This article describes the settings you can apply to individual Zendesk Talk lines. For details about managing general Talk line settings, see Managing Zendesk Talk lines. For details about adding new lines, see Adding Zendesk Talk lines.
Accessing individual line settings
The settings that you can apply to individual Talk lines can be found on the Talk lines properties page.
To access settings for a Talk line
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Talk.
- Click the Lines tab.
- Click the line you want to view or change settings for.
- Make any changes you want using the Available settings for Talk lines list below for help.
- Once you are finished, click Save changes.
If you have many Talk lines, you can use the filter to restrict the numbers that are shown.
Available settings for Talk lines
The following settings can be configured on the Settings tab of the Talk line properties page. The available settings will differ depending on your Talk plan and the line type you've added:
Setting | Description | Line type |
---|---|---|
Nickname | Enter a nickname for the line that will be displayed when you receive an incoming call. The nickname is required for digital lines. | Phone lines and digital lines |
Outbound number | The outbound number is required by digital lines to support making overflow calls and for forwarding calls to agents. You must choose an outbound number to complete setup of a digital line. | Digital lines only |
Failover number (Team, Professional, and Enterprise) | In the event that Zendesk Support is unavailable, the failover feature will route all incoming calls to a pre-designated number so you can help your customers with minimal disruption.
Failover is an automated process. When the outage is resolved, calls automatically revert back to your Talk number. You can find out if Zendesk Support is experiencing an issue on the Zendesk status page. For customers on the Talk Enterprise plan, if Zendesk Support is available to your end-users but you are unable to access it (you’re experiencing a localized internet outage, for instance), you can request to have failover manually initiated by contacting customer support. Zendesk will manually initiate failover for you once a month. Important: Failover can be enabled for a maximum of 24 hours.
The failover number you choose:
Note: Failover numbers must be entered in e.164 format. For more information, see What are the accepted phone number formats for Talk? in our Support tech notes.
|
Phone lines only |
Allow outbound calls? | Determines whether agents can place outbound calls to customers from this number. By default, this setting is enabled. Numbers that have this setting disabled won't appear in the call console as an option when agents try to make an outbound call. | Phone lines only |
Brand (Professional (add-on) and Enterprise) | If you support multiple brands, you can add and assign phone numbers for each brand. Calls to and from those numbers will have the associated brand value on the resulting tickets.
For more information, see Setting up Talk numbers for multiple brands. |
Phone lines only |
Agent wrap-up after calls?
Wrap-up time limit |
For each number, you can enable or disable agent wrap-up. When wrap-up is enabled, Talk agents have time after each call to finish adding details to the ticket.
With Talk Professional or Enterprise, you can also limit the amount of time agents have to wrap up calls for each number from 10 seconds to 20 minutes. If you select No limit, agents must manually leave wrap-up mode before they are available for another call. The wrap-up time in the call console shows the wrap up time left for the agent. If you changed the wrap-up time setting to No limit, it shows the amount of wrap-up time used by the agent instead. |
Phone lines and digital lines |
Call offering time limit (Enterprise only) | Enables you to choose the amount of time that each agent gets to answer a call before it is placed back in the queue. The amount of time left to answer the call is displayed in the Talk console.
The time limit is, by default, 30 seconds. You can click the setting to choose a duration between 15 seconds and 2 minutes. The maximum queue wait time you configure on the Settings page takes precedence over the call offering time limit. |
Phone lines and digital lines |
Create ticket for abandoned calls? (Professional and Enterprise) |
By default, tickets aren't created for abandoned calls. However, you can choose to enable ticket creation for abandoned calls for each of your individual numbers. When this setting is enabled, calls that are abandoned in the queue, in voicemail, or in IVR result in a created ticket, as long as a callback number is available. In cases where the caller is identified as "unknown", no ticket is created. |
Phone lines and digital lines |
Average wait time message? | Enable this option to play a message to callers on hold or, for Talk Professional and Enterprise, requesting a callback from queue, informing them of the current average wait time. This message plays only when the average wait time is over two minutes long.
Note: The average wait time message is available in English only.
|
Phone lines and digital lines |
Available agents greeting (voicemail on)
Available agents greeting (voicemail off) Hold greeting Wait greeting |
Configures various greetings that will be associated with this number. For more information about greetings, see Managing outgoing greetings. | Phone lines and digital lines |
Phone lines and digital lines | If this number is SMS capable, you can enable it for Zendesk Text, allowing you to provide both SMS and phone support from the same number. For details about providing SMS support with Zendesk Text, see Getting started with Text. | Phone lines only |
Changing settings for multiple Talk lines
From the Lines tab of the Talk settings page, you can change some settings for multiple lines simultaneously.
To change the settings for multiple lines
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Talk.
- Click the Lines tab.
- For each line you want to select, click the country flag next to the number. A check mark is displayed.
- From the "…" drop-down list, choose one of the following actions:
- Enable outbound calls: Allow agents to make outbound calls from the numbers you select.
- Disable outbound calls: Stops agents from using the numbers you select to make outbound calls.
- Set as priority number: With priority numbers you can provide differentiated service to your VIP customers and prioritize urgent or emergency calls. When you assign number as a priority number, any incoming calls to that number will be moved to the head of the queue to be answered before other incoming calls.
- Remove priority: Removes any previously assigned priority from the selected numbers.
Deleting and recovering lines
You can delete an existing number or digital line if you don't want to use it anymore.
To delete a line
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Channels > Talk.
- Select the Lines tab.
- Next to the number you want edit settings for, click the menu icon, then select Delete.
- Click Delete in the window that appears.
Zendesk Talk numbers are removed from your account when your trial expires, your Talk subscription is canceled, or your account is suspended or deleted. Within 72 hours, you can contact our customer service team to reinstate your Talk number if you have resolved the issue with your account.
23 Comments
Hi,
we have different websites, each with their own telephone number. When a call reaches us, we need to make sure that we answer with the appropriate greeting, and that the agents know which website telephone number the caller has dialed.
Will this information show up in Zendesk talk? I've assigned nicknames to each number, so will this nickname be displayed when they answer the call?
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Hi Oliver,
Thanks for your question! Yes, the nickname for the number will show up when the call comes in. Your agents can find this information just below the caller information in the pop up:
I've got my talk number enabled for text but I see no more options for actually enabling the Text feature.
The guide on https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/235709587-Getting-started-with-Text-Talk-Team-Professional-and-Enterprise- jumps right from creating or enabling a number for text right to sending a text. I have one number Talk and it is enabled for texting, how do I now jump to actually setting up texting?
Hi Jon,
If you navigate to Admin>Channels>Text do you see the Talk number you've enabled for Text?
If you do have this number set up then you can take a look at setting up the appropriate triggers as mentioned here: Using Text Notifications with Triggers
Let me know if you run into any issues.
Cheers!
Thanks Brett. Looking at this, perhaps I'm misunderstanding the usage of the text feature. Can I not send an SMS/MMS to a customer from my Zendesk Dashboard? I have my phone icon with dial pad in the top right hand corner, I guess I just assumed that the text feature would allow for texting from that screen.
Hi Jon,
It won't let you proactively reach out via Text through the Talk icon at the top right unfortunately. You'd need to generate a ticket in your account and have the appropriate triggers set up to send your update to the requester.
The documentation I attached previously should help with setting this up but please let me know if you have any questions or concerns :)
How do I add the Nickname for a line to reports (in Explore) and views?
Hey Cyn,
Are you speaking on behalf of renaming your metrics? Because in order to do this you would need to create a renamed data set with the metrics containing your desired name. You'll see below how you can reach the Data Structure editor which will allow you to rename your attributes and metrics.

I hope this helps!
How is the average wait time determined?
We are just launching this platform so we have no wait time recorded and zero calls made.
Hello Robbie,
Wait time begins counting the moment the customer arrives in the IVR and stops when they leave. I included this article that should help explain this process a bit more in detail.
When is the Average wait time message triggered?
Best regards!
Hi, how do I disable the agent wrap-up? It says above you can do it but I can't find anything in the settings. We're only trialing the lite version at the moment, is it not available at that level?
Our goal is to ensure agents don't leave the timer running after a call and forget to make themselves available again for new calls.
Hey Gareth,
You can find this option by navigating to Admin>Channels>Talk>Numbers and select the number you'd like to disable this option for. Screenshot below:
Let me know if you're still unable to locate this option on your end.
Cheers!
Perfect, that's exactly what I needed. Didn't see the little settings cog next to the number. Thanks.
I have a question on deleting a number. We have five phone numbers we do not intend to use beyond this year.
What exactly happens when a number that has been in use previously gets deleted? What will a customer who still has the old number saved somewhere hear when calling that number?
Hey Eckhard -
The best practice is to continue using the number you plan to discontinue for a few weeks with a voicemail message saying that this number will no longer be in use before deleting it. Once it has been deleted, users who call it will receive a message that it is no longer in service.
Hi Nicole! Thank you for the clarification.
Would love more details on how to send out a text proactively. There's a comment above but it refers to documentation i can't find.
How can I make a Reporting in Explore show Outbound Call related to country?
The Agents clicking just "Call" in Ticket and always one pre-selection will select.
So all Outbound call for example come from one number instead of right country code.
Hello Tobias Hermanns,
You can create this report using the Outbound Calls Metric and the End-user Local attribute.
Best regards.
Hi Devan,
nice try, but not workable.
From 3.000 Calls, 2500 flagged EN-US, and we working in EMEA region.
So most issue is not all Helpcenter languages are activated, so many customer just flagged as EN.
I think we need one of these two:
- Custom Fields, to Take Ticket Country, we have mandatory in Talk Dataset
- User Number in Explore (like +44) we can build a custom metric for that.
Hello Tobias Hermanns,
My apologies that our solution didn't works as intended for your use case. After looking this over, it does seem that the attributes you would need are not natively possible at this time. I would recommend posting in our product feedback forums so our developers can consider making these changes in a future update.
Best regards.
Hi!
I'm wondering how I can configure our account so that a phone line automatically routes to an after-hours line and then routes back automatically to the main-line during certain hours during the day?
Hi Maddy Greenburg
The easiest way to achieve this workflow is to toggle to the "Overflow" tab in the settings for the line you wish to route outside of your posted schedule. From here, you can designate a number to over-flow to. Make sure to properly format the number as +1 (212) 555-1234 and test it to ensure connectivity. Hope this helps!
Brandon Tidd
729 Solutions
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