Skip to main content
You can edit a live AI Receptionist without any caller noticing. Everything you change in its editor saves automatically to a draft, and the live Receptionist keeps answering exactly as it was until you choose to publish.

​
Your draft

While everything is published, the top of the editor says All changes published, beside the Versions and Test buttons. As soon as you change something, that gives way to two buttons, and a draft chip joins the version chip under your Receptionist’s name — V4 and V5 draft, say. Your change saves to the draft on its own a couple of seconds after you stop typing — in your workspace, not in your browser — so close the tab and it’s still there when you come back. They give you two choices:
  • Publish changes — makes your draft the live Receptionist. This is the only moment your changes reach callers.
  • Discard draft — throws the draft away and puts the editor back to what is live now. It’s in the ⋮ menu at the top of the editor too. You’ll be asked to confirm, because a discarded draft can’t be recovered.
Your Receptionist’s business numbers aren’t part of the draft. Adding or unassigning a number in the Business numbers section takes effect straight away, so publishing never changes which numbers your Receptionist answers — see Business numbers. Before it publishes, Moneypenny AI checks your draft is complete — your Receptionist has a name and a description, every journey step is named, every detail a step captures is named, any step that puts callers through has somebody to ring, and any call summary that’s switched on has valid recipients. If something’s missing, it tells you exactly what to fix. The hand-off check is the one you see before you click: while a step has nobody to ring, Publish changes is greyed out with the reason beside it, such as “The hand-off on ‘Complaints’ needs somebody to ring.” Your business name isn’t checked here because it doesn’t live on the Receptionist — every AI Receptionist reads it from your business profile, on Business details.
You don’t have to publish to try a change. The test drawer can run your draft in chat or on a browser test call, so you can hear it before anyone else does. Callers on your business number only ever hear the published version.

​
Editing from more than one place

An AI Receptionist has one draft, wherever it’s edited from — a second browser tab, a colleague working on the same Receptionist, or the Train your AI Receptionist chat all work on that same draft. So before every save, Moneypenny AI checks that the draft hasn’t changed since you last saw it. If it has, your save is refused rather than overwriting someone else’s work: your own edits stay on screen exactly as you made them, and a notice appears at the top of the editor — “This Receptionist changed elsewhere. Your edits are kept here and nothing was overwritten.” Click Show latest on the notice to see the draft as it is now. You’re asked to confirm first, because the unsaved edits on your screen are replaced by the latest saved version and can’t be brought back — if any of them matter, note them down before you confirm. Until you’ve done this, nothing you change can be saved, so don’t carry on editing around the notice. The same check protects the two draft buttons:
  • Publish changes publishes what’s on your screen. If the draft changed while you were publishing, the changed draft is kept rather than cleared, and the confirmation tells you — “Published. Your draft changed while you were publishing, so it was kept.” The notice appears too, so you can Show latest and decide what to do with what’s left.
  • Discard draft only discards the draft you were looking at. If it changed in the meantime, nothing is discarded and the notice appears instead — look at the latest version, then discard again if you still want to.

​
Versions

Click Versions at the top of the editor (it’s also in the ⋮ menu) to open your publishing history in a panel on the right: your Receptionist is created as version 1, every publish adds the next, and a Live chip marks the one answering now. Close the panel with its ×. To go back, click Make live on an earlier version and confirm. Your Receptionist returns to how it was then, except for its business numbers, which stay as they are today — and your current settings stay in the history, so you can switch back just as easily. What the editor shows afterwards depends on whether you have a draft. With no draft, the editor refreshes to the restored version, so every section and the Train your AI Receptionist chat pick up from there. With a draft, your unpublished changes are left alone and the editor keeps showing them — Discard draft is the way to start again from the restored version. The panel also shows your Receptionist ID — quote it if you contact support.

​
Receptionist states

On the AI Receptionists list, a chip on each row shows whether the Receptionist is taking calls; the editor shows the same state under the Receptionist’s name:
  • Live (green) — live on its number now.
  • Needs a number (amber) — switched on, but it can’t receive calls until you add a business number. In the editor the chip reads Number needed, with a sentence under it saying the same.
  • Paused — not answering calls or chats until you resume it.

​
Pause and resume

Pausing is separate from publishing: publishing decides what the live Receptionist does, pausing decides whether it answers at all.
1

Find the Receptionist on the AI Receptionists list

Each row has a pause control next to its status chip.
2

Pause it

Click the pause button and confirm. While it’s paused, your AI Receptionist won’t answer calls or chats — and it can’t be tested either.
3

Resume when you're ready

Click the same control (now a play button) and your Receptionist is answering again. Nothing else changes — its settings, draft and version history are untouched.
Pausing is always reversible, which is what makes it the safe choice while you decide. When you’re finished with a Receptionist for good, remove it instead — that’s permanent, and a removed Receptionist can’t be resumed, edited, published or brought back from its version history.