# Questions we get asked

The ones that arrive before the first call is placed. Anything that comes up *after* you have integrated has a page of its own, and this page links to it rather than answering it twice.

## Getting started

| Question | Answer |
| --- | --- |
| **What do I need before I can place a call?** | An account, an API key you make yourself in [the portal](https://voice.sphoro.com/portal), and — for calls to a telephone — a number provisioned on your account. Browser calls need no number at all, so you can build and test the whole integration before one is assigned. See [get an API key](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/api-keys). |
| **How long does the first working call take?** | About fifteen minutes if you follow the six numbered steps. The first three get you a call that connects. |
| **Is there a sandbox or a test number?** | Use a browser call to your own machine, and place real calls to your own phone. There is no simulated telephone: a call that does not use a real carrier does not tell you what you need to know about a real one. |
| **Can I try it without writing code?** | Yes — the portal creates agents and places test calls. The [command line](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/cli) covers the rest without a program. |

## Languages and voices

| Question | Answer |
| --- | --- |
| **Which languages can an agent speak?** | Every one on [language and voice](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/voices), which is generated from this deployment rather than written out — so it is the real list. |
| **Can one agent speak more than one language?** | Yes. Each is an entry in `languages` with its own voice, greeting and prompt, and `language_detection: "follow"` moves the agent into whichever one the caller speaks. |
| **Can I use my own recorded voice?** | For the fixed lines — the greeting, a menu, a disclaimer — yes, by uploading the audio. See [voice lines](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/voice-lines). The conversational parts are synthesised. |
| **Can I clone a voice?** | Voice cloning belongs to the synthesis vendor rather than to this platform. Clone it with the vendor, then use the id it gives you in the language entry's `voices` map. See [vendors](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/providers). |

## Telephony

| Question | Answer |
| --- | --- |
| **Can I bring my own carrier account?** | Yes, for Twilio, Plivo and Vobiz. Your credentials go on your account and your existing numbers become usable. See [numbers and carriers](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/telephony). |
| **Can I connect a SIP trunk directly?** | Not today. Terminate the trunk on one of the supported carriers and connect that account. [Tell us](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/support) if the trunk itself is the requirement. |
| **Can the agent transfer a caller to a person?** | Yes — a cold transfer to one number you configure. Warm transfer, where all three are on the line, is not available. See [transfers and endings](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/transfers). |
| **Why did the caller's number arrive without a country code?** | It did not, in what we store. Some carriers deliver a national-format number, and it is normalised to E.164 before the call record is written — so what you read back is consistent even where the carrier's own dashboard is not. |

## Capacity and cost

| Question | Answer |
| --- | --- |
| **How many calls can run at once?** | A ceiling provisioned on your account, plus a separate allowance for inbound callers waiting. Past both, a caller hears the busy line. See [concurrency](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/capacity). |
| **Why did a batch of calls fail with `at_capacity`?** | They were fired faster than your ceiling allows, so most were never dialled. Use a [campaign](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/campaigns), which paces itself, or put a gap in your loop. |
| **How do I stop one team spending everybody's budget?** | A [project](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/projects) with a monthly budget. Note that a budget stops *inbound* calls too, so put a support line in its own project. |
| **Where do I see what it cost?** | [Analytics](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/analytics), over any window, sliced by agent or project. Cost per *connected* call is the number worth watching. |

## Building agents

| Question | Answer |
| --- | --- |
| **The agent is confidently wrong about our prices. What fixes it?** | A [knowledge base](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/knowledge-base). No prompt fixes this — you are asking a model to recall something it never knew. |
| **It does the steps in the wrong order.** | A [flow](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/flows). Each step becomes a node and the model is only ever asked to do one step's worth of work. |
| **Can it call our API during the call?** | Yes. Tools against your own endpoints are provisioned per account today rather than created through this API — see [tools and functions](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/functions). |
| **How do I get structured data out of every call?** | [Extractions](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/post-call): typed fields filled from the transcript after the call. Test them against a pasted transcript before placing thirty calls. |
| **Why is `summary` empty in my webhook?** | You are reading it on `call.ended`. It is written a few seconds later and arrives on `call.analysed`. This is the most common integration bug against this API. |

## Running it

| Question | Answer |
| --- | --- |
| **Can we run this in our own infrastructure?** | Dedicated and in-region deployments exist. [Talk to us](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/support) before you build against assumptions about where data sits. |
| **Can we keep transcripts off third-party models?** | The model chain speaks the OpenAI wire format and several presets are self-hosted runtimes, so the model can be one you run. See [vendors](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/providers). |
| **How long are recordings kept?** | On a retention window agreed with your account, and only if you turned recording on. See [security and data](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/security). |
| **Is there a status page?** | [Getting help](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/support) has where to look and what to send us. |

## The shortest possible answer to "how do I start?"

Two requests, to your own telephone. Everything else on this site is detail around these.

**Shell**

```bash
AGENT=$(curl -s -X POST https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/agents \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name":"First agent","languages":[{"code":"en-IN","greeting":"Hello, this is a test.","system_prompt":"You are testing a phone line. Be brief and friendly."}]}' \
  | jq -r .id)

curl -s -X POST https://voice.sphoro.com/v1/calls \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SPHORO_API_KEY" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen)" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"agent_id\":\"$AGENT\",\"to\":\"$YOUR_OWN_NUMBER\"}"
```

## Not answered here?

[The glossary](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/glossary) covers the terms this documentation uses in a narrower sense than the industry does, and [getting help](https://voice.sphoro.com/docs/support) is where to ask a person. The search box at the top of this site reads every page, including the ones this FAQ points at.