Hotline

This module is an optional extension and must be activated first.

With GroupAlarm you can start, manage and monitor a dynamic first responder hotline in a few steps.

How it works

You create a new hotline and automatically get assigned a phone number from your local area network. You now assign any number of agents to this hotline in the form of subscribers from your organization. These agents maintain their phone numbers themselves in their profile – as is the case with all other accessibilities.
If the number of the first responder hotline is now called, all agents of this hotline will be called. Agents who accept this call can then decide for themselves whether they want to be connected to the caller. If the agent agrees, the connection is established immediately. For all other agents, the connection will be terminated.

First setup

After enabling the hotline in the extension you have to do an initial setup of the hotline. During this process, the address data of your organization will be requested. This data will be checked automatically so that you get the correct location numbers when you create an organization.

Overview

At this point, all configured hotlines including your phone number and the current status of the hotline are displayed.

Status

The following statuses are currently possible:


The hotline is active and can receive calls.


The hotline has been started and will be active in a few seconds.


The hotline is paused and cannot receive calls.


An error has occurred, please contact support.

Pause

In addition, a hotline can be paused at this point. This means that no more incoming calls will be received on this hotline, but the phone number and configuration will remain (and thus continue to incur monthly costs).

Create hotline

The button "Create Hotline" can be used to create a new hotline. Here you define the name of the hotline as well as the respective agents. These specifications can be edited later.

In addition, you can define the number of incoming and outgoing telephony channels. The number of outgoing telephony channels determines the maximum number of possible agents of a hotline.

Also, the automatically read out texts for greeting an incoming call and the agents called by the hotline can be set here. After editing, the hotline must be paused once to accept the texts and restarted.

After creating a hotline, it can take up to 24 hours until the phone number is reachable and calls can be put through to the agents by the hotline. The waiting time depends on your network provider and cannot be influenced by us. However, this process is usually completed in about 1 hour.

Costs

By creating a hotline, a chargeable telephone number is booked from your local network. In addition, each telephony channel and the outgoing calls to agents incur further usage-based costs. These are billed to you via the statement at the end of each billing cycle (30 days).
You can get an overview of the composition of the consumption costs in the itemized bill.

Thus, the monthly fixed costs for a hotline are composed as follows, for example:

Edit hotline

An already created hotline can be edited at any time. This includes renaming the hotline, adding or removing agents, defining the incoming and outgoing telephony channels and the automatically read out greeting texts.

If you change the number of telephony channels of a hotline, the monthly costs for the hotline may also change. Additional costs will be taken into account in the next billing. If, on the other hand, the costs are lower, they will be taken into account after the next billing.
You can view the current and any subsequent costs at any time in the Cost preview.

Monitor hotline

Each hotline logs all incoming calls and actions started by them.
To view this data, click on the menu in the hotline overview and select "Call history".

There you will see all received calls in chronological order. Select one of the calls to see more details.

The following events are currently logged:


This call was received and triggered the hotline process.


This call to an agent was started by the hotline.


This call was accepted by an agent.


This call was accepted by an agent and transferred to the caller.


This call was terminated (by the hotline or the agent).

Itemized bill

In addition to the call history, you will receive an itemized bill for all outgoing calls and the costs incurred as a result.
To view this data, click on the menu in the hotline overview and select "EVN".

There you will see all outgoing calls in chronological order including their duration and costs incurred.

*

plus consumption costs for outgoing calls to agents

Updated on: 28/09/2022