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Voice alerts require a Team plan or higher. View pricing.
Voice alerts add phone calls as an escalation method. When push notifications or other channels fail to get a response, kodo uses AI-powered voice calls (via Bland AI) to phone the on-call responder and read out the alert details.

How It Works

Alert Fires

Push Notification → Acknowledged? ✓ Done
    ↓ (not acknowledged)
Voice Call → Acknowledged? ✓ Done
    ↓ (not answered)
Next Escalation Step
Voice calls are triggered as part of escalation policies. When an escalation step includes voice_call as a notify method, kodo will:
  1. Look up the on-call responder’s phone number
  2. Check that the organization hasn’t hit its monthly spend cap
  3. Initiate an AI voice call that reads the alert title, severity, and description
  4. Log the call attempt in the alert timeline
If the call fails or isn’t answered, escalation continues to the next step automatically.

Setup

1. Enable Voice Alerts

  1. Go to Dashboard > Settings > Voice Alerts
  2. Toggle Enable voice call escalation on
  3. Set a monthly spend cap (default: $50)

2. Add Your Phone Number

Each team member needs to add their phone number:
  1. In the Voice Alerts tab, find the Your Phone Number section
  2. Select your country code
  3. Enter your phone number
  4. Click Save Phone Number
Supported country codes: US/CA (+1), UK (+44), AU (+61), NZ (+64), IN (+91), DE (+49), FR (+33), JP (+81), CN (+86), BR (+55).

3. Add Voice Calls to Escalation Policies

Include voice_call as a notify method in your escalation policy steps:
curl -X POST "https://kodostatus.com/api/oncall/policies" \
  -H "X-API-Key: your_api_key" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Critical Alert Escalation",
    "steps": [
      {
        "targets": [{ "type": "schedule", "id": "sched_api_team" }],
        "notify_methods": ["web_push"],
        "timeout_minutes": 5
      },
      {
        "targets": [{ "type": "schedule", "id": "sched_api_team" }],
        "notify_methods": ["voice_call"],
        "timeout_minutes": 10
      },
      {
        "targets": [{ "type": "user", "id": "user_eng_manager" }],
        "notify_methods": ["voice_call", "email"],
        "timeout_minutes": 15
      }
    ],
    "repeat_count": 2,
    "max_voice_calls_per_incident": 5
  }'
This policy sends a push notification first, then calls the on-call responder after 5 minutes if unacknowledged, then calls the engineering manager after another 10 minutes.

Spend Caps

Voice calls are billed per usage. To prevent unexpected costs, every organization has a monthly spend cap.
  • Default cap: $50/month
  • Minimum cap: $0 (disables voice calls)
  • Adjust in Settings > Voice Alerts > Monthly spend cap
When the cap is reached, voice call steps are skipped and escalation falls through to the next step. An event is logged in the alert timeline noting that the voice call was skipped due to the spend cap.

Usage Dashboard

The Voice Alerts tab shows three metrics:
MetricDescription
Calls this monthTotal voice calls initiated
Spend this monthTotal cost of calls in the current billing period
Monthly capYour configured spend limit

Push Notifications

The Voice Alerts settings tab also includes browser push notification configuration, which is available on all plans:
  • Click Enable Push Notifications to subscribe your current browser
  • Push notifications are sent as the first step in most escalation policies
  • Push works independently of voice alerts — you don’t need a Team plan for push

Safety Guards

Voice alerts include several safeguards:
  • Spend cap — Calls stop when the monthly limit is reached
  • Max calls per incident — Configurable limit on how many voice calls a single incident can trigger (set on the escalation policy)
  • Plan gating — Only Team and Enterprise plans can enable voice calls
  • Phone number required — Steps are skipped for users without a saved phone number
  • Graceful fallback — If a voice call fails (network error, Bland AI outage), escalation continues to the next step without blocking