A hotline is a reporting dimension. It groups inbound numbers into a named bucket so that call volume can be rolled up by campaign, programme, or line-of-business rather than by individual DID. On the Phone numbers admin screen, the per-number drawer exposes a Reporting hotline field. Setting it writes phone_number.hotline_id, a nullable foreign key to a row in dim_hotline. Nothing else on the call path reads it.

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What a hotline bucket is

A hotline bucket is a row in the dim_hotline dimension table, scoped to one org. The Phone numbers screen reads four of its columns: The picker renders each option as code · name, so a bucket with code SUPPORT-EU and name EU support line appears as SUPPORT-EU · EU support line. The query behind the field is, in effect:
Because code drives the sort order, codes with a common prefix (SALES-…, SUPPORT-…) group together in the dropdown.

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Creating and deactivating hotline codes

The Phone numbers screen does not create, rename, or deactivate hotline codes. It is a consumer of dim_hotline only — it lists the active rows and lets you bind one to a number. Codes are maintained outside this screen, and the drawer will not offer a bucket that does not already exist for the org. Two consequences follow from the active = true filter:
  • A newly added code appears as soon as it is active. Reopen the drawer (or reload the screen) to refresh the list; the hotline list is fetched with the numbers and trunks when the screen loads.
  • Deactivating a code hides it from the picker but does not unbind numbers. Rows that already carry that hotline_id keep it. The drawer for such a number has no matching active option to display, so re-saving the number through the drawer can drop the stale binding. Move numbers to a replacement bucket before a code is deactivated.

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Binding numbers to a hotline

Pick a bucket in Reporting hotline and save. The field is clearable — the empty state is — None —, which stores hotline_id: null. The save goes through the admin API’s phone-number upsert:
The TeleQuick BFF dual-writes the row to Supabase and to Redis. The Redis DID index is published or pulled based on status, not on hotline_id; changing only the hotline binding does not re-deploy or undeploy the number. The drawer’s Deactivate and Reactivate actions pass the existing hotline_id through unchanged. Deactivating a number is a soft delete — status becomes inactive, the BFF pulls the Redis DID index so inbound INVITEs stop resolving, and the row (with its hotline binding) is retained. Reactivating restores routing with the same bucket still attached. e164 is immutable once a number exists; the hotline binding, trunk, and agent ID are all editable on an existing number.

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Where hotline roll-ups appear in reports

The binding is a stored dimension key, not a computed field. Reporting reads phone_number.hotline_id and joins dim_hotline for the code and name labels. Because the key lives on the number and not on the call, it applies from the moment it is saved — rebinding a number to a different bucket changes how that number’s subsequent traffic rolls up and does not retroactively relabel anything already attributed to the previous bucket. If a number has hotline_id: null, its traffic carries no hotline dimension and rolls up only under the org, trunk, and agent dimensions that the number already has.

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Hotline vs VDN: reporting against routing

These are easy to confuse because both look like “a code attached to a number”. They sit on opposite sides of the call. The drawer’s hint says it plainly: reports only — no routing effect. Changing a hotline never changes who answers. The destination fields this screen offers are:
  • Trunk — inbound termination, where matched calls land. Optional; the empty state is — unassigned —.
  • Agent ID — optional direct routing to an AI agent, entered as a free-text agent_xxx identifier.
This screen does not expose a vdn_id destination. If you are following provisioning material that describes routing a DID to a VDN, that destination is not settable from the Phone numbers drawer, and the Reporting hotline field is not a substitute for it — a hotline has no routing behaviour at all. Set the trunk (and optionally the agent) here for termination, and use the hotline purely as the reporting label.

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Call rating on these numbers

The drawer states the tariff that applies to calls on the number being edited: the platform flat tariff of 0.0005percallplus0.0005 per call plus 0.0010 per minute. This rate is a property of the number, not of the hotline — selecting or clearing a hotline bucket does not change how calls rate. Hotline buckets only determine how the resulting usage is grouped in reports. See Billing for the full rating detail.