Forwarding Portal — setting up a flow

A flow is one set of inbound numbers plus the destinations those calls spread across. The New flow wizard walks you through it in four steps — about five minutes, and nothing to configure on the servers themselves: we build the trunks and whitelist the IPs for you.

Step 1 — Master & DIDs

1. Click Inbound Seller in the left sidebar (under Products & Addons).
2. Click New flow, top-right.
3. Flow name — something your team will recognize later, like "Acme overflow router".
4. Master server — the server your carrier sends the calls to. Every other server on your account becomes an eligible destination.
5. Timezone — drives schedule windows, same-day caller stickiness, and per-destination daily caps. Defaults to US Eastern.
6. Inbound DIDs — the numbers your carrier delivers to the master, comma or newline separated. Letters are allowed (alphanumeric DIDs up to 50 characters) — enter them exactly as your carrier sends them. DIDs already synced on the master appear as one-click chips under the box.

We don't sell phone numbers — you bring these from your carrier and point them at the master.

Step 2 — Destinations

Add where calls go — Inbound Buyers (your other servers) and/or toll-free numbers, in any mix. A flow needs at least one destination, and a master that forwards only to toll-free numbers with no buyer at all is fine.

Add buyer

1. Click Add buyer and pick the server.
2. Priority — lower is tried first. Same number = one tier, split by weight.
3. Weight — the destination's share within its priority tier. 0 = drain (no new calls).
4. Max live — cap on that server's live calls. A server at its cap is skipped, not queued.
5. Lands on — Existing in-group (we mint the transfer DID for you), Auto-create in-group (we create an empty in-group plus transfer DID on the server — assign agents to it in VICIdial afterwards), or Existing DID.

Add toll-free

1. Click Add toll-free and enter the toll-free number, plus its priority, weight, and max-live.
2. The original caller's number and CNAM pass through; the carrier trunks are managed for you.

If the Add toll-free button is greyed out, toll-free termination isn't enabled on your account yet — contact support.

Step 3 — Routing rules

• Spread mode — Round robin rotates evenly across a tier; Weighted splits by each destination's weight.
• Stickiness — send a returning caller back to the same destination: None, Same day, or Rolling window (you set the minutes).
• Fallback (API down) — what the on-box router does if the routing API is briefly unreachable: Static list (its local failover file), Default route (the first route), or Reject.
• Repeat-caller rule (optional switch) — callers who rang within the last N minutes, matched per DID, per flow, or per tag, go back to the same destination or are rejected.

Defaults are sensible — skip this step if you're unsure.

Step 4 — Review

1. Check the summary — each destination shows its priority, weight, and live cap.
2. Optional: flip Create paused to build everything now but route no calls until you switch the destinations on in the Rules tab. Useful for staging a flow before go-live.
3. Click Build & go live (or Build (paused)). We provision the trunks, whitelist the IPs, install the on-box router, and start routing within about a minute.

Test it before the real traffic

• On the flow's page, click Test call (top-right). It places a real call through your routing — it rings a destination but is never billed and never counts in your reports (look for the Test tag). Watch it land on the Live tab.
• The Live tab shows which destination is next in line ("Next up") and every call currently ringing or talking.
• The Call Log has one row per call (rapid redials collapse together) — expand a row for the step-by-step timeline: received → sent to … → answered → ended, with talk time.
• On the Rules tab you can pause or disable individual destinations at any time — changes take effect within a minute.

Good to know

• A destination at its Max live cap is skipped, not queued — the next eligible destination takes the call.
• Weight 0 means drain: calls in progress finish, but no new ones are sent. Handy for phasing a server out.
• Auto-create in-group gives you an empty in-group — calls arrive but nobody answers until you assign agents to it in VICIdial.
• Toll-free legs bill at your termination per-minute rate, separate from the forwarding per-minute rate.
• The Simulate tab on the flow runs what-if traffic through the real routing engine — no real calls, no billing — so you can sanity-check your priority/weight setup before go-live.