Phone Callouts

Phone callouts allow Motion Meetings to automatically dial a participant phone list and connect answered calls directly into the live meeting as phone participants. Rather than requiring participants to dial in themselves, the platform calls them — this significantly increases phone participation rates for large-scale events such as union town halls, government consultations, and AGMs with thousands of members.

How Phone Callouts Work

When a callout is launched, the platform dials participants from the phone list at a configurable pace. When a call is answered by a live person, the participant is immediately bridged into the meeting audio. They can listen to the meeting and cast votes via their phone keypad.

Calls that reach voicemail are detected by answering machine detection (AMD) and either hang up silently or drop a brief notification message, depending on the configuration. This prevents voicemail boxes from counting as connected participants.

Caller ID and Phone Number Setup

Participants see the organization's registered phone number and CNAM (Caller ID Name) when they receive the callout. A recognizable caller ID name (e.g., "ACME Union" or "City of Oakdale") is essential for high answer rates.

Before launching a callout, confirm the following in the organization settings:

• A Direct Inward Dial (DID) number is provisioned for the organization.
• CNAM registration is complete (allows the organization name to display on call recipient screens).

Both of these are configured under Organizations > [Organization Name] > Phone Numbers in the Platform Admin Panel.

Configuring a Phone Callout

1. In the Platform Admin Panel, navigate to Organizations and select the organization.
2. Confirm that phone callouts are enabled in the organization's feature entitlements. If not, toggle on Phone Callouts under the Features tab.
3. Navigate to Live Events and open the meeting you want to run the callout for.
4. Click New Callout.
5. Set the Dial Pace — the number of simultaneous outbound calls the system will maintain (e.g., 50 concurrent calls). Higher values reach participants faster but require sufficient carrier capacity.
6. Set the Retry Attempts — how many times to retry numbers that did not answer (recommended: 1–2 retries, with a minimum gap of 10 minutes between attempts).
7. Configure AMD Behaviour:
   • Silent hang-up — Hang up without leaving a message when voicemail is detected.
   • Leave message — Drop a pre-recorded notification into the voicemail box.
8. Select the Recipient List. This is automatically populated from the meeting's participant list (phone participants only). You can further filter by group if needed.
9. Set the Start Time:
   • Scheduled — Start at a specific time, typically 15–30 minutes before the meeting begins so participants are connected and ready.
   • Manual start — Launch the callout manually from the Live Events dashboard when ready.
10. Click Save Callout.

Launching and Monitoring a Live Callout

Once a callout starts, the Active Callouts panel in Live Events shows a real-time dashboard:

• Dialing — Numbers currently being called.
• Connected — Participants actively on the call and in the meeting.
• Voicemail — Calls where AMD detected a voicemail box.
• No Answer — Calls that rang out without being answered.
• Callbacks Received — Participants who called back on the organization's number after missing the callout.
• Failed — Numbers that could not be dialed (invalid, carrier-rejected).

You can pause the callout at any time (e.g., while waiting for quorum to stabilize) and resume it when ready. You can also abort the callout completely, which stops all further dialing but does not disconnect participants already connected.

Inbound Callbacks

Participants who miss the callout but call back on the organization's published number are automatically bridged into the meeting if the callout is still active. The Callbacks Received counter tracks these participants separately from directly connected participants.

Callout Report

After the callout ends, a detailed report is available showing:

• Outcome per number (connected, voicemail, no answer, failed).
• Connection duration for each participant (useful for quorum validation).
• Retry history for numbers that required multiple attempts.

The report can be exported as CSV and is also included in the post-meeting Attendance Report available to organizers.