2. Prevent Agent from Speaking Until Caller Picks Up The agent currently starts speaking immediately upon call initiation, which causes issues if the caller hasn’t picked up yet. How can I ensure the agent waits until the call is actually answered before starting the greeting? Is there a setting or flag (e.g., “answer detection” or a call state trigger) that ensures the assistant only starts talking once a human answers the call?

To prevent your agent from speaking until the caller picks up, set the

firstMessageMode

parameter to

assistant-waits-for-user

in your call configuration:

json
{
  "firstMessageMode": "assistant-waits-for-user"
}

This setting ensures the assistant waits for the user to answer before starting to speak, solving your issue with premature greetings. Source: - [Discord conversation about firstMessageMode](https://discord.com/channels/1211482211119796234/1305065394662408192)

@Vapi Support Bot in which call settings? I don’t see that option on dahsabord

Based on the information I found, the

firstMessageMode

parameter can be set in the assistant configuration via the API rather than directly in the dashboard UI. It can be included in your API call when creating or updating an assistant:

json
{
  "firstMessageMode": "assistant-waits-for-user"
}

Are you currently configuring your calls through the dashboard UI or are you using the API? This would help me provide more specific guidance on where to add this parameter in your workflow. Source: - [Discord conversation about firstMessageMode](https://discord.com/channels/1211482211119796234/1305065394662408192)

Hey! To help track down this issue, could you share: - The call ID - When exactly this happened (the timestamp) - What response you expected to get - What response you actually got instead This would really help us figure out what went wrong!