Call Routing API: Managing the Rule-Space Programmatically

Every inbound number carries an invisible rule-space behind it: which phone rings, when, in what order, with what recorded. Most businesses manage that space by hand in a console. The Routing Management area of our API exists for the businesses that cannot afford the hand — where routing has to follow rosters, monitors and campaign calendars automatically. This page maps the rule-space and how the API reaches it.

The rule-space, mapped

Four routing concepts cover nearly every setup, all described in how 1300 numbers work:

• Destinations — the landline, mobile or team a number points at. The base case, and the forwarding question.
• Time rules — different behaviour by clock and calendar: after-hours paths, weekend destinations, public-holiday announcements.
• Overflow — a second destination when the first is busy or unanswered, so spikes degrade to voicemail-to-email instead of ring-outs.
• Recording — whether calls on the line are captured, toggled per your policy windows.

The Routing Management area of the API manages these programmatically — forwarding and recording control over RESTful JSON with bearer-token authentication, callable from any language that speaks HTTP.

Where API routing earns its keep

The console handles change-once setups perfectly well. The API earns its place where change is constant or systemic:

1. Roster-driven destinations — after-hours paths applied by the rostering system, never forgotten.
2. Monitored failover — your monitoring re-points a number when an answer point fails, before customers notice.
3. Campaign lifecycles — launch points the campaign number at the new team; teardown restores it.
4. Policy windows for recording — on where required, off where not, without a human remembering either.

The narrow forwarding case — destination changes alone — has its own walkthrough in API call forwarding, and the data side that closes the loop is the CDR area, described in call detail records via API.

Getting started

Routing automation needs three things: numbers hosted with us (standard 1300 and 1800 from $10 a month, searchable on available numbers), authentication as described on the API page, and a trigger system that knows the when. Start with one number and one pattern — a schedule-driven destination is the gentlest first automation — and expand to overflow and recording once the loop is trusted.