Introduction

A call is in progress. One of your staff opens it, hears it, and reads the transcript as it is spoken. If the caller needs a person, they press a button: the assistant says one short line, goes quiet, and your colleague speaks to the caller directly. Closing the panel gives the call back to the assistant. Hanging up ends it.

What it is#

Live monitoring is a way for your own people to sit in on a phone call while the assistant is still handling it. They listen, they read, and they can take the conversation over without transferring the caller to another number. The caller stays on the same line the whole time.

It covers inbound phone calls. A browser or WhatsApp conversation cannot be monitored.

You build the panel in your own product. OnCore supplies the connection and the controls; there is no drop-in widget to embed.

What you can do with it#

• Watch a call as it happens. A supervisor opens a call that is live right now, hears the audio, and reads the transcript as each turn is spoken, including what was said before they joined.
• Step in and talk to the caller. When the caller needs a person, the supervisor takes over. The assistant finishes its sentence, says one short bridge line, and goes quiet. Your colleague speaks on the same line.
• Give the call back, or hang up. Closing the panel returns the caller to the assistant after a few seconds. Hanging up ends the call for everyone. There is no extra "hand back" step.
• See who listened afterwards. Each session records who your backend said was listening, and whether they took the call over. That audit is readable during the call and after it has ended.

How to set it up#

The work splits across two places in your product, and you need both to hear a call or speak on it.

Your backend talks to OnCore: it lists the calls in progress, mints a short-lived join credential for one call, and drives take over, hang up, and close. Those calls take your API key, so they never run in the browser. The monitoring API is that half.

Your frontend uses the credential to connect to the call: it plays the audio, renders the live transcript, and carries the supervisor's microphone after a takeover. In the browser is that half.

Two decisions are yours rather than OnCore's, and both are easy to miss:

• Who among your staff may listen. An API key carries a tenant and nothing else. The permission check belongs in your backend, before it calls OnCore. See Authorization is yours to enforce.
• Whether the caller is told. A live person listening to a call in progress is call monitoring, and several jurisdictions require disclosure. That obligation is yours as the operator of the line. See Disclosure is yours to make.

Limits & FAQ#

• Inbound phone calls only. Browser and WhatsApp conversations report that they cannot be monitored. A live-calls row carries no direction, because there is nothing else it could be.
• There is no prebuilt panel. OnCore supplies the endpoints and the browser connection; the interface is yours.
• One person speaks at a time. Several people can listen. Takeover is exclusive: a second supervisor who asks to speak is told someone else is already holding the call.
• The person who takes over is not transcribed. Nothing your colleague says reaches the live transcript or the stored record. What the record carries instead is a labelled marker showing that a person took the call over, when, and when they handed it back. The caller is transcribed for the whole call.
• The recording is one mixed track. When recording is on, the supervisor's voice lands on the same track as the caller's and the assistant's. There is no way to separate them afterwards.
• A dropped browser does not leave the caller in silence. If the supervisor's page closes while they are holding the call, the assistant takes the conversation back after a few seconds.

Can we monitor a call that is not being recorded? Yes. Recording and monitoring are independent. A call can be monitored whether or not it is recorded. See Recording and transcripts.

What if the supervisor refreshes the page? They carry on. A reload mints a fresh session, whether they were listening or mid-takeover, without the caller hearing a second bridge line.

What does the caller hear when someone steps in? The assistant finishes its sentence, says one short bridge line, and goes quiet. When the assistant comes back, it speaks a line of its own before carrying on. Those two lines are fixed in this release; they are not a per-assistant setting.

Next steps#

• The monitoring API: list live calls, mint a credential, take over, hang up, close a session, and read the audit.
• In the browser: play the audio, render the live transcript, and open the microphone after a takeover.
• Read call activity: find a monitored call afterwards, with its transcript and marker.