Keep seats quiet, stop junk before it rings users#
Your product is judged on uptime, call quality, and user happiness. Junk calls torpedo all three. Ring groups light up for nothing, softphones buzz during meetings, admins drown in "why did this ring?" tickets. You can't clean up the whole PSTN. You can police what reaches your UC seats.Where CallerAPI sits
Inside your UC routing/orchestration—pre-ring for inbound (to users, hunt groups, auto-attendants) and pre-origination for outbound from UC seats. One question: "Do we let this caller through?" We answer with a tier (SPAM / BUSINESS / UNKNOWN) and the why (raw data, reason codes). You enforce: block, challenge, or allow. Done.
What we're actually fixing#
Seat experience: fewer nuisance rings, fewer false "Spam Likely" moments on legit callers.
Queue health & SLAs: better ASA, lower abandon, fewer credits burned.
Admin sanity: fewer tickets; every decision has a reason string you can show.
How you run it (boring and predictable)#
| Case | Default action | What actually happens | Why this is sane |
|---|
| SPAM | Block | Don't ring the seat/queue. Play a short message. Log the reason. | Saves users and queues from garbage. |
| BUSINESS, but with recent spam reports | Challenge | Light IVR (press-to-continue) with a tight timeout; or present CAPTCHA in-app before connect. | Humans pass. Robocallers don't. Keeps false positives down. |
| UNKNOWN | Allow | Route normally; tag for monitoring. | Most first-time callers are fine. |
Start conservative. Put the gray zone in Challenge, not Block. Tighten after a week of data.
Day-1 to Day-30 - the playbook#
1
Week 1 - Pilot and test
Run pre-ring decisions on your noisiest destinations: main company lines, sales/support ring groups, auto-attendants. Don't enforce yet. Pipe tier + reasons to ops. Build two live lists: must-pass (VIP, existing accounts, emergency) and must-block (known abusers).
2
Week 2 - Turn on enforcement
Enforce SPAM = Block on those pilots. Keep BUSINESS (with reports) = Challenge. Expose reason strings in your admin portal so IT can explain decisions.
3
Week 3 - Tune by product & tenant tier
Contact center add-ons, basic UC seats, and executive lines behave differently. Set per-product and per-tier thresholds. If challenge pass-through is high, you're too strict.
4
Week 4 - Automate hygiene
Cache low-risk callers briefly to shave milliseconds. Auto-escalate repeat gray callers to Challenge. Keep signed decision logs—instant dispute enders.
What to measure (and how to read it)#
Spam interception rate - if it stalls, widen SPAM. If complaints spike, you went too far.
ASA / Abandon on UC queues - should improve as junk drops.
Challenge pass-through - low = you’re hurting humans; simplify the prompt or loosen thresholds.
Ticket volume - fewer "why did this ring?" tickets = policy working. If not, inspect your gray zone.
Quick win: enforce on publicly listed main numbers and toll-free DIDs first. That's where junk hurts the most.
Edge cases you will hit#
Cost & Data Control - “Daily Spam Report” for flat spend#
Some UCaaS teams want zero surprises and one nightly job: pull a curated set of bad actors and enforce across tenants and products.
What you get
A daily set of confirmed spam/abuse numbers, validated by our systems + human review. Scoped to your tenant.
Why it exists
Predictable spend. One (or a few) fetches per day. Load once, protect every user, queue, and AA.
How you use it
Pull today's JSON, push to your UC allow/block/challenge lists, and apply the SPAM / BUSINESS / UNKNOWN policy. No per-call metering.Endpoint: dedicated Daily Spam Report per tenant.
Fields: number, created date, violated date, consumer state, subject (spam category), robocall (yes/no).
Cutover time: posted before 13:00 UTC daily; covers the prior 24h.
Validation: algorithmic scoring + human review for high-impact entries.
Retention: last 24h available (30-day window on request).
License: tenant-wide use across UC seats, queues, and auto-attendants.
Pricing: flat monthly fee.
Purpose: cost control with enough fidelity to keep users protected.
Ask us to enable Daily Spam Report for your tenant. We'll hand you a hardened URL, auth, and a sample file so your team can wire the nightly job.
You keep control of region and retention on your side.
Daily Report - budget certainty; great for global hygiene across tenants.
Real-time - when you need per-call context (queue, user, business hours) and want to challenge the gray zone instead of blunt-blocking it.
How to talk about this with customers#
Be explicit in release notes and the admin portal: "We block obvious junk. We challenge the gray. We log every decision with reason + timestamp." Give admins the reason codes. Angry tickets turn into quick fixes.
Talk to an expert
Make your UC seats spam-resistant by integrating CallerAPI.