Getting Started

Overview

There are two things to do when you open a new account: get the billing and the phone number sorted, then build the line itself. The Getting Started wizard handles the first part in three short steps. Everything after that happens on My Hotline, the keypad builder that is your home page.

You do not have to wait for a phone number to start building. Every account gets a test PIN on signup: call the shared test line, enter your PIN, and you hear your own hotline exactly as a caller would.

The Getting Started wizard

The wizard is not in the sidebar. You reach it from the green Get Started button at the top of the Statistics page. Its heading reads "Set Up Your Hotline. Complete these steps to get your hotline up and running."

Step 1: Add Payment Method

Add a card to your account. If a card is already on file the step simply confirms it: "Payment method on file. You can proceed to the next step." Otherwise the card form appears; the card is saved and set as your default, and you are told when it worked.

You cannot finish the wizard without a card on file.

Step 2: Choose Plan

• Select a Plan — required. Every active plan is listed with its monthly price, for example Starter - $12.00/month.

The plan you pick here is created on your account when you finish, with everything the plan includes. Plans and the add-ons you can stack on top of them are on Billing, Plans & Add-ons.

Step 3: Phone Number

• Phone Number — required. A searchable list of the numbers currently available to buy, each with its description where it has one.

Complete Setup

The button at the end is Complete Setup. It:

1. Checks a payment method is really on file, and stops with a warning if not.
2. Creates your plan from the plan you chose.
3. Assigns the phone number you picked to your account.
4. Builds a simple starter hotline: a Main Menu, a Main library audio player on key 1, and a message box on key 2 that saves into that library.
5. Points your new number at the Main Menu.

You are told "Hotline Setup Complete!" and dropped on the Statistics page.

Your first steps after that

1. Open Home and look at the keypad

Home in the sidebar is My Hotline. The keypad you see is your hotline: every key shows what a caller gets when they press it, empty keys show a +, and menu keys can be stepped into. A guided Take a tour runs by itself the first time.

If you have not been through the wizard, opening this page still gives you a Main Menu to work with, created quietly the first time you arrive.

2. Call your own line with the test PIN

The green Test PIN chip under the menu name copies your PIN, and hovering it shows the number to call. Dial in, enter the PIN, and listen. Do this after every change. It is the fastest honest check that things sound the way you meant them to.

3. Try a template

The Templates button in the header opens ten ready made hotlines: a family line, a shul line, an office system, a school hotline, a news line, a shiurim network, a kids story line, and more. Each card shows a picture of its keypad and what is inside every submenu. One click builds the whole structure as your own, with the recordings and forwarding numbers left blank for you to fill in.

Nothing is lost when you apply one: your existing menu and everything on it stay in your account and can be reconnected any time. If you want to tidy up afterwards, More → Clean up deletes what no caller can reach.

4. Make your first recording

Two recordings get a hotline talking:

• The menu recording. On the Menu recording card, press Set it to upload or record one, or press Generate to have a spoken menu written and voiced from the keys you have already set ("To listen to Announcements, press 1. To leave a message, press 2."). Details are in Recordings & Text-to-Speech.
• Something to listen to. Open an audio player key's ⚙ and use Upload recordings to drag in your files. Each file becomes its own recording, named after the file. See Audio Player (Library).

5. Decide what the other keys do

Tap any empty key and pick from the plain words list: another menu, an audio player, a message box, a forward call, and the rest. How the pieces connect is explained in How Routing Works, and the blocks themselves each have their own page.

Where to go next