Hotline settings

The Hotline Settings helps you control how you want your hotline number to operate. 

Navigating to Hotline Settings

• On the main dashboard click Hotlines on the top navigation bar
• Click the Edit button of the hotline you want to manage

Basic Profile

This area is where you can edit and change the Name and Description of your hotline. This is helpful when you have multiple hotlines and need to distinguish each from the other.

Greetings and Voicemail

To upload a custom greeting or voicemail, navigate to the area under your settings, and click upload. Then click Save. At the moment, we only accept .mp3 files.

Note: Legal Compliance for custom greeting message - Custom greetings may require a recording disclaimer to comply with your state's laws about privacy and record keeping. We encourage users to include the following sentences when creating the call recording: "This call may be monitored and recorded for quality or training purposes."

Catchment Area

A catchment area is a geographic area from which your hotline attracts callers. For example, if your hotline services the area of San Diego County, you would select San Diego as your catchment area.

Note: A catchment area helps you better manage your Rapid Response account. For example, selecting your catchment area in advance helps you type ahead quickly the address of an incident you want to report in the Incident Report tool.

Hotline Options

Enable Call Recording

Turn this on if you want all incoming and outgoing calls to be recorded. If they are recorded, you can go to the Call History section of each call to download the audio recording.

Allow calls from anonymous numbers

Turn this on to enable calls from anonymous or unlisted numbers.

Reject abusive calls 

Turn this on to disable the blocking of calls from abusive numbers.

Allow incoming SMS text from

Turn this on to determine who can send your hotline an SMS text message.

Any and all Numbers - anyone in the public can text in.

Registered numbers - only those that are registered on the Rapid Response dashboard (like operators, legal observers) can text in.

No-one (disable incoming SMS) - No one can text in.

Max operators to forward to

This is the maximum number of operators an incoming call with be forwarded to.

Max alert range

This setting sets the maximum distance (in miles) an incident report will look for dispatchers.

Allow calls from non-U.S. numbers

Turn this on to enable calls from outside of the United States.