A voice call is the channel most likely to wake someone up, so it's worth knowing exactly what a recipient hears and how they respond. This page walks through the call from the recipient's side.
Plan availability: Voice calls are included on the Starter plan and up, and on the free trial. See Plans & Billing.
You can respond two ways on every prompt: press a key on the keypad, or say the word. Both work. Use whichever is easier — speech is handy when you're driving or your phone is at your ear; the keypad is reliable on a bad connection.
A standard call
When a flow calls you, JAMS reads the alert aloud, then asks you to respond:
"[the alert message] … Press 1 or say confirm to acknowledge this notification. Press 2 or say repeat to hear the message again."
Your options:
| To do this | Press | Or say |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledge the alert | 1 | "confirm" (also "yes", "okay", "ack", "acknowledge") |
| Repeat the message | 2 | "repeat" (also "again", "say again", "replay") |
Acknowledging stops the escalation immediately — the rest of the rotation won't get paged. Saying "repeat" replays the alert and then asks you again, as many times as you need.
Escalating from the call
When there's a next responder queued behind you, the call adds a third option:
"Or press 3 or say escalate to alert the next responder."
| To do this | Press | Or say |
|---|---|---|
| Escalate to the next responder | 3 | "escalate" (also "next", "next responder", "next level") |
Escalate is for "this isn't mine to handle." It jumps straight to the next person in the escalation policy without waiting for the timer.
Why this matters: the escalate option only appears when someone is queued after you. If you're the last responder in the chain — or the only recipient — there's nowhere to escalate to, so the call won't offer option 3. You'll still get acknowledge and repeat.
Integration calls use different words
Calls from an integration speak the verbs that match that system, so the word you say lines up with the buttons you'd see in that tool's console.
| Source | What the call says |
|---|---|
| Standard JAMS notification | "Press 1 or say confirm to acknowledge." |
| JAMS Scheduler alert | "Press 1 or say confirm to acknowledge." — plus remediation actions built from the job's sequence/workflow ancestry (Restart, Continue, Cancel, Retry) on their own keys, run by the JAMS Incident Connector. See JAMS integration. |
| Azure Monitor alert | "Press 1 or say acknowledge to acknowledge this alert in Azure Monitor. Press 2 or say close to close it in Azure Monitor." |
The Azure Monitor wording matches the Acknowledge / Close buttons in the Azure Portal, and acting on the call syncs the alert state back to Azure — the same two-way sync the Incidents page uses. For JAMS Scheduler details, see the JAMS integration guide.
Whatever the call says, the keypad numbers are consistent — press 1 to acknowledge, the next key to repeat, and (when offered) 3 to escalate. If you don't catch the exact word, the number always works.
Both speech and keypad, always
Every prompt accepts both. If speech recognition mishears you — background noise, an accent it didn't catch — just press the key instead; it's recognized directly with no guesswork. You never have to repeat yourself because the call didn't understand a spoken answer.