Ring groups let you route incoming calls to multiple team members at once — or one by one. Instead of sending every call to a single person, you pick a group of users and a ring strategy, and dialnote handles the rest.
You'll set up ring groups inside the visual call flow builder using the Ring Users action.
Ring Strategies#
dialnote supports two ring strategies:
Simultaneous ("Everyone at once") — All selected team members' phones ring at the same time. The first person to pick up gets connected, and the other calls cancel automatically. This works well for support teams or sales lines where speed matters most.
Sequential ("One by one") — dialnote rings each team member in order. If the first person doesn't answer within the ring duration, the call moves to the next person in line. This is great for priority-based routing, like trying a primary account manager before falling back to a backup.
Availability matters
dialnote only rings team members whose status is set to Available. Users marked as Away or Do Not Disturb won't receive calls, so the ring group adjusts automatically based on who's actually ready to take calls.
Setting Up a Ring Group#
To add a ring group to your call flow:
- Open Settings → Phone Numbers and select the number you want to configure.
- Click Edit Call Flow to open the visual builder.
- Add a Ring Users node to your flow.
- Configure these settings:
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Users | Pick individual team members to include in the group |
| User Groups | Select predefined groups (members are expanded automatically) |
| Ring Strategy | Choose simultaneous or sequential |
| Ring Duration | How long to ring before giving up (5–300 seconds, default 30) |
| Caller ID | Which caller ID agents see when the call comes in |
You can combine individual users and user groups in the same ring group. dialnote removes duplicates automatically, so a user who appears in multiple groups won't get double-ringed.
Queue Fallback#
What happens if nobody picks up? You can enable queue fallback so callers don't just hit voicemail right away.
When queue fallback is on, dialnote moves unanswered calls into a hold queue. You can configure:
- Queue name — A custom label for the queue (optional)
- Hold music — Play a text-to-speech message or a custom audio URL
- Announce position — Tell callers their place in line
- Announce wait time — Share the estimated wait
- Accept/Reject mode — Require agents to actively accept the queued call instead of auto-connecting
- Accept timeout — How long agents have to accept (5–300 seconds)
Auto-created queues
When you enable queue fallback on a ring group, dialnote auto-creates a queue with the same users and ring strategy. You don't need to set up a separate queue first — it's handled for you.
If queue fallback isn't enabled, unanswered calls go directly to voicemail after the ring duration expires.
How It Works Behind the Scenes#
When a call hits a Ring Users node, here's what happens:
- The caller enters a conference room and hears hold music.
- dialnote checks which group members are Available.
- Based on the ring strategy, agents are dialed into the same conference.
- The first agent to answer gets connected to the caller instantly.
- If no one answers within the ring duration, the call routes to queue fallback or voicemail.
For sequential ring, dialnote tracks progress through each target. If the current agent doesn't answer, it advances to the next one automatically. Once all targets are exhausted, the fallback kicks in.
Ring duration per agent
With sequential ring, the ring duration applies to each agent individually. If you set 30 seconds and have 3 agents, the total maximum wait before fallback could be up to 90 seconds. Keep this in mind when setting timeouts.
Common Setups#
Sales team — fastest response wins: Use simultaneous ring with your full sales team. Set ring duration to 20 seconds with queue fallback enabled. Callers get connected to whoever's free first.
Account management — try the owner first: Use sequential ring. Put the primary account manager first, then a backup, then the general support team. Set ring duration to 15 seconds per agent so callers aren't waiting too long.
After-hours overflow: Combine ring groups with business hours in your call flow. Route to your main team during work hours, and a smaller on-call group after hours.