Before your tenants hear your assistant, you should. A handful of test calls takes about ten minutes and is the fastest way to find out whether your configuration matches the way you actually work.
Check three things first
You know your Doorkeep number. It is under Settings → Phone.
Everyone on your Call List is verified. New staff contacts confirm their number by text before Doorkeep can ring them. An unverified contact is skipped, so a transfer test will fail for a reason that has nothing to do with the assistant.
You have a second phone to call from. Some carriers will not complete a call from a phone to itself once forwarding is on, and calling from the number you are testing gives you a misleading result either way.
Test the path, then the behavior
There are two separate things that can go wrong, and it is worth checking them in order.
First, the path. Call your existing number from another phone. You should hear your Doorkeep assistant. If you hear your own voicemail instead, forwarding either is not set or your voicemail is picking up before it can trigger. If you hear ringing that never lands anywhere, check the number you entered when you set forwarding up.
Then the behavior. Once calls are arriving, the question stops being technical and starts being about judgment: does the assistant handle a routine call the way you would want, and does it get a person on the phone when it should.
Four calls worth making
Run these as a tenant would, in plain language, without being unusually clear or helpful. Mumble a little. Give your unit number the way a real person would.
A routine message. Ask when the rent is due, or say you want to know the status of a request you put in last week. This is the bulk of your call volume. Listen for whether the message that reaches you is actually useful.
A property issue. A leak under the kitchen sink, no heat, a broken lock, or a lockout. This is where the assistant decides how urgent something is and what to do about it.
A leasing inquiry. Say you saw the listing and want to know if anything is available. Prospect calls are the ones that cost you money when they go unanswered.
A call that should reach a person. Ask to speak to the manager, or describe something urgent enough that it should ring your Call List. Confirm the right phone actually rings, and pay attention to what you hear before you are connected.
Also worth doing once: call from a number that is already in your contacts, and once from a number that is not. Doorkeep behaves differently when it recognizes the caller.
Do not test with real emergency wording
Words like fire, gas, smoke, or someone unconscious put the call on the fastest possible path, which is a redirect to 911. That is working as designed and it is not something you want to rehearse.
To test urgent handling safely, use a serious property issue instead: water coming through a ceiling, no heat overnight, a unit that will not lock. You will see the same routing and escalation behavior without going anywhere near 911.
Then listen to what it did
Every test call shows up in your call history exactly like a real one. For each call, check:
The recording. Does the assistant sound like your company? This is the part your tenants judge you on.
The transcript. Did it hear the name, the unit number, and the address correctly?
The summary. If you read only this at 7am, would you know what to do?
The caller. Does it show the real caller's number, or your forwarding number? If it shows your own number, caller ID is not passing through and Doorkeep cannot match calls to contacts.
The notification. Did the email or text arrive, to the right person, fast enough to be useful?
What to change based on what you hear
Almost everything you will want to adjust after a first round of testing falls into one of four places:
Too many calls reaching you. Narrow which situations ring your Call List, or tighten your call windows.
A call you wanted did not reach you. Widen those same settings, and confirm the ring order on your Call List puts the right person first.
The assistant did not know something it should have. Add it to the property information for that property.
Names or unit numbers came through wrong. Worth telling us about. It helps us tune the assistant.
Make the change, then make the call again. A test call after every change is the whole point, and it costs you thirty seconds.
Good to know
Test calls appear in your call history and trigger notifications like any other call. That is deliberate. You are testing the whole chain, not just the conversation.
Test again any time you change your Call List, your call windows, or your property information, and any time someone joins or leaves your team.
If you are not happy with what you hear, turn forwarding off, adjust, and turn it back on. Your calls go back to ringing exactly as they did before, and nothing in your Doorkeep account changes.