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Set up outbound calling

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Applies to: Dynamics 365 Contact Center—embedded, Dynamics 365 Contact Center—standalone, and Dynamics 365 Customer Service

This article describes how you, as an administrator, can set up outbound calling for phone numbers in your organization. After you set up outbound calling, your agents can make calls to customers in the Customer Service workspace or Contact Center workspace app.

If you don't have any phone numbers provisioned for your business, then see Acquire a new phone number to learn how you can acquire new phone numbers. Phone number calling plans must be provisioned to support making calls to be used for outbound voice.

Prerequisites

Before you set up outbound voice calls for your business, you must perform the following steps.

  1. Configure one or more phone numbers for outbound calling.
  2. Create a voice type queue or use an existing voice queue to associate with the outbound profile.
  3. Configure capacity profiles and add users.
  4. Create outbound profiles

Configure phone numbers for outbound calling

To check whether a phone number is enabled for outbound calling, go to General settings > Phone numbers, and check whether the number has Make calls mentioned in the Calling column. You can configure the calling plan for a phone number if it isn't enabled for outbound calling.

  1. In the site map of Customer Service admin center or Contact Center admin center, select Channels in Customer support. The Channels page appears.

  2. Select Manage for Phone numbers.

  3. In the Edit number dialog, in the Calling plans area, select the Make calls option, and then select Upgrade. Your phone number is now upgraded for outbound calling.

The phone number is displayed to your customers when your agents call them.

Note

  • Though you can use the same queue for both inbound and outbound calling, we recommend that you create separate queues for inbound and outbound calling. This helps your supervisors to monitor and gauge traffic and customer sentiment, specific to outbound calls.
  • To configure call transfer to an external number to manage overflow, outbound calling must be enabled.

Configure capacity profiles and assign users

You must create or use existing capacity profiles to define and set the workload of your agents. For your agents to be able to make calls to customers, they must be assigned or added to an outbound capacity profile. If an agent isn't assigned to a capacity profile associated with an outbound profile, then outbound calling features aren't available to the agent. So, make sure that after you create or update the capacity profile, you add users to the profile.

For detailed information on how to manage capacity profiles and add users, see Create and manage capacity profiles.

For outbound calls, set the capacity profile fields as follows:

  • Work item limit: Indicates the number of outbound calls an agent can make at a time. If the value is set to 1, it means that the agent can make only one call at a time, and can't make a second call until the first call is ended. If the value is set to 3, it means that the agent can make 3 outbound calls at a time.
  • Reset frequency: Indicates whether the agent can immediately make another call when the current ends or has to wait until end of day. For voice calls, set this field to Immediate so that the agent can make another call after the current call is over.
  • Assignment blocking: Indicates whether you want to block any incoming calls when the agent is already on a call. Set this value to Yes, if you want to ensure the agent doesn't receive any incoming calls when an outbound call is in progress.

Note

  • When you name your capacity profiles, we recommend that you clearly indicate in the capacity Profile name field whether they're outbound, inbound, or both, so it's easy for you to assign users or agents to the appropriate profile.
  • Though you can use the same capacity profile for both inbound and outbound calling, we recommend that you create separate profiles because the considerations and settings for outbound calling and inbound calling can differ.
  • If your agents are assigned to receive customer calls only and not assigned to any capacity profile used for outbound calling, call features aren't displayed to the agent.

Assign personal phone numbers to agents

Personal numbers allow agents to exclusively make calls from the chosen number. These are different from outbound profile numbers as personal numbers are linked to specific user records, not profiles.

You can assign personal phone numbers to agents to make outbound calls to customers as long as the number isn't toll-free. To configure a personal phone number:

  1. Acquire a geographic phone number in Customer Service admin center or Contact Center admin center. For details on how to acquire a phone number, see Manage phone numbers.

  2. On the Phone numbers page, select Setup in Ready for setup, and in the dialog that appears, select Assign to user. The Omnichannel Users page displays a list of all agents.

  3. Select an agent to open the agent details page.

  4. Select Omnichannel and in Omnichannel Phone, search for your geographic number by using +1.

  5. Select the number in the results and then select Save. The phone number is now assigned exclusively to the agent to call customers.

Note

  • You can assign to agents local phone numbers only as personal phone numbers; toll-free numbers can’t be assigned. Personal agent phone number calls always apply the default scoped outbound profile.
  • You can add only those users who are configured for unified routing.
  • After you add agents to a queue, they must refresh their dashboards after 20 minutes to be able to make calls.

Overview of the voice channel
Manage phone numbers
Configure outbound and inbound profiles
Bring your own carrier
Set up inbound calling