Call recording

Call recording captures answered calls so you can review how enquiries are handled, coach the team, and settle "who said what" disputes. It starts on for a practice that is new to Smileline Voice, and you can switch it off in Settings; this page covers recording compliantly, how long recordings are kept, and where to play them back.

Turn recording on or off

Recording is configured at Settings → Voice & calling (owner or manager role):

While it is on, every answered call is recorded. Calls that are never answered produce no recording.

Smileline imports recordings up to 32 MiB. If a provider produces a larger recording, the call remains in the timeline but no playback control is added.

Consent to record

Recording a call comes with obligations: callers must know the call is being recorded, and in some places they must actively agree to it.

Smileline does not play a spoken recording announcement — not on outgoing calls, inbound calls, or calls the AI voice agent takes. Recording relies on the consent your practice collects from patients, for example in its registration and enquiry forms, patient agreements or privacy notice. Make sure those cover call recording, or switch recording off until they do.

Recordings are stereo with one party per channel, which is what lets a transcript tell the caller's words from the practice's.

• In some US states every party must consent, not just be told. California, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida and several others work this way, and California's rule carries a private right of action. Call someone only when the consent you hold covers recording; if they object on the call, stop the recording or end the call rather than continuing.

Pause the recording while you take a payment

There is nothing to press: the recording pauses by itself when card details come up on the call. The live transcript listens for card talk from either side, and pauses the recording when it hears:

• a card phrase, such as "card number", "long number", "card details", "expiry date", "security code", "CVV", "cardholder", "take a card payment", "pay by card", "credit card" or "debit card";
• numbers said around such a phrase — the expiry after "expiry date", the three digits after "CVV";
• a card-length run of digits read out in groups by the same person, even with no card phrase.

A phone number and its readback don't pause the recording, and neither do "visa", "expires", "payment link" or "deposit" on their own.

While the recording is paused, the browser call bar, Smileline Desk's call window and the Chrome extension show Card payment · recording paused · resumes in 0:27. The recording resumes by itself, in the same file, 30 seconds after the last card talk it heard. The live transcript keeps running through the pause — that is how it hears the reading carry on — so every new group of digits restarts the 30 seconds, and a long reading stays paused all the way through. If the pause couldn't be confirmed, they show Recording couldn't be paused — card details may be recorded in red instead.

Card digits are blanked (shown as •) in every saved transcript: the live transcript, the AI receptionist's transcript, and a transcript made from the recording. Phone numbers, prices, years and times said outside card talk stay readable.

Every pause window is kept with the call — the times the recorder was off — so you can show which part of the call wasn't recorded. A pause still running when the call ends simply runs to the end of the call.

Calls the pause doesn't cover

The automatic pause works on recorded calls that have Call AI's live transcript: practices with Smileline Voice in the United Kingdom and the United States. Nothing listens for card talk on calls to tracking numbers while the transcription switch is off.

Don't take card details by voice on those calls — the recording keeps running. Send the patient a deposit payment link instead, so they type the card in themselves.

Retention: recordings delete themselves

Recordings are kept only for the retention window you set, then deleted automatically. There's no manual purge to remember — a shorter window is the simplest way to minimise the data you hold.

New calls follow a saved window immediately. A shorter window is applied progressively to existing recordings in bounded daily batches. Extending the window or changing it to Forever does not restore deleted audio or postpone a recording already scheduled to expire sooner.

When a recording expires, its Play recording control is removed. The call-history entry remains, including who called, when, how long and the line outcome.

The phone provider's copy

Once a recording is saved in Smileline and its transcript is done, Smileline asks the phone provider to delete its own copy. That copy counts as deleted only when the provider confirms the deletion, or reports that the copy is already gone. If the provider refuses, the practice's phone system is not set up, or a legal hold covers the call, Smileline tries again later. After five attempts the call appears in the review queue as a Phone system update that says why the last attempt failed; clear that reason, then click Try again.

Play a recording back

Answered, recorded calls show a Play recording control wherever the call appears:

• On the patient timeline — every call is logged there with who called, when, how long and the outcome of the line.
• In Today's recent activity for the lead you're working.

Click Play recording and the audio starts straight away; you can jump to any point without waiting for the whole file to download. If you leave a recording paused for a long time, pressing play or jumping ahead picks it up where you were. Playback is limited to owners and managers: front desk and telesales place calls but cannot replay them, and analysts have no calling access at all. Voicemail messages are the exception — every calling role can play those in the voicemail inbox, and read the transcript beside them.

Under the player, anyone who can place calls can expand the call's transcript. Smileline transcribes recorded calls and voicemails automatically once the audio is stored, so a long call can be read instead of listened to. While that is still running the panel says so; if transcription fails after its automatic retries, it says Transcription failed with a Retry button (the failure also appears in the review queue, where it can be retried too). Transcripts are deleted with the recording when its retention window passes.

When a recording fails

Occasionally the carrier reports that it could not record a call. The call keeps its history entry — who called, when, how long and the outcome — but no Play recording control ever appears for it, and nothing is retried in the background: the audio does not exist. When the failed recording was a voicemail, the practice still gets the missed-call alert, which says the message could not be recorded, so the caller is never silently lost.

Every listen leaves a trail

Recordings are sensitive, so access is audited: every playback is written to the practice activity log, along with who listened and which call it was. Picking a recording back up after a long pause is logged as another listen. Turning recording on or off and changing the central retention settings are logged too. Owners and managers can review the trail at Settings → Activity log.