Hotliney user guide
Everything in Hotliney today, from your first workspace to your first answered call — written for the person running the business, not for engineers.
Getting started
A working Hotliney takes about five minutes: create the workspace, decide who answers, publish a link.
Create your workspace
Sign up with your work email. The workspace you name here is your company inside Hotliney; everything — links, queues, calls, reports — belongs to it and is never visible to another workspace.
Follow the setup checklist
The overview page walks you through the four things a live hotline needs: a queue, someone (or an AI agent) to answer, a call link, and one test call. Finish it in order and you are live.
Make your first test call
Open your link in another browser or on your phone, allow the microphone, and answer from the agent console. Test calls are stored like any other call so you can see exactly what your customer's call will look like.
Call links
A call link is the thing your customer clicks. One workspace can have as many as it needs — per branch, per campaign, per product page.
Create a link
Give it a name your team recognises, choose the queue it rings, and pick its address. The address is what appears in the public URL, so keep it short and readable.
Ask the caller for what you need
Each link can ask for a reason for the call and short details such as name, phone, email or order number — before the call connects or while it is running. Whatever the caller submits appears on the call and on their contact record.
Track where calls come from
Add source and campaign values to a link — or keep the UTM parameters already on your landing page — and every call carries that attribution into history and analytics.
Publish, pause or retire
A link can be published, paused or closed at any time. A paused link shows callers a clear message instead of ringing an empty queue.
Queues
A queue decides who a call reaches and what happens when nobody is free.
Add the people who answer
Assign team members to the queue. A call rings only the members who are online in the agent console.
Choose how the queue answers
People only, AI only, team first with AI backup, or AI first with people behind it. Team first with AI backup is the safest default: your team gets the call, and if nobody answers within the waiting time you set, the AI agent takes the same call over instead of losing it.
Set working hours
Outside working hours the queue tells callers you are closed rather than ringing indefinitely.
Team and availability
Everyone answers from the browser. There is nothing to install and no phone system to configure.
Invite your team
Send an invite from the Team page and choose a role: owner and admin manage the workspace, supervisor monitors live calls and sees everything, agent answers calls and sees their own.
Go online to receive calls
In the agent console, switch yourself online. Break and do-not-disturb stop new calls without signing you out.
During a call
You can mute, hold, transfer to another team member or to the AI agent, add notes, extend the call if you need more time, and close it with an outcome.
AI backup for your team
AI backup exists so a missed call still becomes a conversation.
How the handover works
On a team-first queue the call rings your agents first. If nobody accepts before the waiting time you set, the same caller — without redialling — is handed to the AI agent, and the call keeps one single record.
Taking a call back from AI
A supervisor can move a live AI call to a human, or a live human call to the AI agent, from the operations page.
Building an AI agent
You build the agent entirely inside Hotliney. You never need an account with the voice provider.
Start from a purpose
Pick what the agent is for — sales, support, bookings, qualification — and Hotliney writes a first set of instructions you can edit.
Choose a voice and language
Browse the voice library and play a sample before you commit. Set the language and dialect the agent should speak.
Write the instructions
Say who the agent is, what it may promise, what it must never say, and when to hand over to a human. If you are unsure, use the writing assistant to draft or tighten the text and review it before saving.
Give it knowledge
Add your prices, policies or FAQ as text, a web page or a document. Hotliney shows you when each item has finished indexing and is actually in use.
Connect it to a queue and test
Assign the agent to a queue, then call your own link and talk to it. Every AI call produces a transcript and summary you can review afterwards.
The website widget
The widget is a floating call button that sits on your own website.
Copy the snippet
Open the link, choose the widget option and copy the one-line script. Paste it before the closing body tag of your site — or into your site builder's custom-code box.
Match your brand
The widget uses the link's own logo, colour and label, so it looks like part of your site rather than a third-party badge.
Inline embed
An inline embed puts the call experience inside a page — a pricing page, a booking page, a support article.
Paste the embed code
Copy the inline embed code from the link and place it where you want the call panel to appear. The visitor calls without ever leaving your page.
It behaves like any other call
Embedded calls follow the same queue, the same AI backup and the same history, analytics and attribution as a standalone link.
Microphone on your domain
Browsers only allow microphone access on secure (https) pages, so serve the page over https and let the visitor accept the microphone prompt once.
Recording and transcripts
Recordings are private to your workspace and are reached through short-lived, signed playback links — never a public file address.
Where to listen
Play a recording from the call list or from the call detail page. AI calls also carry a transcript and a written summary of what was discussed.
Who can hear it
Owners, admins and supervisors can play any recording in the workspace. Agents can only reach their own calls.
Tell your callers
Callers are told before the call that it may be recorded. Keep that notice on — in most markets it is a legal requirement, not an option.
History and analytics
Every call is stored with how it arrived, how long it waited, who handled it and how it ended.
Call history
Filter by queue, link, agent, AI, outcome, source, campaign, recording or date, switch between cards and a table, and export the page you are looking at.
Call detail
One call shows its timeline, the link and campaign that produced it, everything the caller submitted, agent notes, the recording, and the AI transcript and summary when AI handled it.
Analytics
See volume, answer rate, missed calls, waiting and talking time, busiest hours, performance per queue, link, campaign and agent, and a separate view for AI-handled calls.
Contacts
When a caller shares details, Hotliney keeps a simple contact record so the next call is not a blank page.
How a contact is created
A phone number or email submitted before or during the call creates or updates a contact automatically, and the call is attached to it.
Returning callers
If the same person calls again, the agent sees that they are a returning caller together with their previous calls.
Trial, plans and billing
Hotliney starts with a 14-day free trial. No card is asked for, because online payment is not switched on yet.
Your trial
The trial gives you the product to evaluate with real calls. The billing page always shows how many days remain and what your workspace has used.
Plans and limits
Each plan carries its own limits — team members, queues, links, AI agents, concurrent calls and monthly minutes. The billing page shows your current plan, its limits and your usage against them.
Changing plan today
You can request a plan change from the billing page and our team applies it to your workspace. Hotliney will not ask you for card details until online payment is activated — if any page ever does, do not enter them and tell us.
When something goes wrong
Most call problems come down to three things: the microphone, the browser, or nobody being online.
The caller hears nothing
Ask them to allow the microphone when the browser asks, and to leave silent mode on iPhone. Use the latest Safari, Chrome or Edge.
Calls are not reaching the team
Check that at least one member of the queue is online, that the link is published, and that you are inside working hours. If the queue has AI backup, the call is answered anyway.
A recording is missing
AI recordings arrive a few seconds after the call ends. Reopen the call list a moment later and Hotliney fetches anything still outstanding.
Still stuck?
Write to our team with your workspace name and the time of the call you are asking about — that is usually all we need to trace it.
hello@hotliney.com