My Hotline (the builder)

Overview

My Hotline is the home page of your account, and the easiest way to build and manage everything. It looks and works like a real phone keypad: every key shows what happens when a caller presses it, and you tap the keys the same way your callers do. Almost everything you need is here, so you rarely have to go looking through the sidebar. In the sidebar it is called Home, and its heading reads "Your Hotline. Build your hotline the same way callers use it, one key at a time."

The keypad model

There is one rule, and it covers almost everything:

1. Press an empty key (the dashed tile with a +) and the When callers press N panel opens so you can decide what that key does.
2. Press a key that holds a menu and you step inside it. A fresh keypad opens for that menu and the colored chips at the top show where you are.
3. Press any other key and its ⚙ settings slide-over opens. That is the one place a key is understood and configured.
4. Press the ⚙ on a key at any time and you get the same settings panel without stepping in.

A key that holds an Access check is special: the tile shows the lock and the check's name on a small amber strip, and then shows what is behind the check as the key's real content ("then opens …"). Pressing such a key steps through the check to whatever passing callers reach; the lock strip and the separate ⚙ let you edit the check itself and the thing behind it separately.

If Callers can press a key to go back is turned on and that key has no route of its own, its tile shows Back instead, and pressing it walks you up a level.

Finding your way around

Breadcrumb chips and colors

Above the phone is a row of colored chips: Main Menu, then one chip per menu you have stepped into, each showing the key you pressed to get there. Tap any chip to jump straight back to that spot.

Every key has a fixed color, and it is the same color everywhere in the app, including the location chips on the full settings pages:

The menu you are standing in is framed in its own color, and the menu you came from is painted around the outside, so you always see "inside orange, surrounded by blue". A longer code gets a stable color picked from the same palette.

Number switcher

If your account owns more than one phone number, a small dropdown sits above the chips listing each number. Pick one and the keypad rebuilds for the menu that number answers with. Your choice is remembered for next time. With one number (or none) the switcher is hidden.

Test PIN

Next to the number, in the line under the menu name, is a green Test PIN chip. Tap it to copy the PIN. Hover it and a small card tells you which number to call: dial the shared test line, enter the PIN, and you hear your own hotline exactly as a caller would. This is how you can build and test a hotline before you own a number at all. The phone number chip next to it copies your number the same way.

The Main Menu is made for you

The first time you open the page, if your number (or test PIN) is not routed anywhere yet, a menu called Main Menu is created and the entrance is pointed at it. You never start from a blank screen.

If your number goes straight to something that is not a menu, the page says so ("Your number goes straight to …") and offers a link to that thing's settings, because the keypad builder works with menus.

The menu recording

Under the menu name sits the Menu recording card. It tells you at a glance whether the recording is set ("Set — callers hear it when they arrive here.") or not ("Not set yet — callers will hear silence."), and gives you a player to listen right on the page.

• Generate opens the Generate the menu recording dialog (below).
• Set it / Change opens the ordinary recording picker, with all the usual ways to supply audio: upload, pick from an audio player, record, or generate speech. See Recordings & Text-to-Speech.

Generate the menu recording

This builds a spoken menu out of the keys you have already set, so you do not have to write or record one yourself.

• Which keys to announce — a tick box per assigned key, each showing the line it will contribute, for example "To listen to Announcements, press 1." Keys sitting behind an access check start unticked, with the note "Behind an access check — announce it only if callers should know."
• The menu script — the actual text that becomes the recording. Ticking or unticking keys rewrites it; after that you can edit it freely.
• Voice — Alloy, Echo (the default), Fable, Onyx, Nova, or Shimmer.

Generate & use it creates the audio and sets it as this menu's recording straight away.

The wording is chosen per key type: an audio player becomes "To listen to X, press N", a message box "To leave a message, press N", a forward call "To speak to X, press N", a play recording "To hear X, press N", and anything else "For X, press N".

Working with keys

Drag and drop

Drag any assigned key onto another key on the same menu:

• Drop it on an empty key and the assignment moves there ("Moved to key 4").
• Drop it on an assigned key and the two swap ("Keys 1 and 4 swapped"). The tile shows a Swap badge while you hover.

Nothing is created or deleted; only which key holds what changes.

Key press heat

A key that callers have actually used shows a small line such as 128× this week, counted from the call traces of the last 7 days, plus a hairline bar at the bottom of the tile showing that key's share of the menu's presses. It refreshes every few minutes. Keys nobody pressed show nothing.

Longer codes

A route whose key is more than one digit (for example 12) cannot be drawn on a twelve key keypad, so it is listed in a Longer codes on this menu card underneath, with the code, the name, and the type. Callers reach it by typing the whole code.

When callers press N

This is the panel you get from an empty key. It is headed When callers press 1 … and asks three short questions.

• What should this key be? — a single dropdown in plain words, with a colored dot per type:

  🔵 Menu	🟢 Audio player	🟠 Message box
  🟦 Forward call	🟡 Conference	🟪 Bookmark
  ✅ Join a list	❌ Leave a list	⚪ Go to
  🔷 Dial out	🌸 Exam	🟣 Play recording
  ⚫ Custom code

  Play recording sits near the end of the list on purpose, because people kept choosing it when they wanted an audio player. Access check is deliberately not here: a check is a setting you put in front of a key, not a kind of key. Payment and CallMagic are not here either, because they cannot exist without a merchant or an API token; create those on their own pages and then connect them.

• Which one? — ➕ Make a new one, or any existing item of that type. Each existing option carries a small gray second line showing where it already sits in the call flow (call flow: ☎ 1-7, or call flow: none yet). Pick an existing one and a note appears under the dropdown spelling out every way callers already reach it, or telling you this key will be its first home.

• Give it a name — only for a new one, and the name has to be free (see below).

• Phone number to forward to — only when you are making a new Forward call. Digits only, for example 18455551234.

Save a new item and the ⚙ settings panel opens immediately, because a fresh block usually needs setting up. An exam even says so: "Now add the questions and answers."

Names must be unique

No two things in your account may share a name, whatever their type, so nothing gets mixed up later in the Destination dropdown. If a name is taken you see: "You already have something called "X". Pick a different name so the two don't get mixed up." The rule is case insensitive and applies both when creating and when renaming.

Rename a menu

Next to the menu title are a pencil and a gear. The pencil opens Rename this menu, with a single Menu name field (the uniqueness rule applies). The gear opens that menu's own ⚙ settings.

The ⚙ settings slide-over

Every key, and the menu you are standing in, has a settings panel that slides in from the side. It is headed for example "Key 3 — Audio player settings", and it is laid out the same way for every type:

1. Two shortcut links at the top, when they apply: Access check (jumps to the check guarding this key) and Open its full page (opens this item's own resource page in a new tab, for anything the builder does not surface).
2. Name, and for an audio player key, Plays the audio player so you can point the key at a different player without touching anything else.
3. The everyday settings for that type, right up front.
4. Show more — a collapsed section holding everything else the block can do, including Turned on ("When off, callers can't use this") for the types that have it.
5. Afterwards — "Where the caller goes when this finishes", holding the block's named routes. For Go to, Join a list, and Leave a list the destination is moved to the top instead, because routing is the whole job.
6. Add an access check in front (or, on a check itself, Remove the access check from this key).
7. Remove from this key and Delete this … completely.

What each type shows

These are the plain words the builder uses. The full resource pages behind them often use older, more technical labels; each block's own page lists those.

Each of those has a fuller page: Menu, Audio Player, Message Box, Forward Call, Play Recording, Dial Out, Custom Code, Conference, Bookmark, Join / Leave a List, Exam, Payment, CallMagic Action, Go To.

Where it's heard

An audio player key gets an extra section, Where it's heard, listing every path callers use to reach that player (a chip trail per path, starting from the phone number). Two buttons sit under it:

• See the recordings inside — opens the recordings slide-over.
• Upload recordings — opens the uploader.

Because one audio player can be heard in several places, this is the quickest way to check you are editing the one you think you are.

The recordings slide-over

Headed with the player's name and subtitled "What callers hear, in playing order". It lists the active recordings in order, each with its position, name, length, and its own play button, up to 50 at a time, plus a count of anything archived. Upload recordings is available from here too.

Upload recordings

Drag in one or more audio files. Each file becomes its own recording, named after the file, added to that player. The panel tells you how many were added, and how many failed if any did.

Access checks

An access check is a gate. It is never a key type: you put one in front of something that already exists.

The front door

Under the menu name on the main menu is either Add access check (a dashed button) or, when one is already there, an amber chip naming it, such as "PIN check · Hotline access check", with a small ✕ to take it off.

Add access check asks:

• Which access check? — ➕ Make a new one, or one you already have.
• Who gets through? — Caller must enter a PIN code · Anyone saved in my contacts · Only chosen contacts · Contacts with certain labels · Specific phone numbers.
• The PIN code — only when you are making a new PIN check.

Callers then pass the check before they reach your main menu, and everything behind it stays exactly as it was. The chips at the top show the lock so you always know the gate is there.

Removing the front door check points the number straight at the menu again. The check itself is not deleted and can be brought back any time.

Protect key N

The same idea on one key. From that key's ⚙, Add an access check in front opens Protect key N with the same three questions. What the key used to do becomes the check's "If the caller passes" destination, so nothing is lost. The tile now shows the lock strip plus "then opens …" and the thing behind it.

Remove the access check (the ✕ on the lock strip, or Remove the access check from this key in the ⚙) points the key straight back at what was behind it. If nothing is behind it yet you are told to set that first.

Everything a check can do, including verifying callers by name or personal PIN, letting unrecognized callers identify themselves, and the six optional spoken prompts, is on the Access Check page. The builder gives an access check its own dedicated panel, reached from the lock icon on the key or the Access check link in a key's settings.

Header buttons

In-call keys

Opens Keys while listening: a keypad view of what each key does while a caller is listening to a recording (skip, pause, rewind, archive, and more). Tap a key to change it.

A row of pills at the top picks the scope, because a key can behave one way everywhere and differently for one kind of audio player:

A row saved for one specific type beats the "every type" row, exactly as the phone system does it.

Tapping a key opens Edit listening key, with What it does (pause/resume, back or forward by 15 seconds, 1, 5, 10 or 15 minutes, next or previous recording, delete, archive, save a bookmark, louder, faster, normal speed & volume, play an instructions file), Ask the caller to confirm first (shown for delete and archive: the caller must press 1), Which bookmark? (for the bookmark action), The instructions file (for the instructions action), and Turned on. Clearing What it does deletes the row, so the key does nothing in that scope. Full details, and the keypad control settings behind them, are on Account Settings & Keypad Controls.

The panel also offers Spoken instructions for listeners: a script built automatically from the keys you have set plus the go-back key ("To go back 15 seconds, press 1. To pause or continue, press 2. …"). You can edit The wording, pick a Voice, and choose Save the audio into either a new "Instructions" audio player or an existing one. The finished audio lands as a recording you can wire to a key as its instructions file.

Account

A short slide-over with the basics:

• Account name
• Timezone — "Schedules and times everywhere follow this."
• Callers can press a key to go back
• Which key goes back? — only *, #, 0, 7, 8, 9
• All account settings — a link to the full Account Settings page
• Danger zone (collapsed) — Delete entire hotline…

Templates

A gallery of ten ready made hotlines. Each card shows the template's name, a one line description, a mini keypad preview of the main menu, and a breakdown of every submenu inside it, so you can see the whole structure before you copy it.

Use this template asks you to confirm. If your hotline already has content, the warning is honest about it: your number currently answers with "Main Menu" (and how many keys it has), the template will take its place, but nothing is lost — the old menu and everything on it stay in your account and can be reconnected any time. The button then reads Replace & build it instead of Build it.

Templates leave forwarding numbers, recordings, and PINs blank for you to fill in through each key's ⚙.

More → Clean up

Clean up unconnected extensions lists everything callers cannot reach from any phone number or PIN, grouped by type, and offers to delete all of them in one press ("Delete all 12"). It is what you use after switching templates.

Two things are deliberately spared even when they look unreachable:

• An audio player that a connected message box saves into, and any audio player that still holds recordings.
• A bookmark used by your in-call listening keys.

Everything it deletes is unreachable by definition, so your live hotline is untouched.

Danger zone: delete the entire hotline

Reached only from Account → Danger zone → Delete entire hotline…, never from the header, so it cannot be hit by accident. The confirmation counts exactly what will go ("3 menus, 4 audio players, 1 message box — and the 27 recording(s) inside your audio players") and you have to type DELETE in a box to go through with it. Type anything else and nothing is removed.

It deletes: every menu, audio player, message box, forward call, conference, bookmark, join/leave a list, go to, dial out, exam, play recording, custom code, and access check in your account, along with the recordings inside your audio players and all of their routing.

It keeps: your phone numbers, contacts, labels, in-call keys, billing, and call logs. Afterwards your number answers with a fresh, empty main menu.

Payment blocks and CallMagic actions are left alone too, because they depend on a merchant or an API token and cannot be recreated from the keypad.

Remove from this key vs delete completely

At the bottom of every ⚙ panel are two different red buttons, and the difference matters:

• Remove from this key — "The key becomes empty again. Nothing is deleted — you can reconnect it any time." Only the connection goes.
• Delete this … completely — the item is removed from your whole hotline. If it is connected in more than one place the confirmation says so ("it is connected in 3 places, and all of them will become empty"). Its routes, in and out, are cleared too. Delete the menu you are standing in and you are stepped back to the main menu.

Take a tour

A small Take a tour button sits above the phone. It runs a nine step walkthrough that dims the page and spotlights each part in turn: the breadcrumb chips, the menu recording, the keypad, the menu settings gear, Templates, In-call keys, Account (and the Danger zone tucked inside it), and finally the Plans and Billing links in the sidebar. It starts by itself the first time you open the page, and after that only when you ask for it.

Tips

• Build in the order callers experience it: set the key first, then its settings, then the recording that announces it.
• Use the Test PIN after every change. It is the fastest honest check.
• Let Generate write your menu recording once the keys are set. Re-generate it whenever you add a key.
• Give things names you would say out loud ("Weekly Shiurim", not "Library 4"). The generated menu script uses them.
• If a key looks right but callers never reach it, open its full page and read the Where callers reach this chips.