IVR Templates

When you create a new flow, you start by picking a template. Each template is a pre-built phone system layout — you fill in the details (phone numbers, greetings, audio) and the app does the rest.

Available Templates

Template	Best For	Complexity
Simple Bilingual IVR	Clients with English + Spanish callers	●●●○○
Department Menu IVR	”Press 1 for Sales, 2 for Support…” menus	●●●●○
Ring Group	Ringing multiple people at once	●●●○○
Play Audio IVR	Announcements, closures, or simple prompts	●●○○○
Business Hours Routing	Routing differently during open vs. closed hours	●●○○○
Multi-Language Menu	Full bilingual IVR with departments per language	●●●●●
After-Hours Emergency	Emergency on-call + voicemail after hours	●●●○○
Simple Forward	Forward all calls to one number	●○○○○
Forward + Voicemail	Forward with voicemail if no answer	●●○○○
Voicemail	Straight to voicemail, no forwarding	●○○○○

Picking the Right Template

Most client setups use one of these three:

Simple Bilingual IVR — The go-to for bilingual clients. Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, each routes to a different Eqho agent or number.
Department Menu IVR — When the client has multiple departments. Callers press a digit to reach the right team.
Ring Group — When multiple people should be called at once. First to answer gets the call, with voicemail fallback.

Simpler needs:

Simple Forward — Just routes every call to one number. No menu, no options.
Play Audio IVR — Plays a message, then optionally forwards, records voicemail, or hangs up. Great for holiday closures or temporary announcements.

More complex setups:

Multi-Language Menu — Like Simple Bilingual but with full department menus under each language.
Business Hours Routing — Sends calls to different numbers depending on whether the business is open or closed.

Template Visibility

Not all templates are visible by default. Superadmins can control which templates appear on the Create Flow page — see the Admin Guide for details.

Common Settings

Most templates share a few settings that appear under Advanced Settings (collapsed by default):

Setting	What it does
Voice	Which TTS voice reads text-to-speech prompts (e.g., Polly.Joanna)
Prompt Replay Count	How many times the prompt loops before moving on (1–5)
Pause Between Repeats	Seconds of silence between loops — TTS only (0–10)
Input Wait Time	How long to wait for the caller to press a key (1–30 seconds)
Ring Timeout	How long the destination phone rings before fallback (5–120 seconds)
Record Calls	Whether to record the forwarded call

You can leave all of these at their defaults for most setups.