Connect your phone line

Your phone line comes from a provider: the company that gives you your business numbers and carries your calls to the rest of the world. In the trade it is called a SIP trunk. You keep your contract and your numbers with that provider, and Vocivo becomes the phone system on the line. Connect your phone line sets it up in three steps, without any telecoms jargon.

Before you start

An account with a phone line provider. A local phone company, or a global cloud provider. If you do not have one yet, ask your local phone company for a business SIP trunk.
What they sent you. Usually a welcome email, activation email or service sheet with a server address and either a username and password or a note that they will approve your server.
Your numbers. The phone numbers on the line, as you would dial them locally.
An administrator’s sign-in. In the web app, open SIP trunks and choose Connect your phone line.

Step 1: Choose your country and provider

Vocivo knows 223 providers in 50 countries. Your country is chosen for you from your workspace, and the list is grouped the way people think about it:

Local providers in your country, such as the national phone companies.
Global cloud providers that sell phone lines in many countries.
Other provider, for anyone not listed. It works with any provider that offers a standard SIP trunk.

Type part of the name to search. Former names work too: searching “Etisalat” finds e&. When you pick a provider, Vocivo shows what that provider will have sent you and where to find it, with a link to the provider’s own help page when there is one.

Illustration of step 1, simplified. Provider names are placeholders.

Step 2: Give Vocivo what your provider sent you

There are two ways in, on one screen. Use whichever is easier.

Upload or paste it

Upload a screenshot of the welcome email or service sheet, or paste its text, and press Read it for me. Vocivo reads it and fills in the questions below. Each answer it filled is marked From your document, and anything it was unsure of is marked Please check. Nothing you upload is kept.

Or answer four questions

Your provider’s server address: Just the address, such as sip.example.com. Some providers use one address for every customer; Vocivo fills those in for you.
How does your provider recognise you?: With a username and password, or They approve my server’s address. The next section explains the difference.
Username and password: Only for the username-and-password kind. The password is stored encrypted and never shown again.
Your phone numbers: Paste as many as you like, one per line or separated by commas. Ranges work too, such as 0130000000-4. Vocivo reads each one back, in the local spelling and in full, so a typo shows up before anything is saved.

Advanced settings holds the name of the line, your provider’s account reference, the port and the transport. Leave them alone unless your provider told you otherwise: Vocivo picks sensible values for your country and provider.

Illustration of step 2, simplified. The address and numbers are examples, not real.

IP approval or username and password?

Providers recognise your phone system in one of two ways. Their paperwork usually says which.

The two ways a provider recognises your phone system
	Username and password	They approve your server’s address
What they sent you	A server address, a username and a password.	A server address and your numbers, but no password.
How it works	Vocivo signs in to your provider, the way a phone signs in to a network.	Your provider trusts calls from your server’s address and sends your calls there.
What you do after Connect	Nothing. Test your line.	Send your provider the email Vocivo writes for you, wait for them to approve it, then test.
Words you may see	“Registration”, “SIP credentials”	“IP authentication”, “whitelisting”, “allow-listing”

Many local phone companies approve addresses; many cloud providers use a username and password. If you are not sure, choose what the paperwork suggests and ask your provider. You can change it later.

Step 3: Review and connect

Vocivo shows what it will save, in sentences: your provider, country, server address, how they recognise you and your numbers. Press Connect.

Vocivo then sets up the server side for you: it checks your details, reaches your provider, prepares a connection for your line, lets your provider in, adds your numbers and switches the line on. Each part shows a tick when it is done. If one needs you, it says what to do in a plain sentence, with Try again or Go back and fix it.

Send this to your provider

If your provider approves addresses, Vocivo now shows Send this to your provider: your server’s address and port, each with a copy button, and a ready-written email. Use Open in my email, or Copy the email and paste it into a message to your provider. The line shows Waiting for your provider until they approve it.

Illustration of step 3 for a provider that approves addresses, simplified.

What to ask your provider

If their paperwork does not answer everything, send them a short note. Change the words in brackets and send it from the email address on your account:

Hello,

We are connecting our business phone line [account reference] to our phone system. Please could you confirm:

1. The server address for our line.
2. Whether you recognise us by a username and password, or by approving our server's address.
3. The username and password, if you use them.
4. The numbers on the line, and which of them we may show as caller ID.
5. The port and transport, if they are not the usual UDP 5060.
6. How emergency calls are routed, and whether each number needs a registered address.

Thank you.

Your technical lead may want more detail, such as number formats and audio codecs. It is all on How it works.

Test your line

Right after connecting, Test your line offers one call each way:

Call my mobile. Enter your mobile number and press the button. Vocivo rings you through the new line. Answer it: if you hear the test message, outgoing calls work.
Call your number now. Press I am ready to call, then ring one of your numbers from any phone before the countdown ends. The screen ticks when your call arrives: that is the proof your provider is sending calls to Vocivo.

Test every number, not just the first one. After that, the SIP trunks page keeps checking the line and shows its status in plain words:

What each phone line status means
Status	What it means
Connected	Your provider is answering and calls go through.
Signed in	Your provider accepted Vocivo’s username and password.
Waiting for your provider	Your line is on. Your provider still has to approve your server’s address and send your numbers to it.
Provider not answering	Vocivo cannot reach your provider’s server address.
Sign-in refused	Your provider turned the username and password away.
Not connected yet	The line is saved but not switched on. Press Connect.
Switched off	Someone switched the line off in Vocivo.

Something not working? Troubleshooting goes through each status and what to do.

Next: set up your main line

When the line works, choose what callers hear when they ring your main number: a greeting, a menu, or your AI receptionist. The button Set up your main line appears as soon as you are connected. See Your main line.