Set up Break Glass

Break Glass is a safety switch. If something ever prevents your Avoca assistant from answering normally, Avoca sends your incoming calls to a number you choose — your call center, your office line, whichever transfer destination you nominate — instead of letting the assistant handle them. Break Glass chooses a destination for each call. If Avoca cannot work out where to send a call, it does not divert it: the call stays with your assistant and is answered as usual.

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When Avoca uses Break Glass

Avoca turns Break Glass on during planned maintenance, and during a major outage that stops calls being handled properly. In practice that means:

• Calls are not connecting.
• Calls connect but are silent, or go silent partway through.
• Bookings are failing.

Break Glass is turned off again once the maintenance or outage is over.

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What you control

• Break Glass destination — which of your transfer destinations Avoca dials. One per account.
• Call the Break Glass destination even when it is closed — whether that number is dialed outside its own open hours and on your holidays.

Everything else about Break Glass — whether a diversion is happening at all, and which accounts it covers — is an Avoca operational decision.

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Choose your Break Glass destination

Open Responder → Transfer Destinations and edit the destination you want Avoca to dial. Back on the Transfer Destinations list, the destination you chose carries a Break Glass badge. A destination can hold both Break Glass and Default Destination, either, or neither — they are separate settings that do different jobs. Default Destination is where your assistant transfers a caller mid-call when no other destination is the clear choice. Break Glass is where calls go when the assistant is not available due to maintenance or an outage. If no destination is set as your Break Glass destination, nothing breaks. Your calls simply stay with your assistant during an incident, which is safe but means Break Glass does nothing for you.

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When the destination is closed

By default, Avoca only dials your Break Glass destination while that destination is open. “Open” means:

• Inside the open-hours windows configured on that destination, read in your account’s timezone.
• On a day marked on your holiday calendar, only if that holiday allows transfers and the destination is not marked as unavailable on holidays. An ordinary holiday on its own leaves the number available.

Choose Yes — call any time, including holidays to set both of those aside. The number is then dialed whatever the clock and the calendar say. With No selected, a call arriving outside those hours is not diverted — it stays with your assistant and is answered as usual.

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What your callers and your team experience

The call is forwarded silently. Your caller hears the line ring through to the chosen number; there is no announcement and no extra step for them. Whoever answers sees the caller’s own number, not an Avoca number. Existing screen pops, caller lookups, and callbacks keep working. Calls handled this way are not answered, summarized, or booked by your assistant. Once a call has been sent to your chosen number, it rings there. If it is busy or nobody picks up, the call ends the way any call to that number would — your assistant does not take it back. Choose a number that is reliably answered during the hours you allow it to be dialed.

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Change or remove your Break Glass destination

To move Break Glass to a different number, open the new destination and turn on Break Glass destination. That takes it off the old one automatically. Avoca will not let you delete or deactivate the destination that currently holds Break Glass. Move Break Glass to another destination first, then delete or deactivate the old one. This is deliberate: it prevents an account from quietly losing its emergency number and only discovering it during an incident. Editing the destination in any other way — its name, number, hours, or holiday behavior — works normally while it holds Break Glass. Remember that changes to its hours and to your holiday calendar change when Break Glass can use it.

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Frequently asked questions