Call forwarding for law firms

How to forward your firm’s Zoom Phone calls to your intake agent

The steps the phone-line step of setup gives for Zoom Phone, from Zoom Phone’s own help page, with “your Intake Gateway number” standing for the number you get at setup.

Zoom Phone

Before you start, read what forwarding changes.

How do I forward my office line to Intake Gateway?

You keep your own phone number — nothing changes for the people calling you. Once you're signed in, the phone-line step of setup gives you a second, private number that belongs to your account, then shows the star codes to forward your own line to it.

Codes differ by carrier and by plan, so that step links each carrier's own instructions and gives you a quick way to check the forwarding took.

The phone-line step starts with nights and weekends: forward only after hours, only the calls you don't answer, or every call. Forwarding only after hours or only unanswered calls means you keep answering the calls you already do — that step lays out each way.

This answer on the help page

Forward in Zoom Phone

Calls your phones don’t answer

First, Zoom's page: to forward calls to an external number, the user must have a Direct Inward Dial (DID) number assigned; a user with only an extension and no DID can't forward calls externally.
As the user: in the Zoom web portal's side menu click Zoom Phone, then the Settings tab; in the Business Hours or Closed Hours section, click Edit next to Call Handling.
Or as an account owner or admin: in the top-right corner click your profile picture or initials, then Admin Center; in the side menu click Product configuration, then Phone system, then Users & Rooms; click the phone user's name, open the User Settings tab, and in the Business Hours or Closed Hours section click Edit to the right of Call Handling.
Click Add Phone Number and enter your Intake Gateway number (Zoom's page: this forwards to an external phone number or external contact, such as a personal phone number not part of Zoom Phone).
For Call Handling Ring Mode select Sequential, not Simultaneously, and set Ringing Duration for Each Device. Zoom's page says you can move a toggle to rearrange the order of the apps and devices that ring: keep your Intake Gateway number after your own. Zoom's page doesn't say where an added number sits in that order; check it rings after your own devices.
If Require to press 1 before connecting the call is checked, clear it: your agent can't press 1 (Zoom's page: it is checked by default, can't be changed for call queues, and can be turned off for other calls).

Only after hours

Zoom keeps separate Business Hours and Closed Hours call handling: add your Intake Gateway number under Closed Hours only, and leave Business Hours as it is.

Before you rely on it

Zoom's page asks for an account owner or admin to manage account or site settings, and a Zoom Workplace license with Phone included or a standalone Zoom Phone calling plan. It says admins can lock some settings with policy controls, shown by a lock icon.
Zoom's page describes Add Phone Number as one more place the call goes, rung in the order you set; it doesn't call it forwarding for unanswered calls, so test it with a call you let ring.
Under When a call is not answered, Zoom's page also lists Forward to External Contacts, which works if the account has a directory of external users; the page doesn't say how to add one, so it isn't covered here.
Break hours and holiday hours have their own call handling on Zoom's page; these steps are for Business Hours and Closed Hours.
These are one phone user's settings. Zoom's page says the press-1 option can't be changed for call queues, so a call queue's calls aren't covered here.
Forwarding every call isn't on the page we read.

These steps come from Zoom Phone’s own help page and nothing else: check them on Zoom Phone’s site. Menus change; where yours read differently, follow their page.

Never set your Intake Gateway number to ring at the same time as your own phones: your agent answers at once and would take every call.

If Zoom Phone lets you choose the caller ID on forwarded calls, choose the caller’s number: a forwarded call that shows your own number reads as a test call from you, on the phone-line step and in your call emails.

Testing it

Test from a phone that isn’t yours once forwarding is on.

A caller says they got nothing: silence, a busy signal, or the call dropped.

Check these in order.

Is your line live? Your setup page says so. Until it does, a forwarded call has nowhere to go; see "My setup page says Almost there" above.
Is your plan active? After the trial ends without a plan, or after a failed payment's grace period runs out, calls are refused before the agent answers. Your Billing page shows your status and fixes it. Before you add a card, your line answers only test calls from phones on your list of your own numbers, up to 10 calls or 15 minutes in all, whichever runs out first, one call at a time; every other caller is refused.
Is forwarding pointed at the right number? Compare the number your forwarding sends to with the Intake Gateway number on your phone-line step, digit for digit.
Does the phone you transfer urgent calls to also forward to us? Then a transfer can come straight back to your Intake Gateway number, and that call is refused so it can't loop into the agent. Transfer urgent calls to a phone that does not forward here.
Did we email you, or does your dashboard say, that calls to your Intake Gateway number are not being answered? Then it is on our side; see "If your calls stop being answered" below. No such notice does not rule it out: that notice can be late or never come.

If none of that explains it, email us the number the caller dialled from and roughly when, and we'll look into it.

This answer on the help page

If your calls stop being answered

We watch every call we let through to your agent. When at least two calls to your Intake Gateway number, ten or more minutes apart within one hour, go unanswered, and our voice provider's own records show it failing at least two of those calls, we try to email you (at the addresses in Settings, or your sign-in email if you set none) and your dashboard shows a red notice. The problem is on our side, not yours. That email is a courtesy, not a guarantee: it can be late, it can miss a problem, and it may never be sent, so do not rely on it alone.

What this cannot catch quickly: it needs calls to notice anything, so on a quiet line it can take hours before two calls arrive; it notices only calls that reach us; and callers who hang up before they are connected are not counted as a failure. If our voice provider stops passing calls to us at all, you may not get this email; we are alerted when it stops answering our own checks, and that alert comes to us, not to you; if we confirm a failure like that, we may send you the same email ourselves. If a caller tells you they got no answer, check your own line by calling your Intake Gateway number directly.

What to do until it is fixed:

Point your call forwarding at your transfer phone — the number you gave for urgent calls — instead of your Intake Gateway number. Use the same forwarding steps as at setup, with your transfer phone's number in place of the Intake Gateway number. Your callers then reach you directly.
Or turn forwarding off, so your office line rings as it did before you had us.
Never forward to your own office number: it forwards to us, so the call would come straight back.
Call back the people on the dashboard's list of callers who got no answer. Call them back soon: the list is kept only for a short time, and we never had a recording or transcript of those calls, because nobody answered them.

We try to email you again once it is fixed: after a call to your line is answered, we wait 30 minutes to be sure it holds, then two more hours in case it fails again, so a brief recovery does not send you back and forth. Meanwhile your dashboard says calls are being answered again; keep your forwarding as it is until the email arrives or you have checked for yourself. You can check at any time by calling your Intake Gateway number directly: if your agent answers, it is working again, and that call tells us so too.

When that email arrives, or your own call to your Intake Gateway number is answered, point your forwarding back at your Intake Gateway number and place one test call to your office number from a phone that is not on your list of your own numbers.

This answer on the help page

Other phone systems

Every system, the Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile codes, and testing, on one page

Try it on your own line

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