Use this article to understand what Phone Reusable Workflows are, how to create one, and how to integrate it into your main phone call handling Workflow. Phone Reusable Workflows are available to workspaces on plans that include the Intercom Phone add-on. You must have at least one phone Workflow already set up before you can make use of a reusable workflow.
A Phone Reusable Workflow is a self-contained, modular block of IVR (Interactive Voice Response) logic — the automated phone menu system that plays prompts and routes callers based on their input. Instead of rebuilding the same routing sequences in every phone Workflow, you build them once as a reusable block and call them from any main phone Workflow using the Pass to a phone reusable workflow step. When the reusable block completes, control passes back to the main Workflow automatically.
How to create a Phone Reusable Workflow
Follow these steps to create a Phone Reusable Workflow:
Navigate to Fin AI Agent > Workflows.
Click + New Workflow in the top-right corner.
Choose to build from scratch.
In the trigger selection screen, choose Phone Reusable Workflow as the trigger type. This trigger appears under the Phone category and marks the Workflow as one designed to be called by another phone Workflow, rather than triggered independently by a customer call.
Build your IVR logic — for example, prompts to collect caller information or steps to route to common departments.
Ensure the Workflow ends cleanly, without hang-up, voicemail, or routing actions that would conflict with the parent Workflow (see the Important callout below).
Click Set it live when ready.
Once your Phone Reusable Workflow is live, you can call it from any main phone Workflow. Open your main phone Workflow, click + Add Step, and select Pass to a phone reusable workflow. Choose your reusable Workflow from the list. When a call reaches that step, the main Workflow pauses, the reusable block runs in full, and then the main Workflow resumes from the step immediately after.
When the reusable Workflow completes all its steps, control returns to the main Workflow and execution continues from the step immediately after the Pass to a phone reusable workflow step.
Important: During an active phone call, when the main Workflow reaches a Pass to a phone reusable workflow step, the system follows this sequence:
The original phone workflow pauses
The reusable workflow executes
The original workflow resumes
If the reusable workflow isn’t designed to return control cleanly, or if it duplicates actions from the parent workflow, this can result in:
Accidental call disconnections
Unexpected or repeated steps after the workflow resumes
Design reusable workflows carefully to avoid overlapping routing, hang-up, or voicemail actions.
This pause-execute-resume sequence lets you share common IVR logic — such as department routing or authentication prompts — across multiple phone Workflows without duplicating steps in each one.
Note: Phone Reusable Workflows that contain phone-only steps are not compatible with Switch. Switch is a feature that lets callers move from a phone call to a web-based chat session — under the hood, it converts the call into a web channel conversation. Because phone-specific actions cannot execute in a web channel context, any reusable Workflow containing those steps will not run in a phone Switch conversation.
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