Keypad Input

Keypad Input sends the digits a caller types on their phone straight to the agent, the same way it handles something they said out loud. There's no tool call involved and nothing for the agent to arm first — a keypress just becomes the next turn.

The whole row is Voice only. It is absent, and so is anything to configure here, on an agent with Voice switched off in its Channels.

Off by default

Keypad Input is off for every agent until you turn it on. Open the Keypad Input row, in the Tools & Skills group on the editor's Conversation step, and switch the enable toggle at the top of the panel. Turning it on changes how every keypress on a live call behaves, so it's opt-in per agent rather than something that changes under an agent already in production.

How a run of keypresses becomes one turn

A caller rarely presses one key and stops, so keypresses are grouped: everything typed close together arrives as a single turn instead of one turn per digit. A group ends — and ships to the agent — on whichever of these happens first:

• the caller pauses longer than the inter-digit gap
• the caller presses the submit key
• the group reaches maximum digits

Settings

Inter-digit gap — how long to wait after the last keypress before treating the digits typed so far as one message. Default 1,500 ms. The agent stays quiet for this long after the last digit, so a large value is a long silence: the agent editor caps it at 10,000 ms.

Submit key — a key that ends the group immediately: #, *, or None. Default #. The submit key itself is not part of what the agent receives; only the digits typed before it are. A caller who types 1234# sends the agent 1234.

Maximum digits — stops collecting after this many digits even with no submit key pressed. 1–32. Default 32.

Interrupt the agent — on by default. The first keypress of a group stops the agent mid-sentence, the same way caller speech does when Allow barge-in is on, and the agent stays quiet for as long as the caller keeps typing.

Turning it off delays the interruption rather than preventing it. The keypress itself no longer cuts the agent off, so it keeps talking while the caller types. The digits still stop it once the group closes: a closed group arrives as a caller turn, and a caller turn always cancels whatever the agent was saying. The agent is interrupted either way, on the first keypress with this on and up to one inter-digit gap later with it off.

Keypad Input vs. Capture keypad digits

Keypad Input is a different mechanism from the Capture keypad digits built-in tool, and the two answer different questions:

• Capture keypad digits is a tool the agent calls when it needs a specific answer — it speaks a prompt, opens a collection window, and blocks until the caller responds or the window times out.
• Keypad Input has no prompt and nothing to arm. Any keypresses the caller makes reach the agent as a turn, whether or not the agent asked for them.

Both can be on for the same agent. While a Capture keypad digits collection is open, the keypresses go into that collection instead of becoming a Keypad Input turn. Once the collection closes, keypresses go back to arriving as ordinary turns.

If a caller starts typing before the collection opens — over the tail of the agent's spoken prompt, for instance — those early digits aren't lost and aren't delivered twice: whatever was typed into the open Keypad Input group is carried into the collection as its starting digits the moment it arms.

Limits and defaults

Next steps