Overview: Outbound Data Action Function - Intercepting and Changing Outbound CallerID (ANI) and Call Data on the Fly

Introduction

The Outbound Data Action Function allows you to programatically change the default state/configuration of an outbound Spoke call, right as the call is about to be placed.

When you set up Spoke, you set up company defaults for items such as call recording, the CallerIDs customers see when your team make calls, etc. Outbound Data Actions allow you to change this default behavior on a call-by-call basis.

Here are some examples of what you can do with Outbound Data Actions:

• When your Customer Support team makes a call to a premium customer, you want the customer to see your premium support line number calling.  Rather than having to rely on your team knowing who is a premium customer and manually selecting the right CallerID before they call, you can intercept their call and ensure the right number is selected.
• When a user attempts to make a call to a country you know they should not be calling, you can block the call from being made for that user but allow the call to go through for others.

Here's how it Outbound Data Actions work:

1. User A in Spoke dials a phone number
   
   
2. The Spoke Outbound Data Action calls some custom code (that you have written), and says to your code: "Spoke User A is about to call this customer number, and we plan on presenting this CallerID (ANI) to the Customer."
   
   
3. Your code can then either: A) let that call go ahead as planned, or B) ask Spoke to:
   1. use this CallerID instead
   2. block this call

How to enable Outbound Data Actions

1. Login to your Spoke Account Portal.
2. Go to the Other menu, select Developers and click on the Data Actions tab.
3. Enter the URL to your custom call application
4. Spoke will give you a signing secret to secure the data transmission

How to write a custom app that responds to Spoke's outbound calls

Please refer to the Data Actions section of our Developer API documentation.