Calls and texts

Brick gives you one phone number of your own. Clients see that number when you call or text them, and every call and text lands in the Inbox and on the contact's record.

Get your Brick number#

Open Settings from the bottom of the sidebar, then Phone. Without a number the page reads You don't have a Brick number yet. Click Get your Brick number.

The Get your Brick phone number dialog shows one Toronto-area number with its town beside it. Click Show me another until you like one, then click Register this number. The dialog says Your Brick number with the number and Ready to use. If someone took the number a moment before you, Brick shows a different one and asks you to confirm it. If it says No Toronto numbers left today, try again the next morning.

The Call and Text buttons on a contact open the same dialog until you have a number.

Once you have a number, the Phone page shows it with Copy your Brick number beside it, two switches and the voicemail greeting:

Let clients know the call is recorded plays a short notice to the client at the start of every call, in both directions. On a call you receive, the client hears it before your phone rings. It is off until you turn it on.
Ask me to press 1 before connecting is on until you turn it off. Keep it on. It is explained in Receive a call, below.
Voicemail greeting shows the sentence callers hear, built from your first name. Click Record a greeting, speak into your computer's microphone for up to 60 seconds, click Stop recording, listen back, then click Save greeting or Discard. Click Record a new one to replace a saved greeting, or Delete to remove it. Brick asks you to confirm, then brings back the default sentence.

Incoming calls ring the phone number on your profile, so add it under Settings, then Profile. The Phone page warns you when it is missing: until you add it, every client call goes to voicemail.

Make a call#

Click the phone icon on a contact record's header, on a contact's hover card, or on a board card. Its tooltip says Call and the contact's name. Brick calls the contact's first phone number from your browser. There is no phone app to install, and the browser asks for microphone access the first time.

A banner appears at the top of the screen and follows you around the app: a Keypad for extensions and phone menus, Calling with the contact's name and number, the call length once they answer, Mute and Hang up. Three green bars sit beside the timer. When your connection is weak, one turns amber and the other two turn grey.

The phone icon is greyed out when the contact has no phone number, and its tooltip says so. Brick cannot place emergency calls. Use your phone for those.

Receive a call#

A client who calls your Brick number rings your own cell phone for up to 20 seconds. Your cell shows the client's number, not your Brick number.

With Ask me to press 1 before connecting on, your phone announces the caller by name or number when you pick up, and asks you to press 1. Pressing 1 takes the call. Anything else, or not answering, sends the client to your Brick voicemail, where they hear your greeting and can leave up to three minutes.

With that switch off, Brick connects the call to whatever answers your cell. A call you let ring out still goes to your Brick voicemail. But if your phone is off, busy or on Do Not Disturb, your carrier's voicemail answers first. Brick then records an answered call, sends no notification, and the client's message sits in your carrier's mailbox, where Brick cannot see it.

A missed call and a voicemail each arrive in the Inbox as an Open conversation. A call you answered arrives Closed, because there is nothing left to do. Every call you place arrives Closed too, whatever happened.

Recordings, transcripts and summaries#

Brick records and transcribes every call, in both directions. There is no switch to turn this off. Recording starts when the other side answers, so a call nobody answered has no recording, and its entry reads Recording not available.

A few seconds after you hang up, a toast says Preparing call summary…, and then Call summary ready with a View summary button. If transcription fails, the toast says Couldn't transcribe this call. A call under about ten seconds shows no toast. Its entry reads Too short to summarise instead.

Open the call in the Inbox to read it. The heading says Incoming call or Outgoing call with the length and time under it, then three sections:

Summary is a short written summary of what was said. Under it, Suggested tasks lists follow-ups Brick heard in the call. Click one to open the task form with the wording filled in and the contact linked. Brick saves nothing until you click Create task.
Transcript shows who said what, line by line, with the time each line started. On a voicemail this section is Voicemail transcript.
Recording is a player for the audio.

The same three appear as tabs on the contact record's Calls tab, Summary first. Each entry has a Full screen button and Download as text or Download mp3 for the tab you are on. Summary and Transcript also have Copy to clipboard. The call's menu offers Copy link and Delete call. Deleting removes the recording, transcript and summary for good.

A call conversation has no reply box. When the caller is a contact, its header offers Call back and Text instead. A caller Brick does not know gets neither, only the side panel's Create contact and Link to existing.

Send a text#

Texts in Brick read like a phone's message thread. Start one in any of these places:

On a contact record, click the speech bubble icon in the header or open the Texts tab. The compose box says Text and the contact's first name.
In the Inbox, click the arrow beside Compose and pick Text message. In the New text dialog, click Add a recipient, pick a contact or type a number under Or text a phone number, and click Use. Brick texts North American numbers only. A contact with no phone number gets an amber panel to type one, and Brick saves it to the contact.
In a text conversation in the Inbox, type in the box at the bottom.
On a deal record, the Texts tab is a group with the deal's contacts. Brick creates the group on your first send. The tab tells you when the deal has no contacts with a phone number, or more than 9.

Press Enter or click Send to send. Shift+Enter starts a new line. A text from a thread sends at once, with no undo. A text from the New text dialog is held: a toast says Text sent with Undo for about 10 seconds, and the Z key undoes it while the toast shows. A text can hold up to 1,600 characters.

Click the paperclip, or drop a file on the box, to add a photo or a short video. A text carries up to 2 files: PNG, JPEG, GIF or WEBP photos, and MP4 or MOV videos. Brick refuses an iPhone HEIC photo. Brick shrinks photos so carriers accept them. A video must be under about 700 KB, which is roughly 30 seconds, and Brick refuses a bigger one before it sends.

Click the clock beside Send to send later. The box shows Sending with the chosen time and a Send now instead link. A scheduled text shows as a dashed bubble in the thread with a Cancel link, and it also waits in the Inbox's Outbox pane.

A text to a number that belongs to a contact goes to that contact's first number. A reply from one of their other numbers still lands on their record, but as its own thread, labelled with that number. A reply in that thread goes to that number.

Group texts#

On a contact's Texts tab, click New group. In New group text, click Add contacts to pick people, or type a number under Or add a phone number and click Add. A group can reach up to 9 people. Click Start group.

Everyone in the group sees every message, and Brick saves the thread on each member's record. You cannot change a group after it starts. To text a different set of people, start another group.

Texts and calls in the Inbox and on records#

Every text thread and every call is a conversation in the Inbox. The Texts and Calls views in the Inbox's left column show only Open conversations of that kind. A text from a client, a missed call and a voicemail arrive Open and unread. A text you sent, and a call that was answered, arrive Closed, so look for them in All Conversations.

Open a text conversation and you see the thread with the compose box under it. New replies appear while you are looking, without a reload.

A text or call from a number Brick does not know shows the number as its title. The side panel offers Create contact and Link to existing. Once the contact exists, every past text and call from that number moves onto their record.

On a contact record, the Calls tab lists their calls and the Texts tab lists their threads, the one-to-one thread first and then any groups. Both also appear in the record's activity feed, next to their emails and notes.

Sending a text does not tell you whether the client read it. Brick shows Sending and then the sent bubble. A text that failed shows a red border and an amber line with the reason. To send it again, open the Inbox's Outbox pane and click Try again.

Brick allows 500 texts and 240 minutes of calls a day. Past that it says You've hit today's texting limit or You've hit today's calling limit, and both work again the next day.