I have been working with outbound mainly so once i get some more inbound experience you can bet i will make a topic about that too .
In my opinion right now the most important missing features for Outbound VICIdial are:
1.Reliably manage disconnected numbers<--this topic
2.Status code for maximum attempts
3.Manager friendly Reports
4.(Realtime) Sales report
5.Import and export leads templates
Since it would become a mess to discuss all of these subject in one thread i made a thread for each of them. I know that for some of these subjects there have been discussions about them in the past. I will try to reference these older threads as far as i can.
Reliably manage disconnected numbers
Here are some threads of interest:
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... hp?t=18872
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... hp?t=16984
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... hp?t=12950
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... hp?t=12705
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... php?t=8574
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... php?t=5748
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... php?t=5620
And i would not be surprised if the issues with disconnected numbers result into these problems:
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... hp?t=12863
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... php?t=3694
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALforum/v ... php?t=2936
So the problem is:
1.Asterisk is unable to recognize disconnected numbers.
2.These numbers get flagged with NA status.
3.NA numbers start piling up, endlessly!
4.Clients start asking questions, why are there no disconnected numbers. How can you have so many NA calls?
5.Because of the ratio between NEW leads and NA leads grows in the favor of NA leads (of which a large part are actually DC leads) the agent wait time between calls keeps increasing resulting in problems with auto-dialing coming to a halt and wait time between calls increasing to over 1 minute average
6.This last part makes the whole auto-dialing function a financial loss. You can't have agents who are waiting all the time.
mflorell wrote:It all depends on your carrier and whether you can trust the hangup cause codes coming back. Most carriers in the USA are not reliable on their disconnect codes by over 20%.
The only good solution we have found is using the paid-add-on Sangoma CPA call progress analysis proxy.
williamconley wrote:if you're dialing in the US, last time i checked the vicidial system categorized all as NA without regard for the coding (or lack thereof) regarding DC vs no answer.
i have a script that will check for zero second na (which indicates the provider didn't even attempt to call, translates to DC), but i have recent clients who have re-called those and found a fairly large percentage are real numbers ... if called through the same provider even.
so you may need to experiment with this. a useful tool is the carrier log.
mflorell wrote:We have been over this several times. Asterisk is not capable of detecting pre-answer signals, and carrier disconnect signaling is extremely inconsistent resulting in setting disconnect signals for valid phone numbers.
The only solution that works is a paid one, the Sangoma CPA that we have set up for several clients using ViciDial is very good at this, but you have to pay for it on a per channel basis.
The solution seems to be Sangoma Netborder CPA. I would like to hear from some people what there experience is with CPA regarding disconnected numbers, does it detect them?
And if it's the only proper solution why not advertising it more and maybe including a standard integrated trial license in the VICIbox distro?
But isn't there really another work-around we can think of?
Poundteam has made the NA harvester script which basically changes each call that was flagged CANCELED within 0 seconds in the carrier log as a DC call during a nightly job. Only the problem that i have seen so far is that a large part of the numbers that have been set to CANCELED within 0 seconds in the carrier log could still be called afterwards. So maybe a script that sets them to DC status after a call has been canceled 3 times within 0 in a row? I don't know.
I'm wondering how other callcenters deal with this. Thousands of VICIdial users out there and does everyone use Sangoma CPA? I have to say i'm rather disapointed by this, VICIdial is open source but now we still have to pay an expensive license for a piece of software that manages to do what Asterisk can't do. Aren't there any other work-arounds?
If not i think the management of disconnected numbers is something that could be addressed in the manager manual in more detail. There is a chapter about Sangoma integration, maybe expand it a bit.