Forwarding as a function call
API Call Forwarding: The Routing Management Area
Call forwarding is normally a console task: log in, find the number, change the destination. The Routing Management area of our API makes it a programmatic step instead — your software changes where calls land, and the change takes effect on the live service.
- Forwarding via REST
- Recording toggle included
- One of three API areas
API forwarding questions
What can the Routing Management area do?
It manages call forwarding — the destinations your numbers point at — and toggles call recording, programmatically. It is one of three API areas, alongside Services (listing your numbers) and CDR (retrieving call records).
Why control forwarding by API instead of the console?
When destinations need to follow other systems — staffing rosters, campaign schedules, failover triggers — manual console edits become the bottleneck. The API lets the systems that already know about the change make the routing change too.
Do console and API changes conflict?
They write the same configuration — the API and the console are two doors into one routing table, so the last change wins either way. Treat the API as another operator, not a separate system.
Call forwarding rules rarely change for abstract reasons — they change because something else changed: a team went off shift, a campaign launched, a site lost power. When the forwarding destination has to chase those events in real time, clicking through a console stops scaling, and the routing belongs in software. The Routing Management area of our API exists for exactly that: programmatic control of forwarding and recording on the numbers you host with us.
Where forwarding control sits in the API
The API is organised into three areas, as described on the API page:
- Services — lists your active numbers, the inventory your automation reads before it acts.
- CDR — retrieves call detail records, the feedback loop that tells your software what the current routing produced.
- Routing Management — the control plane: manage call forwarding and toggle call recording for your services.
The whole API is RESTful JSON with bearer-token authentication, rate limited for production use, callable from PHP, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Go or any language that speaks HTTP.
What programmatic forwarding is for
Four patterns cover most real automation:
- Schedule-driven routing. After-hours destinations applied by your roster system, so the routing follows the roster without a human remembering.
- Failover. When your monitoring detects an answer point is unhealthy, the software re-points the number before customers notice.
- Campaign switching. A landing page launch points the campaign number at the new team; the teardown re-points it back.
- Recording compliance windows. Recording toggled on for lines and periods where your policy requires it, off where it does not.
The feedback side matters as much as the control side: the CDR area's call records — appearing within a couple of minutes of each call — tell you what each routing change did. The analytics patterns built on that loop are in call analytics through the API.
Starting with forwarding
Routing automation needs numbers first: standard 1300 and 1800 numbers from $10 a month, searchable on available numbers. If your forwarding needs are simpler — one number, one team, occasional manual changes — the console handles it without code, and the routing concepts behind both doors are explained in how 1300 numbers work.
Numbers worth automating
Get numbers your software can steer
1300 and 1800 numbers from $10 a month, with routing your code can manage via REST.