You're a hotline operator. Here's how to handle it.

Use the sign-in link in the email you received. Once you're in, look at your dashboard's Hotlines section — the hotline you were added to should be listed there. Click it to land on the interface you'll use during your shift.

This is also a good moment to make sure the rest of your profile is squared away — particularly your phone number, which step 4 will use.

The hotline page has six tabs across the top: Requests (where calls and texts land — your main work area), Contacts (caller history), Map (geographic view of requests), Dispatch (assigning work to partner orgs), Analytics, and Settings. As an operator, you'll spend most of your time in Requests.

Take 30 seconds to spot where each tab lives. Then check your notification preferences so you're not getting pinged for every new message — pick what you actually want to be alerted about.

In the Requests tab, click any item to open the detail panel. You'll see the full SMS thread, any call recordings (with transcripts, including voicemail when no one answered), MMS photos if there are any, the caller's information (name if we know it, phone, history with this hotline), and any tasks linked to the conversation.

Read everything before you act. Knowing the full context — what the caller said, whether they've called before, what others on your team have already done — saves you from sending a reply.

For SMS, type your reply in the composer at the bottom of the conversation panel and send. The reply goes from the hotline number, not your personal phone — callers see your org's name, not yours.

For voice, click Call. The system rings your phone first; when you pick up, it connects you to the caller, with the hotline number showing on their end. This is why your profile needs your phone number on file. Be polite and identify yourself by first name and the org — you're representing it.

When the work isn't yours to finish, the assignment section in the conversation panel is the one place to hand it off. The same picker can target a specific teammate, a team, a partner agency, or a partner organization — pick whichever fits. Whoever you assign to gets notified and the conversation lands in their queue.

The Dispatch tab is a different thing: it's for managing which organizations and agencies are dispatched to the hotline as a whole — typically a Manager or admin task, not something operators do per-conversation.

If you're a Manager: you can also reconfigure hotline settings (IVR, who's an operator, voicemail behavior) from the Settings tab. Most of that lives in the admin onboarding doc.

Conversations carry one of five statuses: New, In Progress, Replied, Closed, and Spam. The first three move on their own — you don't have to think about them.

Automatic transitions: an incoming SMS or call flips a conversation from New to In Progress. Sending an outbound callback flips it to Replied. Manual transitions: mark a conversation Closed when the situation is fully resolved (work done, caller's need handled), or Spam when it's junk that shouldn't clutter the queue.

The status filter chips at the top of the Requests tab help you see what's still open at a glance.

Before you log off, go through your Requests queue. Anything still sitting at New means it hasn't been touched — either pick it up, assign it to someone who can, or close it if there's nothing to do. Anything In Progress should be moved forward (replied, reassigned, or closed) so the next operator coming in isn't walking into a pile of half-handled conversations.

On a busy shift it's tempting to leave open work for the next person. Don't — they don't have your context. Closing or reassigning is faster for everyone than handing over a queue full of mysteries.