Call recording

Record dialer calls for training and dispute resolution with consent, central retention controls and a full audit trail.

Call recording captures answered dialer calls so you can review how enquiries are handled, coach the team, and settle "who said what" disputes. It's off by default; this page covers turning it on compliantly, how long recordings are kept, and where to play them back.

Turn recording on

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

In the Call recording card, switch Record calls on.

Click Manage retention, or open Settings → Practice details → Data retention. Enter 7–3,650 days under Call recordings, or leave it blank for Forever, then click Save. The default is 90 days.

From then on, every answered dialer 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.

Callers are told they're being recorded

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

SmileLine now plays a short announcement — "Please note, this call is recorded." — at the start of every recorded call, before the conversation begins. It can't be switched off, and it's on the recording itself, so you have evidence the notice was given. Where the AI voice agent takes the call, the same words open its greeting. If the carrier ever refuses to play the announcement while the recorder is running, the call's history entry is marked so nobody relies on a notice the caller never heard.

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

You don't need a script for this any more. Two things are still worth knowing:

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. The announcement is a notice; if the caller objects, stop the recording or end the call rather than continuing.
The announcement is in English. SmileLine Voice serves the UK and the US today. If that changes, this page will too.

This is practical guidance, not legal advice. Recorded calls with patients can contain health information, so review your obligations under UK GDPR and your practice's privacy policy — and if in doubt, speak to your data protection advisor before enabling recording.

Pause the recording while you take a payment

Card details must never end up on a recording. While a recorded call is up, every calling surface — the browser call bar, SmileLine Desk and the Chrome extension — has a Taking payment control:

Press Taking payment before you ask for the card. The recorder pauses on the caller's line and the bar shows Recording paused.

Press Resume recording once the payment is done. Recording carries on in the same file.

The pause is a fenced command on the call, like hold: pressing it twice sends nothing twice, and it is refused on a call that isn't being recorded. Every pause window is kept with the call — the times the recorder was off — so you can show the audio around a payment was never captured. If you forget to resume, the pause simply runs to the end of the call.

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.

Play a recording back

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

On the patient timeline — every dialer 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 streams inline. 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, while the transcript beside them stays with owners and managers.

Under the player, the same roles 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. 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. 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.