Phone and SMS Provider Setup

Calls and texts go through a provider account. This page covers the settings an administrator changes once when the site is set up, and again only when the account changes.

Menu	Settings > Communication > Telephony, and Settings > Communication > SMS
Permission	Manage telephony settings; Manage SMS Settings
Features	Telephony and a provider feature such as Telnyx or Asterisk; Telnyx SMS or Orchard Core's Twilio SMS for texting

Can't find it?

What you see depends on your role. If the menu, a button or a setting on this page is missing, ask your administrator to give you the permission listed above or to turn on the feature. Only administrators can turn features on and change site settings.

Each provider you turn on adds its own tab to Settings > Communication > Telephony. The Soft Phone tab holds the settings that apply whichever provider you use.

Connect Telnyx for calls

Before you start, create an API key in the Telnyx portal under Account > Keys & Credentials > API Keys (a V2 key). Sign in to Telnyx as an account Owner or Admin when you create it: a key made by a restricted member can read the account but cannot create what Connect Telnyx needs, and connecting fails with Not authorized.

1. Open Settings > Communication > Telephony and choose the Telnyx tab.
2. Tick Enable Telnyx provider, paste the key into API key, and save. The Connect Telnyx button appears once the key is stored.
3. Click Connect Telnyx. The site creates the Telnyx resources it needs and shows a green Connected to Telnyx panel with their ids. The other settings appear once you are connected.
4. Pick the Default outbound caller id: the Telnyx number customers see when a call does not bring its own. The list holds your Omnichannel Addresses used for Voice calls; Connect suggests one.
5. Paste the Webhook public key. You find it in the Telnyx portal under Account > Keys & Credentials, as the Public Key. Until it is set, a yellow Add the webhook public key to finish setup panel reminds you, and every call event from Telnyx is rejected: calls do not connect and inbound calls are not routed.
6. Save.

Field	What it does
Enable Telnyx provider	Turns Telnyx on and makes it selectable as the default telephony provider. When no default is chosen yet, Telnyx becomes the default.
API key	The Telnyx V2 API key. It is stored encrypted; leave the box empty to keep the stored key.
Default outbound caller id	The number shown on outbound calls. A dialer profile's Caller ID replaces it for the calls that profile places, and a caller sent on from a phone menu to an outside number is shown as the number they dialed. Use a number you own on Telnyx, so calls are not flagged as spam.
Webhook public key	The key that proves call events really come from Telnyx. It is not a secret you create; you copy it from the portal. Stored encrypted.
Webhook endpoint	The address Connect set on your Telnyx account, shown for reference.

Noise suppression asks Telnyx to clean background sound, such as colleagues talking nearby, out of your agents' calls. Pick Krisp for a busy floor, then tick whether to clean the agent's voice (what callers hear, on by default), the caller's voice (what the agent hears), or both. The soft phone's voice isolation usually cleans the agent's voice already, so Clean the caller's voice is the one that removes the line hiss and background noise your agents hear. Suppression strength sets how hard it works: Balanced (the default) removes line hiss while keeping the soft endings of words, Light sounds the most natural, and Strong removes the most noise but can clip the ends of words and make a voice sound too loud. It is a Telnyx beta feature billed for each voice cleaned; see Background noise suppression.

The Advanced — browser WebRTC (optional) section holds settings you rarely change: Credential lifetime (minutes), Audio test destination (a number that plays your voice back, used by the soft phone's Run audio test), Calls with no local record (what to do with a call left over from a restart: Report or End call), Answering machine detection (Premium, Standard or Off; Telnyx bills the first two per call), Text-to-speech voice and Text-to-speech language for spoken prompts, the SIP and ICE (STUN/TURN) connection settings, Preferred audio codecs, Soft phone region and an API address override. Every one has a working default. Change them only when Telnyx support tells you to, or when your network needs a relay server. The Telnyx reference explains each one.

Disconnect deletes the resources Connect created on Telnyx, after you confirm. To start over, click Disconnect and then Connect Telnyx again.

Connect Asterisk for calls

Use Asterisk when your company runs its own Asterisk phone system. The values come from whoever looks after that system.

1. Open Settings > Communication > Telephony and choose the Asterisk tab.
2. Tick Enable Asterisk provider. The rest of the fields appear.
3. Enter the ARI base URL, ARI user name, ARI password and Stasis application name. The application name is required; when several sites share one Asterisk server, each site needs its own name.
4. Optionally fill in the Endpoint template, Outbound caller id, Dial timeout (seconds) and the voicemail fields.
5. For call audio in the browser, fill in the browser audio fields (SIP WebSocket URL, SIP domain, the ICE and TURN fields, Browser audio codecs and the PJSIP fields).
6. Save.

The Asterisk reference explains each field. When no default provider is chosen yet, Asterisk becomes the default. Your IT team can also set up a shared Asterisk connection for every site; it then appears as Default Asterisk in the Default telephony provider list, with no tab of its own.

Choose the default provider and soft phone options

On the Soft Phone tab of the same page, pick the Default telephony provider and set the soft phone options described in Soft phone.

When you turn off the provider that is the default, the default is cleared and the soft phone stops working until you choose another one.

Set up SMS

1. Open Settings > Communication > SMS.
2. On the Providers tab, pick the Default SMS provider.
3. Fill in that provider's own tab, as described below.
4. Save.
5. Add each SMS number under Omnichannel Addresses.

Telnyx

Field	What it does
Enable the Telnyx SMS provider	Makes Telnyx selectable as the SMS provider.
API key	The Telnyx V2 API key.
Messaging profile id	Optional. Sends through one Telnyx messaging profile; leave it empty to send using only the From number.
Public Key	The Telnyx public key that proves incoming texts and delivery receipts really come from Telnyx.
Webhook URL	Read-only. In the Telnyx portal, create a messaging profile under Messaging Suite > Programmable Messaging, and set both its Webhook URL and Webhook Failover URL to this address.

The tab has buttons that open the right Telnyx portal pages. If your site sits behind a proxy and the Webhook URL shows the wrong address, ask your IT team to fix the site's base URL.

Twilio

Fill in the Twilio account details on the Twilio tab. To receive texts, copy the tab's Webhook URL. In the Twilio console, open your phone number and, under Messaging, set A message comes in to Webhook, HTTP POST, and that address. The Webhook URL is shown when the SMS Omnichannel Automation or SMS Messaging Channel feature is on. The Omnichannel SMS reference lists the webhook address.