Rooms, 3-way calls & transfer

A call is two people. A room is a few more: a family party line, the grandparents’ Sunday call, a team’s standup@your.server. And any call can grow into one — hold it, call someone else, then Merge.

Party lines and phone rooms

Open Rooms in the companion app.

• Party lines are always-open rooms of your household (or team). Guardians make them. Anyone in the space can drop in and out, and everyone sees who’s in right now (“Mom and Kid are in”).
• Phone rooms have an address, like a person: standup@your.server. Anyone in the space can make one and hosts it. Tick Let my connections join too to let people you’re connected with on other servers join it by its address — nobody else can.
• Join by address works for a phone room on any Open Lounge Phone server, as long as its owner allows you in.

In a room you see who’s there and who’s speaking, and you can Mute yourself or Leave. The host (the person who made it — and in a home, the guardians) can also mute someone, Remove them, and Lock the room so nobody new comes in.

Quiet for too long? If you say nothing and don’t touch anything for 10 minutes, the room asks “Still there?” and lets you go a minute later unless you tap I’m here (on a phone: press any key). That keeps forgotten rooms from running all night.

Rooms on a kid’s phone

A kid’s phone can join only the rooms a guardian put on it, and only rooms of its own home. On the phone’s page, under Rooms, tap + next to a room, then put it on a key under Keys. The child lifts the handset and presses that key to drop in; hanging up leaves.

Hold, add a caller, merge

During a call:

• Hold puts the other person on hold: they hear a soft tone, and they don’t hear you.
• Add caller holds the call and lets you call someone else. When they answer, Merge puts all three of you together — nobody is dropped, the audio carries on while the room connects.
• Connect them & leave (instead of Merge) connects the person on hold with the person you just called, and you step out.
• Transfer hands your call to someone else right away: they ring the new person as themselves.
• Mute (or the M key) stops your microphone until you unmute. A small meter shows your microphone’s level; if it stays silent for a few seconds while you’re not muted, the app says so, so you can check the microphone isn’t muted or blocked. Audio picks the microphone and, in browsers that allow it, the speaker (the app remembers them), and sets how loud the other person is.
• If the connection drops, the call says Reconnecting… while it’s restored, and Poor connection while the audio is choppy. A call that can’t be restored within about 20 seconds ends with “The connection was lost”.
• A second call while you’re in one shows a banner: Answer & hold this call puts this call on hold and answers, Decline sends the caller to voicemail.

On a phone it’s all on MENU: during a call, MENU → 1 Add caller, press a speed-dial key, then when they answer MENU → 1 Merge (or 2 Transfer to connect them and leave). The phone says what’s happening (“Choose who to add, then press menu to merge”, “You’re all together now”). MENU → 3 mutes and unmutes, 9 is the volume. That’s the browser phone. A hardware phone carries one call’s audio at a time, so its call screen has 1 Hold / Resume, 2 Transfer (then press the key of who gets the call), 3 Mute and 9 Volume; adding a caller and merging are done from the app.

Kid-safety still holds: a kid’s phone is never merged or transferred to someone who isn’t on its list, and a transfer only rings people the transferred person could call themselves.

Who can hear a room

• Up to 4 people with no relay: the audio goes straight between the people, end-to-end encrypted — like a call.
• Through the server’s relay (bigger rooms, on servers that have one): encrypted on the way, but not end to end — the relay could hear it. The app says which one a room is. End-to-end encryption for rooms is planned.

Nothing is recorded. Rooms count toward the fair-use allowance on the public hub (room minutes, 1,000 a month).