Testing it

What this covers

How to prove phone integration works — and, just as importantly, what each kind of test does not prove. Requires the Phone Integration feature and the manage-settings permission (Owner or Manager).

There are two halves to the journey: your phone system reaching us, and us reaching your screens. Each test covers one half. Knowing which half you have just tested is the difference between five minutes of diagnosis and an afternoon of it.

The Send test call button

On Property Settings → Phone, under Test call, click Send test call. A pop should appear within a second or two on every screen that is answering calls, showing a caller named Test Caller.

What it proves

Everything after your phone system: that your restaurant's settings are right, that the live connection to your screens is working, that the device you are watching is opted in, and that the pop renders and behaves as configured. That is most of the moving parts.

What it does not prove

That your phone system can reach us at all. The test starts inside the app and skips the network hop entirely. A passing test with a misconfigured, blocked or mistyped trigger URL looks exactly like a passing test with a perfect one.

So a working test button plus real calls that never pop is not a contradiction — it is a precise diagnosis. It means the problem is on the phone system side, and you can stop looking at your Tabledoo settings.

Reading the result

The test caller is a made-up number that will not match a guest, so the pop you get is the no-match pop: the number and a Create guest button. That is correct and expected. Do not create the guest.

The button allows ten tests a minute, which is more than anyone needs.

Testing the real path

Only a real call tests the other half.

Pick a guest already in your book whose number you can call from — your own mobile is ideal, so add yourself as a guest if you are not one.
Make sure a screen is answering calls (link Choosing which screens pop) and that you can see it.
Call the restaurant from that number and watch the screen while it rings.
Let it ring rather than answering immediately — the pop should arrive during the ringing.

Then call again from a number that is not in your book, to confirm the no-match pop appears and the number shown is correct. If the number comes through mangled or without its country code, that points at the number format your phone system is sending — see Connecting your phone system, which covers the encoding mistake responsible for most of these.

Reading Last used

Each trigger in the list shows a Last used time. That timestamp is the single best piece of evidence about the half the test button cannot reach: if it moves, your phone system genuinely reached us.

Never used, after your phone system has been configured and a call placed, means the request is not arriving. The address is wrong, revoked, or blocked before it leaves your network.
A time that matches your test call means the phone system reached us. Anything still not working is on our side of the line — a setting, or the device not answering calls.

One thing that catches everyone out: Last used updates at most once every five minutes, on purpose — stamping it on every call would put a database write in the path of a ringing phone. So your first test call moves it, and a second test a minute later will not. That is not a failure. When testing repeatedly, either wait five minutes between calls or trust the pop itself rather than the timestamp.

If the test call does not pop

Work down this list in order — it is roughly most to least likely.

Check	What to do
Is this device answering calls?	The phone icon in the top bar must be green. Grey or crossed out means this screen is opted out — click it.
Is there a trigger URL?	The icon is faded until at least one exists, and clicking it says so. Create one first.
Is the master switch on?	Enable phone integration on the settings page. With it off, the icon is not in the top bar at all.
Is the page stale?	Refresh the screen. A tab left open for a long time may have lost its live connection; a green icon that has gone grey without anyone clicking it is the symptom.
Does your plan include it?	If Phone is missing from Property Settings entirely, see A feature or menu item is missing.

If the test call pops but real calls do not

The problem is between your phone system and us. Give your phone administrator this list:

Confirm the trigger URL is entered exactly, with nothing truncated and no trailing characters.
Confirm it fires on inbound ringing, not on answer or on hang-up.
Confirm the caller number is sent as a query parameter under one of the accepted names.
Confirm the + is encoded as %2B. This is the most common single fault.
Check whether outbound web requests from the phone system are blocked by a firewall.
Check what response code comes back. 404 means a wrong or revoked address, 403 means the plan does not cover it.

Worth testing after any of these

Changing phone provider or phone system
Any work on your network or firewall
Creating or revoking a trigger URL
Adding a new screen or tablet at the host stand