> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.firetone.com.au/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Listening in on a live call

> Three ways to join a call your agent is on, the tone both parties hear, and the mark it leaves on the call afterwards.

**Listen** joins you to a call one of your agents is on. It rings your own
handset first: you answer, and then you are on their call.

## The three modes

| Mode        | Who hears you                                   |
| ----------- | ----------------------------------------------- |
| **Listen**  | nobody. You hear both sides and cannot speak    |
| **Whisper** | your agent only. The customer does not hear you |
| **Barge**   | everybody. You are in the conversation          |

Listen is listen. The eavesdrop controls a phone keypad would otherwise offer
for talking to one side or the other are switched off, because leaving them
live would make "listen only" a suggestion rather than a fact.

<Note>
  The panel's button uses **listen**. Whisper and barge exist in the API
  today and have no control on the screen yet.
</Note>

## Both parties hear a tone

A tone plays **on the monitored call** — the customer and the agent both hear
it — as you join. Not on your leg: playing it to you would announce the
monitoring to the only person who already knows about it, and the customer is
the party with the least say in any of this.

It plays once somebody has actually answered your handset, so the tone marks
the moment you could first hear something rather than the moment you pressed
the button.

## It leaves a mark

Your email and the mode are written into the call's own journey, as a step
anybody who later reads that call will see. A supervisor should be as visible
afterwards as the call they listened to.

Your leg is marked as a listener rather than a call, so it is not billed, not
reported and not counted as a conversation you had.

## Where the button is

On the **Status** view beside live calls: on Queues, a queue's own page, IVR
flows and Processes. It is not on call history, which is a record of calls
that have ended, and not on the desk.

**Stop listening** hangs up your leg. Monitoring you cannot stop is not a
feature.

## When it refuses

| What you see                                                               | What happened                                                     |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
| the call is not there                                                      | it is not one of your teams', or it has ended                     |
| *that call is no longer up*                                                | it ended between the screen drawing and you pressing              |
| *extension N is not registered anywhere, so there is nothing to listen on* | your own handset is not connected                                 |
| *there is no extension to ring*                                            | your login is not linked to an extension; name one in the request |

A call the system cannot attribute to a team is refused too, the same way it
is refused in your call history.

## Playing a recording afterwards

**Recordings** are the other half of oversight, and the permission is
separate from reading a call record: a call record is metadata, a recording is
the customer's conversation.

You may play the recording of a call belonging to one of your teams'
agents — and of a conference session — and nothing else. Anything outside
that reads as not found rather than as refused.

Two things are commonly confused here:

* **A recording exists** and **there is audio to play** are different
  answers. A call recorded on a node that could not write the file says so
  instead of offering a broken player.
* Reading a **transcript** of an AI call is `conversations:read`, which
  every agent holds. Playing the **audio** is yours. The text answers what was
  agreed; the audio is a recording of a person.

Whether a call was recorded at all is decided elsewhere, by six settings that
each switch recording on — see [recording and what is
kept](/guides/recording-and-retention).