Before you start
You need a list of the people who will use the phone system, the numbers you want (new or existing) and how calls should be handled during and outside business hours. The steps below use a common setup: Sales, Support and Billing teams working Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:00.
1. Create a DIDWW account
phone.systems™ is provided by DIDWW. Sign up at my.didww.com. Your DIDWW account holds your numbers, billing and the phone.systems™ subscription.
2. Get a phone number
You have two options:
- Order a new number in your DIDWW account. DIDWW provides local, national, mobile, toll-free, shared cost and UIFN numbers in 93 countries. See DID number.
- Port an existing number to DIDWW. Porting is free in 42 countries and for UIFN numbers. See number porting.
If you prefer to keep numbers with your current carrier, you can connect it later through BYOC.
3. Assign the number to the phone.systems™ trunk
In your DIDWW account, assign the number to the phone.systems™ trunk. Numbers assigned this way appear automatically in the Numbers area of phone.systems™.
4. Activate the subscription
Activate the phone.systems™ subscription and choose the number of seats. Seats start at $9.99 per month, month-to-month, from one seat, and get cheaper as you add more. See pricing.
5. Launch phone.systems™
In your DIDWW account, open Cloud PBX System and select Launch. This opens the phone.systems™ admin interface.
6. Follow the onboarding wizard
On first launch, a guided onboarding wizard walks you through the basic setup. You can complete it, then refine each part in the steps below.
7. Add users and invite them to the app
In Users, add each team member with an internal number (extension), for example 101–199 for Sales, 201–299 for Support and 301–399 for Billing. Invite users to the phone.systems™ app, available for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. Each seat also includes a SIP account for a desk phone or third-party softphone.
In Contact Methods you can add SIP or PSTN forwarding, for example to a user's mobile.
8. Create a time schedule
In Time Schedules, create a schedule with your time zone, working days and hours, and holiday exceptions (once, monthly or yearly). A typical schedule is Monday to Friday, 09:00–17:00, in your office's time zone. See routing calls by business hours.
9. Build a call flow
In Call Flows, drag objects onto the canvas and connect them with cables. A typical main line:
- Phone Number — the number from step 3.
- Time Router — uses the Business Hours schedule to split calls into open and closed.
- Open: Audio Playback with a welcome message, then a Voice Menu — key 1 to the Sales Queue, key 2 to Support, key 3 to Billing.
- Unanswered queue calls: Voicemail.
- Closed: an AI Agent that answers after-hours calls and takes messages, or Voicemail.
Record prompts in the browser, upload them or create them with text-to-speech in Audio Files. Changes apply in real time. See call routing.
10. Test
Call your number from an outside phone during and outside business hours, try each menu option and leave a test voicemail. Then check Call Analytics: the call history shows each call's status, wait time and talk time, so you can confirm calls went where you expected.
Next steps
- Turn on call recording per user and direction, and choose where recordings are stored.
- Connect your CRM — HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, Zendesk, monday or ActiveCampaign.
- Enable AI Call Insights for transcripts and summaries of recorded calls ($0.02 per recorded minute).
For detailed instructions on every area, see the phone.systems™ user guide.