Hotline Documentation

Your hotline is a phone line you build yourself, one key at a time. You give callers a menu, and behind each key you put something: an audio player full of recordings, a message box they can leave a message in, a forward call that rings your phone, an access check that keeps part of the line private, and more. Connecting one thing to the next is called routing, and you do almost all of it on the My Hotline keypad builder, which is the home page.

Start with Getting Started if the account is new, or My Hotline if you want to start building right away.

Getting Started

• Getting Started — Set up billing and a number, then your first menu, recording, and test call
• My Hotline (the builder) — The keypad builder that is your home page: assign keys, drill into menus, and change any setting
• Phone Numbers & Test PIN — Buying and pointing phone numbers, and calling your line with a test PIN before you own one
• How Routing Works — The one Destination dropdown, every kind of destination, and the named routes each block has
• Recordings & Text-to-Speech — Uploading, recording, and generating audio, and the placeholders that speak a caller's own details
• Ideas: What You Can Build — Dozens of hotlines people run — for a shul, a school, a business, a family — with the blocks each one uses

Building Blocks

• Menu (IVR) — Plays a recording and sends callers on by the key they press
• Audio Player (Library) — A collection of recordings with full playback control while callers listen
• Message Box (Record) — Lets callers leave a message, with optional confirmation before it is saved
• Play Recording — Plays one recording, then continues
• Forward Call — Rings your phone numbers, all at once, and hands the caller over
• Dial Out — Lets the caller type a number on the keypad and dials it
• Access Check (Validation) — Gates part of your line behind a PIN, your contacts, labels, or specific numbers
• Exam — A keypad quiz with scoring, feedback audio, and pass or fail routing
• Conference — A conference room with PINs, moderators, recording, and hold music
• Go To (Redirect) — Jumps straight to another block with no audio
• Bookmark — Saves a caller's place so they can pick up where they stopped
• Join / Leave a List — Tags or untags the caller with a label, then continues
• Payment (Pay Prompt) — Takes a card payment on the phone through your merchant
• CallMagic Action — Runs a CallMagic action mid-call, then routes onward
• Custom Code (TwiML) — Hands the call to your own TwiML URL and picks it up afterwards

People

• Contacts — Your address book, caller ID matching, personal PINs, and custom contact fields
• Labels — Lists you group contacts into, for access checks, moderators, and broadcasts
• Broadcasts — Calling out to a list and playing them a recording

Automation

• Scheduled Tasks — Time-based: publish a recording, open or close an exam, or switch where a key goes
• Event Tasks — Event-based: email a new message, transcribe it, or save a conference recording

Account

• Account Settings & Keypad Controls — Account basics, auto top-up, contact fields, and what each key does while a caller listens
• Billing, Plans & Add-ons — Plans, add-ons, balance, top-ups, cards, and what gets charged
• Payments & Payouts — Merchants behind the Payment block, and the charges they take
• Statistics, Logs & Call Traces — Call stats, live calls, inbound and outbound logs, and tracing a single call
• Users, Login & Help — Adding users, two-factor authentication, the Help page, search, and the sidebar map

AI & Integrations

• AI Assistant (Beta) — Build and change your hotline from a conversation; every plan is shown first, applied on your say-so, and undoable
• Hotline API (Beta) — A small HTTP API for reading and editing one account's call flow, with undoable change sets

Reference

• Custom TwiML Attributes — Non-standard TwiML attributes supported beyond what Twilio offers