One click in the admin panel stops all outbound dispatch calls immediately.
Dispatch kill switch is a one-click admin toggle that stops all outbound dispatch calls immediately. State persists until the contractor toggles it back on. The answering service continues to accept and log inbound calls while the kill switch is active — only outbound paging stops.
A green/red indicator in the admin panel shows current dispatch state. Clicking it changes state instantly — no confirmation screen, no delay, no deploy. All queued outbound dispatch attempts stop. Inbound call handling, triage, booking, and logging continue normally. The kill switch affects outbound paging only; nothing else about the service changes.
Three scenarios make this non-optional:
Testing a new on-call rotation. When you’re reconfiguring techs and do not want test calls going out to real numbers, you need a way to run the intake flow without firing live dispatches.
Runaway loop. A misconfigured trigger or a webhook loop can generate a cascade of outbound calls. The kill switch halts it in one second without touching code, without opening a support ticket, without waiting for anyone.
Manual takeover. The contractor or on-call manager is already handling an incident directly and does not want the system paging the rotation at the same time. One click and the system stands down.
A dispatch system without a kill switch is not a serious product.
Permanently visible in the admin panel — not buried in settings. Green means dispatch is active; red means halted. Toggling it logs the event with a timestamp and the admin’s identity, so there’s a clear record of who stopped dispatch and when. When dispatch is re-enabled, the system resumes normally; it does not retry calls that were queued while halted. Works in conjunction with the full Bulldog dispatch loop. See pricing for plan details.