; its card on the step reads Moneypenny receptionists, states the charge, and links back here with Transfers ›. Before it puts anyone through, your Receptionist always asks the caller whether they’d like to be put through to a Moneypenny receptionist — even when they’ve asked for a person themselves — and only transfers them once they say yes. If they say no, your Receptionist carries on helping them, and they can still ask to be put through later in the call. You don’t need to write anything on the step for this, and because calls a receptionist answers carry an additional charge, it means those calls only reach us when your caller actually wants that. What you ask us for is a queue: your own name for it, plus the answers we work from when a receptionist answers one of your calls. You can have more than one, and you choose which of your AI Receptionists uses which. The panel is laid out the same way in every state — one line saying what it’s for, the switch, your queues, the journeys that hand callers over, and the charge. Once you have a queue that line stays put, whatever the queue is doing: Who answers the calls this Receptionist can’t finish. Where you stand is in the switch and in the queue’s own row rather than in the wording above them, so what changes from one account to the next is what you can do, not where to look.Asking us to set one up
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Click Ask us to set this up
It sits at the foot of the panel, and reads Ask us for another if you already have a queue. The form opens in the panel itself — nothing pops up, and Cancel leaves everything as it was.
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Tell us how you'd like these calls handled
- What should we call this? — your own name for the queue. Only you see it, and it’s what you’ll pick it by on each Receptionist.
- How would you like us to greet callers?
- What reason should we give callers for you not being available?
- Anything else we should capture? — a receptionist always takes a caller’s name, telephone number and what they’re calling about. Choose up to two more from Email address, Full address, Postcode, Preferred date and time and Reference number. Once you’ve chosen two, the rest are unavailable until you untick one.
- When a receptionist takes a message for you, how should we send that message to you? — Email or Text message, then the address or the mobile number to send them to.
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Click Confirm
The form closes and your queue appears in the panel marked being set up, with who asked for it and when. Your answers sit behind a What you asked us for link on the row — open it for what to greet callers with, the reason to give, anything else we’ll capture, and where your messages go. They stay on the queue for as long as it exists, so you can check without ringing us; once it’s live the same link reads What we agreed for this queue.
Renaming a queue
The name is yours, and yours to change whenever you like. Click Rename beside it, type a new one and click Save — it changes at once, on every Receptionist and on Settings, with nothing to ask us and no email. The row confirms it and says what didn’t change: only the name, and nothing about what we say or take. It works on any queue, including one still being set up and one you’ve already asked us to change. Nobody at our end reads your name for it, so there’s no work for a rename to get in the way of — if you typed “Reception” and meant “Repairs”, fix it and carry on.Asking us to change what we agreed
The rest of it is different, and the panel is straight with you about why. Those answers describe what a receptionist actually does when they pick up one of your calls, and they work from our own systems rather than from anything here — so changing them takes one of our team, and pressing Confirm is asking rather than doing.1
Click Ask us to change this
It’s a button on the row, above the link that opens the queue’s answers, on any queue that’s set up. The form opens in the panel, prefilled with the answers we work to today, so you edit rather than retype.
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Change whichever answers you need
The same questions as the original request, minus the name. An answer you edit is marked Changed, with what it says today beside it — “was ‘Good morning, Acme Plumbing.’” — and answers you leave alone are left unmarked, so the marks show you exactly what you’re asking for. A count beside the button says how much of the service it touches. Switching from email to text (or back) says outright that the other address will be cleared, because we only ever send one way.
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Click Send this to us
Your queue keeps a change asked for mark, and its row says who asked and when — “Dan Jones asked us to change this on 15 September. We’ll email you when it’s done, and you can ask for something else after that.” Under it, What you’ve asked us to change is open, listing only the answers involved and closing with “Anything not listed stays as it is”; What we do today stays behind its link beside it. The queue carries on taking calls exactly as it is, and the row says so.
- You can’t take it back. There’s no cancel once it’s sent. If you change your mind, wait for us to make the change and then ask again.
- One change per queue at a time. While a request is outstanding on a queue, that queue offers no second one — whoever is making your first change mustn’t have it move under them. A different queue on the same account is unaffected: you can have us changing two queues at once, and asking about one says nothing about the other.
Switching it on for a Receptionist
Under Moneypenny receptionists there’s a switch: Hand these callers to Moneypenny receptionists. Your queues are listed under it either way, switch on or off, by the names you gave them. With one queue that’s the whole control — there’s nothing to choose, and under the name the row reads “This Receptionist hands its callers here.” while the switch is on. With two or more set up, switching on puts a button beside each name and picks the first for you; to use another, click the button beside its name. A Receptionist hands callers to one queue, never several. Once a queue is working, its row also says when it started — “Set up on 20 August 2026.” — so you can see how long we’ve been answering for you without looking it up. Queues we set up before we began recording that don’t show a date, and the date a queue started is never the date you asked for it: on one that took a couple of weeks to arrange, that would say we’d been answering before we had. A queue still being set up is listed too, named and marked being set up, and it can’t be selected — until we’ve finished it there’s nowhere for a receptionist to pick a call up. Its own row says who asked and when, and promises the email: “Asked for by Dan Jones on 15 September 2026. We’ll email you when it’s ready.” If a queue being set up is all you have, the switch is there but greyed out, reading “Not yet — we’re still setting this queue up.” Switching it on is what makes Transfer to one of our receptionists attachable on this Receptionist’s steps. Until then the action is still listed in the action picker, greyed out, with the reason beside it:
Like everything else in the Transfers section, the switch takes effect on your next call. It isn’t part of your Receptionist’s design, so there’s nothing to publish — and going back to an earlier version leaves it exactly as you set it.