Audio player (Library)

Overview

An audio player holds a set of recordings and plays them to callers: a shiur series, daily announcements, a message board, or the voicemails left in a message box. It handles the numbering, the playing order and the keypad controls (pause, rewind, skip, next) for you.

In the app the building block is called Audio player. The full admin pages are under Advanced → Libraries and Advanced → Library Recordings; the recordings of one player are also listed on the player's own page.

How It Works

1. The caller reaches the audio player.
2. If you set a Welcome Audio, it plays once.
3. What happens next depends on the Playback Type you chose (see below): the system either starts playing, announces how many recordings there are, or plays your own menu recording.
4. While a recording plays, the caller can press the keypad controls to pause, rewind, skip, jump to the next one, and so on.
5. When there is nothing left to play, the call follows your routing, or ends.

Recordings that are switched off (Active unticked) or archived are skipped entirely.

Playback Types

Playback Type is the one setting that changes everything else. The default for a new audio player is System Announces Available Recordings.

On My Hotline the same choice is called How callers listen, with plainer wording: System announces each recording, Play everything, one after another, Caller picks by number (numbers read out loud), Caller types a recording number, My own menu recording, Caller chooses: listen straight (1) or pick one (2).

About the Combined type

• Press 1 and every recording plays in turn, each one announced as recording number 3 first.
• Press 2 and the caller picks a recording by that same number.
• The announced number always counts from the oldest recording, so a number a caller heard last week still works after you add new recordings.
• Menu Audio File is optional here. Leave it empty and the system says to listen to all recordings one after the other, press 1. to select a specific recording by its number, press 2.
• If the player is empty, the choice is skipped: the caller hears no messages and follows the When Menu is Empty route.

Creating an Audio Player

On My Hotline, pick a key and choose Audio player. For everything else, go to Advanced → Libraries and click New Library.

Basic Information

• Library Name (required) — how the player is named in your admin panel and in routing dropdowns. Callers never hear it.

Playback Configuration

• Playback Type (required) — see the table above. Default: System Announces Available Recordings.
• Listening Order (required) — Oldest First (the default) or Newest First. For the Combined type this applies only to listening one after the other; selection numbers always count from the oldest.

Audio

• Welcome Audio — played once when a caller enters this player, before any recordings. Works with every playback type. On My Hotline this is Welcome recording (optional).
• Library Menu Audio / Menu Audio File — only appears for the two types that use it. It is required for Selectable - Custom Library Menu Audio (where it is the menu) and optional for Combined (where it replaces the automatic "press 1 or 2" announcement). On My Hotline this is Your menu recording.

Both fields use the standard audio selector: upload, pick an existing recording, record from your browser or generate speech. See Recordings, uploads and text-to-speech.

More Options

More Options is a toggle near the top of the form, not a section. Switch it on to reveal Phone System Reference, Custom Settings and Advanced Routing. It is off by default and is not saved; it only controls what the form shows you.

• Phone System Reference → Extension ID — an optional number used to reach this player from the keypad admin. It only appears when Show phone system reference is switched on in your account settings.

Keypad Controls While Listening

Every account starts with a set of keypad controls that work inside every audio player. They are account-wide and you edit them in Settings (Keypad controls on My Hotline).

If Enable back navigation is on in Settings, your chosen Key to go back also works here and returns the caller to the player's menu.

Custom Settings (per player keys)

Under More Options → Custom Settings you can give one audio player its own keys. A key defined here beats the account-wide default for the same key, inside this player only.

Click Add Setting for each key. Rows can be dragged into order and collapsed.

• Key (required) — the key callers press, for example 1, 8 or 59.

• Action — what happens when it is pressed. The available actions are:

  Action	Effect
  pause	Pause, press again to resume
  regular	Back to normal playback
  next	Next recording
  delete	Delete the recording that is playing
  archive	Archive the recording that is playing
  bookmark	Save the spot to a bookmark
  rewind / skip 15 seconds, 1, 5, 10 or 15 minutes	Jump backwards or forwards
  volume increase	Turn the volume up
  speed increase	Speed the playback up
  play a file in middle this file	Play a separate recording without losing the caller's place

  The account default previous is not in this list; to change what 0 does, edit the account keypad controls in Settings.

• Applies to Library Type — limits the key to certain playback types: All library types (the default), Play All Without Selection, Selectable - System Says Number, Selectable - User Says Number or System Announces Available Recordings.

• Audio File — only shown for the play a file in middle this file action. This is what gets played mid-recording when the key is pressed. Useful for instructions.

• Target Type and Select Target — only shown for the bookmark action. Pick Library and then the audio player the bookmarked spot should be saved into.

• Labels — restricts who may press this key. Only callers whose saved contact carries at least one of the selected labels can trigger the action; everyone else pressing the same key gets no response. Leave empty to allow every caller.

Advanced Routing

Under More Options → Advanced Routing you decide where callers go in situations the keypad does not cover. Every slot uses the same Destination dropdown described in How routing works.

When Listening to Audio — applies while a recording is playing.

• Audio Playback Actions — add a Key and a destination. Pressing that key during a recording leaves the player and goes there.
• When Audio Library is Empty — where to go when there is nothing to play. The caller hears no messages first.
• When Audio Playback Ends — where to go when the last recording has finished.

When Listening to Main Menu — applies while the caller is at the player's menu. This section is hidden for Play All Without Selection, which has no menu.

• Menu Actions — add a Key and a destination for shortcuts out of the menu.
• When Menu is Empty — where to go when the player has no recordings.
• When No Input Received — where to go when the caller presses nothing.
• When No Match Found — where to go when the caller presses something that is not a recording number.

The Library List

Advanced → Libraries shows every audio player with its Playback Type, Order, a Recordings count and a Custom Settings tick for players that carry their own keys. You can filter by playback type or listening order, View a player's summary, or Edit it.

Recordings Inside a Player

Open a player and you get its recordings in playing order. The same list lives at Advanced → Library Recordings across all players, and on My Hotline as See the recordings inside.

Drag rows to change the order. The order is what callers hear and what the selection numbers follow.

Adding recordings

• The New button adds one recording with the full form.
• Upload many takes a drag-and-drop of several audio files at once. Each file becomes its own recording, named after the filename without the extension. On My Hotline the same button is Upload recordings.

Recording fields

• Library (required) — which audio player it belongs to. Only shown when creating; move an existing recording with the Move to Other Library bulk action instead.
• Recording Name — how it is named in your panel. Leave it blank and it is filled in automatically from the uploaded filename, with dashes and underscores turned into spaces.
• Order — the position in the player. Read-only; change it by dragging rows in the list.
• Duration — in seconds, worked out automatically from the audio file. Read-only.
• Main Audio File (required) — the recording itself.
• Selection Audio (Without Key) — a short recording describing what this is ("the morning shiur"). The system announces the key to press itself. This is the recommended option.
• Selection Audio (With Key) — a complete recording including the key, for when you want to word the announcement yourself.
• Active — on by default. Switch it off and callers skip this recording without deleting it.
• Admin Confirmed — a flag you can set and filter on, for example to mark voicemails you have listened to. It does not change what callers hear.

List columns

Besides the fields above, the list can show Recorded By (the phone number the message was left from, when a message box captured it), Archived, Confirmed, Transcript, Transcript Cost, Transcript Text, Transcript Summary, Created and Last Updated. Use the column toggle to turn the ones you want on. Filter by library, order number, Active, Confirmed, Transcript Status, Archived and deleted records.

Archiving

Archiving takes a recording out of the player without deleting it.

• Archive / Unarchive on a single row, or Archive Selected / Unarchive Selected in bulk.
• Archived recordings are skipped in playback and the remaining ones are renumbered 1, 2, 3… so callers never hit a gap.
• Unarchiving puts the recording back at the end of the list, not in its old position.
• Use the Archived filter to see them again.

Archiving is a separate thing from Active (which just mutes one recording in place) and from deleting (which removes it).

Moving and Exporting

• Move to Other Library — select recordings, pick a Target Library, and they are moved to the end of that player. The source player is renumbered.
• Export — download the selected recordings' details as a spreadsheet.
• Delete selected — soft delete. Deleted recordings can be found again with the deleted-records filter.

Transcription

Recordings can be transcribed to text, which also produces a summary and keywords. Transcripts are searchable from the panel's global search, so you can find a message by something that was said in it.

Starting a transcription

• Transcribe on a single row, or Transcribe Selected in bulk. Rows that are already processing or completed are skipped.
• View Transcript opens the finished text.

What it costs

• If you have entered your own YiddishLabs API key in Settings, your key is used and YiddishLabs bills you directly. Nothing is charged here.
• Otherwise it is charged to your account balance at $0.0001 per credit, based on the length of the audio, which works out to roughly a few cents per minute. The Transcript Cost column shows what each recording actually cost.

Status

The Transcript column shows Pending, Processing, Completed or Failed, and the Transcript Status filter narrows the list to one of them. A job that seems stuck on Processing resolves itself: the system re-checks unfinished jobs every hour and applies any result whose notification went missing. Re-checking is free and never buys a second transcription.

Automatic transcription

Two automations work with transcripts, set up on the audio player:

• New library recording → transcript transcribes every new message as it arrives.
• Transcription completed → send email with transcript emails the finished text to whoever you choose.

Common Patterns

A shiur library

Playback Type System Announces Available Recordings, Listening Order Newest First, and a Welcome Audio that names the series. Callers hear how many shiurim are available and type a number.

A voicemail box you listen to by phone

Point a message box at an audio player, set that player to Play All Without Selection and put it behind an Access check so only you can reach it. Messages play one after another, 59 deletes and # skips.

A hand-made menu of recordings

Playback Type Selectable - Custom Library Menu Audio, and record your own menu naming each option. You control exactly how it is worded.

Members-only skip key

Add a Custom Setting with a key, an action and a Labels restriction, so only callers on that list can use it.

Tips

• Keep Selection Audio (Without Key) short: it is read out for every recording in a selectable player.
• With Newest First, selection numbers shift as you add recordings. Use Combined if callers need a number that keeps working.
• Archive old shiurim instead of deleting them; the numbering closes up automatically and you can bring them back.
• Transcribe voicemail and you can search for the caller's words instead of listening to every message.