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The WombatDialer User Manual

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1. 5662012 Me 11 MMO APPT PSYC P d 7 9 Logs for record 5556785 ee gt Cm mn Mear tan Nie ph mt we An Tw tam a Um Poet y camry mt Appt ueresery saes 0 REACTED Nomen LOCA on sx E did 2 OAM S R Aoc ti LOCA e ANS erm V eet ve an TEAMMATEI Avatar ta LOCA 1 ee 2 acta va Touma Arm t LOCA 2 Net aemesder um ores Touma o mms OCA x 3237 You see that calls successfully placed will have an APPT attribute that is either APPE or PSYC also you will see a complete log of activity for each number As a last item you ll remember we enabled HTTP notification This basically POSTs the result of each call to a HTTP server where you could have a simple PHP script to parse it like in the following example 45 A WombatDialer Cookbook 2 Sout uur foreach POST as name gt value out Sname Svalue joue Line error_log RQ Sove rO UU WU s QE The script above basically logs all activity on the HTTP error log What you get is a sequence of calls like RO num 5551234 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate state RS REJECTED I HH 10 retry 0 RO num 5556785 reschedule 0 I MM 00 extstate State RS REJECT
2. LN Ce As first thing WombatDialer can be accessed through its GUI Client in order to configure it view what it is doing and run reports or through APIs see the HTTP API section Section 8 3 Controlling WD over HTTP APIs are meant for external programs to control the behavior of the dialer e g by controlling runs adding new numbers to dial and creating new campaigns D The dialer itself is controlled by the GUI Server this way you can start and stop the dialer process from the GUI When the dialer runs an associated watchdog process runs if the dialer process is to terminate for an unexpected error the watchdog is supposed to log the error on the system log and restart it As the dialer is able to sync to the state of an external PBX during the restart phase calls might not be placed for a few seconds but existing calls will be preserved and tracked correctly When the dialer is running it creates separate AMI handlers for each Asterisk PBX Each of them runs as a separate thread and connects to a PBX throgh its Asterisk Manager Interface AMI If a PBX crashes the rest of the system keeps on working and if one PBX is delayed or loses connection this does not impact other PBXs In case of errors each AMI handler will automatically retry until a connection is estabilished The dialer also spawns a helper thread that is meant to run long operations e g HTTP notifications see the HTTP N
3. Name The exact name of the Asteriks queue or a freely assignable reference name for the EP Max channels the maximum number of parallel calls to be handled by this EP Located at Extension and Context the location in the Asterisk dialplan where the EP can be reached Security key is the key that will protect this resource Leave blank if not needed WD will try and connect answered calls from trunks to end points on the same Asterisk server If a campaign has multiple end points it will try to connect any EP that has free capacity An end point of type PHONE could be adial plan script that plays a recorded message a physical phone given to an agent set max channels to 1 to receive one call after the other an IVR script aconference call anything that can be programmed in Asterisk WD assumes that Trunks and EPs are always usable to their declared capacity so it will try to fill them in as soon as possible If they are to be shared make sure you have enough capacity for WD plus other resources that may be using A them If you exceed their physical capabilities you may experience REJECTED calls or a degradation of speech quality for VoIP Beware 3 4 1 Queue end points As a special case it is possible to have EPs of type QUEUE They are used to distribuite calls on a set of agents that are members of a queue WD will try and observe the queue in order to determine how many agents are logged on to the
4. i Borla locerion yes low te uci Be aware that this log type is a performance killer log var log mysql all queries log Just uncomment the log entry to turn on logging Restart MySQL with this command service mysql restart 7 6 4 Logging of slow queries in MySQL Edit file my cnf and add the following parameters mysqld log slow queries var log mysqgl slow queries log long query time 2 log queries not using indexes This will log all queries taking more than two seconds or running without a defined index to the slow queries log Then restart MySQL 62 Chapter 8 API reference 8 1 Controlling Asterisk from WD When a call is originated in Asterisk a set of channel variables are created WOMBAT D is a unique identifier of the call being processed all input attributes are passed to the call This way all attributes you set for the call are immediately available within the Asterisk dialplan For example if you define input attributes called HH and MM in WD you can use them in the dialplan to synthesize an audio message as in the following example exten gt s n start agi googletts agi Your appointment with the dentist is for tomorrow at HH MM 8 2 Controlling WD from Asterisk WD lets you pass information about a call that is currently processed in Asterisk in the form of User Events This lets you set the completion code for the call and any additional param
5. ti E COWS 1 Sw 124287 o f m Reschedule Rules dis Fue On he og m F y ete tow mas irean r TERAANATE Fii e NOANSIMER s oot eem Jii as ausy us 411 ai EROR 211 Assn Egy Gu Um 7 We set the campaing to be idle on termination so that can add more numbers over HTTP when they become available We also program it to be running only between 8AM and 6PM every day of the week so we don t call people in the middle of the night if a nightly job is used to load new appointments every day We also set a forced closure after 90 seconds so that if the call exceeds a duration of 90 seconds it is automatically hung up to prevent using valuable resources on a call that is likely invalid As a last measure we set the logging format to QM COMPATIBLE so that we can observe activity via QueueMetrics and enter the HTTP notification URL of Dr Strangelove s office management system to be notified of call events see below for more information We then complete the campaign by adding a trunk our new end point with the outbound IVR and our Appointments list As a last step we create a set of Reschedule Rules that implement the retry logic If the call is unanswered busy or in error we retry every 300 seconds for up to five times If the call times out because of a forced closure we retry after 120 seconds f the cal
6. ast update calis Fri Jan 04 10 39 43 GMT 100 2013 campaigns Fri Jan 04 10 39 44 GMT 100 2013 You can also click on a live call to see its details When the campaign completes its run is placed in the Recently closed section and you are able to start it again 2 9 Run a report on your campaign From the home page click on Campaign reports Click on TestCampaign and make sure your run is selected Then press gt gt gt Home Lists Campaigns veo Activity reports by campaign Running trom date 12 29 00 00 00 To date 2013 01 04 23 59 59 Search TestCampaign Statistics for selected calls Call outcomes 13 01 04 10 36 33 Number of calls 4 RS REJECTED 3 75 Total talk length 5 s TERMINATED 1 25 Total wait pre 03 Select Total after 335 Export to new list Total used time 395 gt gt gt Calls per trunk MyPBX Trunk 4 100 Unselect 4 1204 gt Campaign Number Attempted war Talk Status xt Stat List Trunk Retry Next rtr TestCampaign 501 01 04 10 26 34 67 8108 0 REJECTED TestList Trunk 0 120 TestCampaign 500 01 04 10 36 34 67 9225 5917 TERMINATED TestList Trunk 0 0 9 TestCampaign 501 01 04 10 28 42 29 7959 REJECTED Trunk 1 120 TestCampaign 501 01 04 10 40 50 30 7957 0 REJECTED TestList Trunk 2 0 S9 You will see statistics about the runs included trunk usage and status codes and details for every attempt made Getting
7. exten gt 1 n GoTo 1 exten gt 1 n lenOk agi googletts agi You entered the following number en exten gt 1 n SayDigits 5 exten gt 1 n Wait 1 exten gt 1 n agi googletts agi Press 1 to confirm or any other digit to start EXTON gt gt again en n Read CONF beep 1 2 5 n GotoIf S S CONF 2 1 Store Start exten gt 1 n Store NoOp exten gt 1 n Set WHEN S STRFTIME S EPOCH y m d H M S exten gt 1 n Set PARM number CBNUM amp attrs orgQ 400 2Cwhen WHEN exten gt 1 n Set foo CURL http 10 10 5 18 8080 wombat api calls op addcall campaign callback amp PARM exten gt 1 n agi googletts agi Thank you we will call you back as soon exten gt 1 as possible en n Hangup We use Google TTS as a voice synthesizer you could use a different one or you could have the messages custom recorded for you What our diaplan does is first to collect a 7 digit number then read it back asking for confirmation and when confirmed it sends it over to WombatDialer on a campaign called callback Together with the number we also store the code of the queue that the call was on and the date and time this number was gathered Please note that in order to send multiple comma separated parameters in the HTTP request we have to use 2C instead of the plain comma In order to configure WombatDialer
8. exten gt s 1 Answer exten gt s n Set TIMEOUT response 5 exten gt s n UserEvent CALLSTATUS Uniqueid UNIQUEID V 0 exten gt s n start agi googletts agi Your appointment with doctor strangelove is for tomorrow at HH MM exten gt s n agi googletts agi Press 1 for to book for major surgery press 2 for psychiatric counseling exten gt s n Read type 1 exten gt Cere SE uU c wi exten gt gi Gouolx S Sqesee exten gt s n Goto start exten gt s n appe UserEvent ATTRIBUTE Uniqueid UNIQUEID APPT APPE exten gt s n agi googletts agi You choose the appendectomy exten gt s n Goto confirm exten gt s n psyc UserEvent ATTRIBUTE Uniqueid UNIQUEID APPT PSYC exten gt s n agi googletts agi You choose psychiatric counseling exten gt s n Goto confirm exten gt s n confirm agi googletts agi Thank you Now press 1 to confirm the appointment exten gt s n agi googletts agi or 2 to cancel it exten gt s n Read conf 1 extent gt Spm S Sema Vil exten PG oso IM OK oma E al Er exten gt s n Goto confirm exten gt s n ok UserEvent CALLSTATUS Uniqueid UNIQUEID V 1 exten gt s n agi googletts agi The appointment was confirmed See you tomorrow gt Sip idl Bleue exten gt s n ko UserEvent CALLSTATUS Uniqueid UNIQUEID V 2 exten g
9. lt p gt Caill hase i55 lt P gt 2 This page basically displays the person s name and ID so we can display it immediately or this could redirect to an external CRM application At the Asterisk level if you have not already done so create a queue 999 with the correct parameters to be monitored by Wombat see Section 6 4 Understanding queue end points Then edit your extensions custom conf file so that you have an extension 1235 that leads to the queue from internal custom exten 1235 1 Answer exten gt 1235 n Set CALLERID 5 1 PERS expe gt 12398 0 iate S 9X9 10 This rewrites the incoming caller id for the queue to e g 1234 John Doe so this is what the agent sees even before the agent pop up is opened This also is recorded in QueueMetrics so this is what you will see when you run call reports Note that if you run FreePBX you cannot call the queue directly using the Queue command but you ll have to go through its dialplan in order to have all parameters correctly set In QueueMetrics set the following properties in configuration properties realtime agent autoopenurl true default crmapp 48 A WombatDialer Cookbook Then create a queue 999 and set its Queue URL to http 10 10 5 10 1enz wombatPopup php caller C amp unique U amp agent A This tells QueueMetrics that it has to enable a screen pop for calls coming i
10. Autofill yes all free agents are assigned calls at the same time If you create a queue manually without using a GUI configure it with the parameters below so that WombatDialer can observe it 999 autofill yes eventmemberstatus yes ventwhencalled no maxlen 0 strategy rrmemory Now we create a custom piece of dialplan to be called as an end point for calls that connect successfully friendscampaign exten gt 100 1 Answer exten gt 100 n Playback campaign_message exten gt 100 n Read type 1 extrem gt 100 A Cocole S Sfeyoelh Mil Pel exten gt 100 n Goto 1 exten gt 10 exten gt 10 UserEvent CALLSTATUS Uniqueid UNIQUEID V 1 pin ewe YOY 1210 ey Ye In order to make this example shorter we assume you have a basic familiarity with WombatDialer concepts such as Campaigns Servers Trunks and End points Now log in to WombatDialer and create a new End Point Type QUEUE Queue 999 Max channels 10 Boost factor 2 0 41 A WombatDialer Cookbook Max waiting callers 2 This means that WombatDialer will try and place two calls for each agent available but never more than 10 and will stop placing calls if there are two or more people waiting in queue We expected to use a boost factor of three to four given the previous statistics but it is better to start with a small figure and grow it if needed It is impo
11. Call will be placed soon not visible to user SCHEDULED WD requested the call to be placed RD RESERVED When preview dialing an agent has reserved this call RD AGENTREQ When doing reverse dialing WD is connecting to an agent Call processed REQUESTED The request was sent to Asterisk for processing RD REQUESTED Asterisk is processing this call when reverse dialing DIALLING Asterisk confirmed the call was started CONNECTED The opposite side picked up the call Error states RS ERROR A technical error happened while dialing RS LOST WD lost track of this call Usually happens only on system crashes RS NOAGENT An agent that was being predialed in reverse mode did not answer Calls that could not go through RS REJECTED The call was rejected by the network This is usually caused by the upstream provider returning Congestion all circuits busy Off hook dialing with analog interfaces or your upstream provider terminating a call before it s answered without providing any status code RS BUSY Number called was busy RS NUMBER Number called appears to to be invalid Asterisk also raises this error if it cannot allocate a new channel for the call RS NOANSWER Number did not answer within the Answer timeout period set on the Campaign Completion states TERMINATED Call completed successfully RS TIMEOUT Call was forcibly closed because it exceeded the maximum allowed duration set on the Campaign
12. We create a trunk called Trunk with a dial string of Local 9 num G rom internal anda capacity of 10 lines This basically replies all numbers as if they were entered on a local extension prefixed by 9 We create an End Point of type Queue for monitoring queue 401 set extension to 401 and context to from internal max number of lines to 10 boost factor as 1 and max waiting calls to 2 This means that the number of calls placed will match the number of available agents on queue 401 We create a campaign called callback set it to Idle on termination and turn on QM COMPATILE logging We add the trunk and the EP we just created We create a set of reschedule rules in order to handle REJECTED BUSY INVALID and NOANSWER calls e g by retrying up to 5 times each waiting 10 minutes between each attempt Note that we create no lists for this campaign 52 A WombatDialer Cookbook We start the new campaign having no numbers it should immediately turn yellow on the Live page to tell you it s idling If we start sending calls to the queue and we try and leave any numbers we will see that a new list will be created on WombatDialer under the name callback AUTO and that will contain the numbers and attributes like Number 555312 35 Attributes orgQ 400 when 121115 153402 Those numbers are NOT immediately called but WD will wait for some agent to be present and active on queue 401 so that they can be called back This way th
13. 1 Trunks EndPoints Lists tig 4 101 gt ott Trunk ros tint Out FON ag EN B E D 7 Reschedule Rules 1 1 1 a ute On status Soe after mode for max timen RS NOANSWER Er a _ OD 1 l SS 2 At this point we re ready to go make sure that the WombatDialer engine is turned on from the Home Page click on the Play icon goto the View Live page and select our campaign Runme under Available campaigns click on Start If all goes well within a few seconds you shoul receive a call to your SIP phone telling you that user 10 has 100 friends Hooray After this you should see your campaign being shown on the Live page in gold with status IDLE now when our internal tracking system detects new friends for one of our valued customers all it needs to do is to send a HTTP request to the WombatDialer like we would manually from the command line curl http server 8080 wombat api calls index jsp op addcall amp campaign Runme amp number 0916309765 amp attrs user 107 friends 123 If you do in a few seconds the dialer will send this new call You can send all the calls it needs to place one at a time and it will try scheduling them as soon as possible given the current system conditions running campaigns and available outbound lines Now if you want it to actually dial out and not just call our SIP phone edit your Trunk Out set the di
14. 2 8 47 Loway TPF GUI 0 9 7 168 Fri Dec 07 13 07 22 CET 2012 It displays The set of license keys installed on your WombatDialer system For each license you can see The name of the license The licensee From when to when this license is valid Note that you can install a license that will only be valid in the future The status of the license The number of licensed channels The total number of licensed channels acrross all licenses The current version of the dialer when it was built and the versions of the embedded TPF frameworks 4 6 1 Installing a new license key If you get a new license key from Loway be it a full license or a demo key it will look like the following item YOURCOMPANYNAME 12345678 23456789 You can install it by clicking on the Add license key button and entering the new code You will need a working Internet connection from the server as the new license will be downloaded and activated This may take a few seconds to complete wombat ee Jus Jus poe S Sao seem ocre nomeneny sure You may also force a check of all licenses by restarting the WombatDialer webapp Please note that commercial licenses are additive this means you can install two 10 channel licenses together in order to get a 20 channel license though they will disable previous demo keys demo license are exclusive this means that they will disable othe
15. 31 sugarcrm index php 3faction UnifiedSearch 26module Home 26query string NUMBER 26name NAME amp inset 1 The code above will link to WombatDialer on 10 10 5 30 will replace the agent code in the URL and wil link to an embedded instance of SugarCRM running on server 10 10 5 31 passing along the number to be called 36 Chapter 6 A WombatDialer Cookbook This section of the manual contains a few examples of WombatDialer deployments that show common usage patterns Table 6 1 Recipes Section 6 2 Helping Wombats one carrot Outbound IVR Section 6 3 Outbound QueueMetri integration Section 6 5 A custom call backs Section 6 6 Elastix queue call Understand rid Queue EP Section 6 4 Understanding Automated Recalls Section 6 7 Automated recall of lost inbound Dialing Section 6 8 Preview dialing with QueueMetri Elastix and SugarCRM Diff The level of difficulty Beginner Intermediate Advanced 37 A WombatDialer Cookbook EPP Uses PHONE end points EPQ USes QUEUE end points API Shows HTTP APIs NOT Shows HTTP notifications ATT Shows call attributes INP Importing and exporting call lists EVT Call events TTS Using Text to Speech engines QM QueueMetrics integration 6 1 A social media dialer Let s imagine that we work for ACME Social a company that specializes in tracking the success of its clients on social netwo
16. 5 qm port 8080 gm webapp queuemetrics Sep login Uil g qm pass robot These parameters specify the XML RPC connector of your QueueMetrics instance Swe wsl Uimcucps 103 4105 5 1859090 wcomlsu 2 Swot cmp Ug us These parameters specify the URL of WombatDialer and the campaign that calls should be added to The dialer must be running when the calls are added and the campaign should be active usually IDLE Note that the campaign you use for call back might be paused so that call backs are actually deferred during periods of high activity Squeue 300 Slookback 3600 8 in seconds SallowedPatterns array WP Adds These parameters decide which set of queue s should be scanned and how long is to look back for the current day Multiple queues can be used separated by the pipe character The last parameter is a set of regexps that will be used to check the numbers read from QueueMetrics At least one regexp must match for the number to be queued This is used to avoid queueing invalid numbers or worse malicious numbers 6 7 5 Step 4 Putting it all together In order to run the script periodically you could crete a cron jub that runs it every 20 minutes As number are never recalled more than once and the script keeps an history files of numbers already dialed you can safely run it over and over again Once tested a crontab entry like the following one will automate the runni
17. 941 T8 A Je g fate d fO Loads the number 5551234 vith attribute A set to 1 and attribute B set to HELLO You can also use a wizard to generate a set of progressive numbers e g generate 1000 numbers from 5550000 onwards The generator is smart enough to handle the generation of numbers starting with one or more zeros the maximum set uploadable in one batch is about 2Mb or about 100 000 numbers It would be advisable to use smaller sets as to avoid causing CPU spikes 4 5 2 Importing call lists CSV mode By clicking on Upload CSV you will be able to drag and drop a CSV file containing numbers and attributes to be added to the selected list You can easily create CSV files from your favourite spreadsheet Enter numbers for list BA Drag and drop a CSV file The CSV file must be formatted so that the first row contains all the labels and the first column contains the numbers to be called You simply drag and drop the CSV file to the yellow box on screen When done the file will be read and previewed 32 Running WombatDialer As your CSV file might have different field delimiters once you have uploaded the file you will be able to change the delimiters until the file looks right The numbers to be called will be shown in red When it appears correctly on screen you confirm and the file will be uploaded In order for this to work your browser must support the HTMLS File API This
18. SMTP relay that will immediately accept e mail and will forward it to the true SMTP host We suggest leaving SMTP DEBUG on during the initial setup as it writes a verbose log of all SMTP activity on the logs and lets you spot errors and issues quickly 7 1 5 Installing on Docker Docker is an open source project that automates the deployment of applications inside software containers by providing an additional layer of abstraction and automation of operating system level virtualization on Linux When you have Docker installed starting a temporary instance of WombatDialer is as simple as typing docker run p 8080 8080 d loway wombatdialer This will download the current WombatDialer already pre configured for you and will run it by exposing it on the local port 8080 The problem with this approach is that when the image is terminated all data is lost A better approach would be to create a data only container to store the data At this point every time you start WombatDialer it looks for its own data into the data only container You start by creating a named data only container docker run name MYWBT loway data true At this point you can run WombatDialer using that container as in docker run volumes from MYWBT p 8080 8080 loway wombatdialer WombatDialer will recognize whether the data container is blank and will initialize it properly The container also monitors the health of the running WombatDialer process and will
19. a ERR ex p A mex gap rex iR mea scenes 8 2 9 Run a report on your CAMPAIGN eene a a ete Maa rae dente Eae dena a 9 2 10 Where to go from here eee rh teh hh xd aa RR RR Ede REX AA dean 10 3 WombatDialer Concepts Ge e REED setae tents vee PARE 11 3 1 The architecture of WombatDialer cese nennen enhn anna thanh hana then 11 1 11 3 3 TrUNKS asrorin attip 12 3 4 ENd POINS 12 3 5 Gall lists arid call records ested feds erates EnA a EXTR 14 3 6 Campaldfts 1 2 oo irse EUER SEE ERERDRO IER etade PURI SERE dania vated pete 15 3 7 Campaign UNS 18 3 8 21 KE MUI CE Eze rv 21 4 Running WombatDialer exem 24 4 4 Understanding the GUI i eicere edi e dart debs dan ca anes 24 4 2 Control
20. a running campaign Home Lists Campaigns ED License o 000 eo y m poene 15 1 Cate paced on 178 1 Cat tomaton cte 90 1 Estimated manos cats 7246 P Available Campaigns Number Originate Connect Trunk End point Retry Running Campaigns 2100062 14 13 24 12 13 34 T1 Xtwotact 1 343726834 Client A RUNNING 130108 14 1147 35 1964 e 2100067 14 13 27 141336 T2 Xtwotact s 2571778861 Client PAUSED 2100008 14 13 27 141332 2 Xt wetact 1 2652616671 130108 14 10 33 701024 Client C RUNNING 2100069 14 13 27 14 13 30 T2 Xbwotact 2874116438 13 01 08 14 12 09 662934 B 2100071 14 13 20 T2 Xtwotact s 1263254875 2100073 14 13 31 T2 Xtwotact 2637532776 210074 14 13 32 141337 T2 Xtwotact m 2816733177 2100076 14 13 32 Xtwetact 2141715333 2100076 14 13 34 2 Xtwotact 1 2676868822 B 2100078 14 13 34 141338 T Xtwotact s 2855612574 za a B 116615 gt Details Campaign name Client C Started at 13 01 08 14 12 09 Current state RUNNING Priority 10 Calls placed 52 Items in call cache 134 Calls terminated 52 Life cycte termination rate 100 Reschedule rate 0 Est remaining calls 2082 Sb ty Running for 00 01 17 Estimated completion in 01 12 25 Attempts per hour 2431 Completions per hour 2431 Remove High water mark 2200 in List2 Reload
21. bb CC dd 5678 XX yy If you set the parameter dedupe 1 then numbers will be checked for existance on this this list before being added This requires a significant database load so use with caution on a running system where lists are over 10 000 elements each Numbers are considered to be existent if they are present on the list no matter what their attributes might be It is very common to use HTTP POST to add numbers so that you can upload a large set at once The maximum request size depends on your servlet container but is usually in the order of 1 2 megabytes 8 3 4 Preview dialing You can control Preview Reverse dialing through the API A somewhat simpler alternative may be using the Preview page Section 5 5 1 Using the agent s page for preview dialing Reserve a call In order to reserve a call you should call WombatDialer by issuing a request like the following http localhost 8084 wombat script api reserve op reserve amp agent SIP 302 It is of paramount importance that the agent parameter matches an agent code as present in Asterisk If all goes well the reply is like OK OK 65 API reference WOMBATID 366253628 NUMBER 301 VAR A 1 VAR B 2 You should make a note of the WOMBATID as it will be used in subsequent calls If you call this API multiple times the same call will be returned as long as the agent has one reserved call Error codes include AGENT NOT AVAILABLE The agent is not
22. for a call to be picked up See Call logs Section 3 8 Call logs The total conversation time in seconds The number of calls that were placed on each trunk trunk names are prefixed with the server they belong to The number of calls that got each specific outcome By the bottom of the page you can then see a paged list of calls that belong to the set you selected You can use the search tool to zoom in on some specific number and by clicking on the Pencil icon you can get a complete display of the call logs 29 Running WombatDialer View call log record amp Demo Admir Call 2000003 y campaign List Running fi Search Call placed Client A Campaign Client A Call outcomes e RS BUSY 2305096 18 01 08 14 11 47 Run as ETAT Client B TERMINATED 222 4996 Run started 2013 01 08 14 11 47 13 01 08 14 11 53 Export to new list Client C Attempted 2013 01 08 14 11 48 acu 13 01 08 14 12 09 Wait Pre Wait After 112 Talk 074 Call Outcome Status Code TERMINATED Extended Status Retry 2 Number Attempted Next retry b ist Trunk Retry 1t Next rtr 2000001 01 08 02 11 48 Technical details Ti 0 10 2000002 01 08 02 11 48 Trunk 1 i 0 0 un IE 2000000 01 08 02 11 48 i Ti 0 0 Asterisk Channel Local 2000003 dialin 26e3 1 2000004 01 08 02 11 48 1 Ti 0 10 Asterisk Unique 1357650708 31166 _ x 4 4 1 Exporting campaign lists Looking at the lis
23. juli FileHandler level SEVERE org apache juli FileHandler directory catalina base logs org apache juli FileHandler prefix wombat java util logging ConsoleHandler level SEVERE java util logging ConsoleHandler formatter java util logging SimpleFormatter You can turn off logging by setting the logging level to NONE or create extra detailed and huge logs by setting the log level to FINE An extensive tutorial on Tomcat logging can be found at http wiki apache org tomcat Logging Tutorial Please note that running very detailed logs on a production system may create huge files and may render the system unusable by generating too many I O requests 7 6 Troubleshooting a running instance Problems with a WD instance are usually either on the Java side or on the database side We present a few useful techniques to gather important data to be sent over for inspection 7 6 1 Creating a thread dump In order to diagnose problems with WombatbDialer it may be needed to take thread dumps by running fene c Mile C CGm romeac6 icimceaccunjo gt chums 2095 01 18 These dumps prints what the threads are doing at a point in time It may be worthwhile to take multiple ones a few minutes apart from each other 7 6 2 Creating a heap dump On request you may need to create a heap dump This is a large file containing the full contents of the live JVM root wombat1 usr local queuemetrics java bin jps LOOO JO
24. know is the point in the dial plan that they start from e g internal number 123 FreePBX is always available as 1238 rom internal 40 A WombatDialer Cookbook You can optionally add an Active Period to the running campaign so that calls on it are placed only say between 9 AM and 6 PM no matter when the messages are queued 6 2 Helping Wombats one carrot at a time You know how it goes so many good ideas in real life end up being limited by the amount of funds you can raise to implement them That s why Vicky the energetic new president of Friends of the Wombat called you Friends of the Wombat is a non profit institution that helps wombats in need but their activities are limited by the rising cost of carrots so they decided to start a volunteer fund raising campaign What they would like to do is to call a list of known contacts that expressed an interest in wombats and ask them to make a donation They started doing this manually with paper and pencil but getting to a lead is really tiring and time consuming their volunteers spend most of the time dialling numbers and it is really hard for them to get through to somebody who is interested After a good cup of green tea what you propose to do is to use WombatDialer to automate the process by dividing it into multiple stages Create an electronic list of those leads Leads from their list are dialled If the call is answered a message is played that explain
25. meeting room there is a large and colourful graph in the middle of the table The graph shows the call wait times during the week and boy it s not a good sight Their main inbound activity is to offer client support for a company selling sport bikes and everybody seems to be calling on Monday morning It looks like people go riding on weekends and whatever problem they have they call on Monday morning Wait times peak abandon rates spike and nobody is happy The call center manager is mostly concerned of having to hire and train some temp people in order to handle the load that only happens one day a week They ask you if you have any better idea on what can be done And yes you have some You can program an Asterisk queue so that when people tire of waiting they press a digit and get to a menu where they can leave their number Then the system queues their call and attempts to call them at a convenient time This way your customer are happy they don t have to wait in queue for so long your call center manager is twice happy the first time because wait times and abandon rates go down the second one because by placing calls at a convenient time they can smooth out the workload of their agents during the day This scenario requires some additional glue to what is basically supported by Asterisk exiting a queue and reading a number are easy but then starts the pain You ll have to create a database and write a script that reads back from
26. of your Elastix server and replace the 10 10 5 30 address above This code links to an instance of SugarCRM on 10 10 5 31 On it create a contact named John which telephone number is 300 and one contact named Mike which telephone number is 301 You can link to any other CRM software that has a web based interface just the same way 6 8 4 Making it all work together Log agent 302 into QueueMetrics and have him join queue 400 on extension 302 Note that we are using Hotdesking the agent logs into Asterisk with their SIP extension Start the dialer From the Live page start the campaign Reverse No calls will be placed Check the dialer status You should see WombatDialer observing queue 400 and finding SIP 302 logged on Try pausing and unpausing the agent and refreshing the dialer the status of SIP 302 should change accordingly Now click on the button called Wombat from the Agent s page You should see a preview panel like the one in the picure WombatDialer Preview Panel for SIP 302 Emm Wy Account Employees Admin Logout Loway SUGARSUF Thome Accounts tunes Campagna Emsis ee dieere 2d ee ee See rt ee 1 i Search Results lr i As you can see the SugarCRM panel is displaying the right record the first time you call the page SugarCRM might ask you to log in Do it and refresh the page 56 A WombatDialer Cookb
27. on Announcements and selecting our recording We set up the announcement so that the message is played twice and then the channel is hung up PBX Configu ration Basic Extensions Add Announcement Feature Codes General Settings Description WbtMessage Outbound Ro tes Recording BroadcastMessage x Trunks R Inbound Call Contro us E 2 Inbound Routes Allow Skip Zap Channel 0105 Return to IVR Announcements Don t Answer Channel r Blacklist CallerID Lookup Sources Destination after playback Day Night Control Terminate Call x Hangup IVR Queue Priorities Submit Changes Queues Ring Groups Time Conditions Time Groups Internal Options amp Configuration Conferences Languages Then we go to Misc Applications and create a custom application with feature code 999 that plays the announcement we just defined Getting started with WombatDialer PBX Configuration Extensions Feature Codes General Settings Outbound Routes Trunks Inbound Routes Zap Channel DIDs Announcements Blacklist CallerID Lookup Sources Day Night Control Follow Me IVR Queue Priorities Queues Ring Groups Time Conditions Time Groups Apply Configuration Changes Here Add Misc Application Misc Applications are for adding feature codes that you can dial from internal phones that go to various destinations available in FreeF Misc Destinations module which is for creating destinations that can be
28. present or is busy o paused AGENT CANNOT RESERVE No available call for the agent Place a reserved call In order to place a reserved call you need to feed Wombat its WOMBATID http 127 0 0 1 8084 wombat script api reserve op dial amp id 123456 Returns DIALING the call is being placed ID NOT FOUND No such ID ID FOUND WRONG STATE The ID exists but the call is in a wrong state Skip a reserved call In order to skip a reserved call you need to feed Wombat its WOMBATID http 127 0 0 1 8084 wombat script api reserve op skip amp id 123456 amp withStatus XXX The parameter withStatus is optional and that will be the extStatus for the call being skipped You can use this to get fine control on whether it is to be rescheduled and how Returns SKIPPED the call was skipped ID NOT FOUND No such ID ID FOUND WRONG STATE The ID exists but the call is in a wrong state 8 3 5 System health It is possible to receive a JSON structure with general information about the system It is meant to be used by external monitoring systems that need to make sure WombatDialer is working http 127 0 0 1 8084 wombat script api sysup The response will be similar to the one below WWE Ween eee e 139 ramMaxMb 1818 access msu 717 generatedOn Mon Sep 29 16 04 00 CEST 2014 Uyecsiem OB 0 112 When this transaction is run the database is access
29. restart it as needed If you prefer you may use a local folder instead of a data only container as in 59 Administering WombatDialer docker run v root WBT1IDATA data p 9090 8080 d loway wombatdialer This command mounts the local folder root WBT1DATA for WombatDialer to store its data in and for a change will expose WombatDialer on port 9090 You can also control the local time zone and the amount of memory used by passing them as parameters when starting up the image docker run e CFG memory 400 timezone GMT p 8080 8080 d loway wombatdialer When you need to upgrade WombatDialer you simply stop the current image and start a new one using the same data container Your dialer is updated 7 2 Upgrading Upgrading WombatDialer is meant to be very easy it is in any case worthwhile to make a complete backup see below before attempting an upgrade If you run WombatDialer on a virtual machine the easiest way might be taking a snapshot of the whole box before attempting the upgrade ERN Before attempting an upgrade always make sure that no calls are in progress and that the dialer is turned OFF If you have running campaigns you should pause them and wait for relevant calls to terminate 7 2 1 Upgrading via yum If you originally installed via yum this should be enough yum update wombat System settings should be automatically transferred When the update is complete on the first connect
30. started with WombatDialer If you want from here you can create a new list that only contains calls for which the final status was not successful Click on Export to new list select the runs you are interested in and the final statuses you want to include and enter a name for your new list Exports Export numbers to new list A new igt wil be created with all the numbers included that are in a terminal state with one of the states included Campaign runs 1 Available call states TestCampaign 13 01 04 10 26 33 TERMINATED 1 il x Name of new Run job Close This way you can save calls to be retried at a later date 2 10 Where to go from here This manual provides a detailed description of the concepts involved in WD and how it is run and administered plus a complete API reference Of particular interest can be the section named WombatDialer Cookbook that includes a number of recipes that cover different real world scenarios and show common usage patterns 10 Chapter 3 WombatDialer Concepts In order to work profitably with WombatDialer it is necessary to understand the core concepts that come into play 3 1 The architecture of WombatDialer WombatDialer is a complex system that is built out of different subsystems Understanding which ones they are and what they are for will make understanding the whole product easier WombatHelper gt gt C estab 5 C EaD D Persistence
31. the new PBX Then we go to PBX System Recordings and follow the instructions to record a new message or upload an existing audio file Getting started with WombatDialer System Agenda PBX IM Reports PBX Configuration Operator Panel Voicemail Monitoring Batch Configurations Conference Tools Flash Operator Pa Basi IE PBX Configuration Extensions System Recordings Feature Codes General Settings Ada Recording Outbound Routes Step 1 Record or upload Trunks Inbound Call Control Using your phone dial 77 and speak the message you wish to record Inbound Routes Alternatively upload a recording in any supported asterisk format Note that if you re using wav eg recorded with Microso Zap Channel DIDs Encoded 16 Bits at 8000Hz Announcements Scegli file Nessun file selezionato Upload Blacklist Step 2 Verify CallerID Lookup Sources Day Night Control After recording or uploading dia 99 to listen to your recording Follow Me If you wish to re record your message dial 77 IVR Queue Priorities Step 3 Name Queues Name this Recording Ring Groups Time Conditions Time Groups Click SAVE when you are satisfied with your recording Save Internal Options amp Configuration Conferences System Recording BroadcastMessage Saved When done save the recording under the name BroadcastMessage 2 3 Create a PBX application to play back the recording Now we create an announcement by clicking
32. track through a status code which callers ask for being put in contact with a volunteer this allows easy inspection of what goes where from the Campaign Report panel Now all we have to do is to set our campaign to use an actual telephone trunk and upload the real list of numbers and we are ready to go it s time to buy some new carrots for our wombats Understanding statistics If you run a report of our campaign with a queue analyzer like QueueMetrics you will have two different views of the campaign if you analyze the queue friends the one that matches the name of your WombatDialer campaign you will see the total external System activity all calls placed on the campaign are tracked and the wait time matches the external wait time that is the time between the dial request and a successful connect All calls appear to be connected on the end point as you could have multiple ones assigned to the same campaign if you analyze the queue 999 you will see the human side of action how many calls were queues for humans to interact with how fast they were answered and by whom Further expansion You can use the same end point in multiple parallel campaigns if needed e Itis possible that your campaign reaches someone who is interested but is currently doing something else so does not have the time to speak to your volunteers They could tell you by hitting 2 you could add a Reschedule Rule that reschedules the call in a fe
33. trunk 0 6 4 441 tar gz tar zxvf Wombat trunk 0 6 4 441 tar gz mv Wombat trunk 0 6 4 wombat cd wombat WEB INF lib cp usr share java mysql connector java jar service tomcat7 restart Now connect to http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat and follow the on line wizard to create the database 7 1 3 On installation complete When installation is done connect to http myserver address 8080 wombat will be asked for the MySQL root password to create a local database When done login using as user demoadmin password demo WombatDialer ships with a free demo key that lets you use up to two lines no limit on the number of calls you make You may want to get a free demo key so you can run a full evaluation of the software in a real life scenario License keys can be installed from the License page Section 4 6 The License page as soon as you log in 7 1 4 Configuring e mail If you plan to use e mail notifications you should edit the tp properties file to tell WD about your SMTP servers and the e mail address it is supposed to use SMTP HOST smtp gmail com SMTP PORT 587 SMIP AUTH yes SMTP USER your gmail account gmail com SMTP PASSWORD wombat SMMEPMUS ERSS I NO SMTP FROM WombatDialer lt your gmail account gmail com gt SMIP DEBUG yes As e mail sending happens on the notification thread a very slow SMTP server might delay HTTP notifications In this case we suggest setting up a local
34. used by other FreePBX modules to dial internal numbers or Add Misc Application Description PlayMessage Feature Code 999 Feature Status Enabled v Destination Announcements v wotwessage v Submit Changes We save and apply changes to the PBX If now we dial 999 on our local extension the message we just set up is played back So far so good This ends what we had to do on the PBX 2 4 Set up WombatDialer Now go back to WombatDialer after logging in click on Edit basic settings and add a new Asterisk Server like Server description MyPBX Adress 127 0 0 1 Port 5038 Login admin Password password WD Now we create a new trunk This will be used to dial numbers out We might be using a SIP trunk a local channel or whatever suits you For the moment we use the default format used by Elastix so that numbers will be composed as if they were dialed on a local extension Server MyPBX Name Trunk Capacity 10 in this example we use the default AMI user for Elastix it would be generally better to create a new user specifically for Dial string Local S num from internal n Now we create an end point that is a destination for calls that are successfully answered This will match the function just created in Elastix again we will fake dialling 999 on a local extension Server MyPBX Type PHONE Queue name phone 999 Max channels 10 Extension 99
35. will usually start automatically when the webapp is loaded Exceptions to this behavior happen if 60 Administering WombatDialer WombatDialer was updated and the database required updating In this case the dialer will be turned off until manually activated There is no valid license installed If you prefer to avoid the dialer starting automatically you can do this by creating a flag file called donotstart to be placed under WEB INF like e g touch WEB INF donotstart In order to revert to the previous behavior simply remove the flag file 7 4 Backing up All the information WombatDialer requires to run is contained withn the wombat MySQL database Backing it up should suffice in most cases If you use a different database that the defsult MySQL on localhost then you need to back up the file wombat WEB INF tpf properties that contains the database connection information For ease of recovery you may also want to back up the whole wombat webapp 7 5 Logs and logging User serviceable logs are available on the syslog viewer page This tracks errors agent logins campaign activity and many common user facing conditions A log of severe errors is also held in the Tomcat logs directory usually with file names of the format wombat 2013 01 05 txt or similar This behavior can be customized by editing the file WEB INF classes logging properties in the WombatDialer webapp org apache
36. 01 08 23 59 59 Search 8 Client A Statistics for selected calls Call outcomes F 13 01 06 14 11 47 Number of catis 452 RS BUSY 230 50 8 B Total talk length 1257 s TERMINATED 222 49 F 13 01 08 14 11 63 Export to new fist ete Select au Total 25315 RM Total used time 3814 s gt gt Calls per trunk E19 T1 147 32 Unselect all E19 72 305 675i M 150453 b Campaign Number Attempted wiPre wan Talk Status Xt Stat List Trunk Retry Next rtr Cien A 2000001 01 08 02 11 46 115 5123 o BUSY ust T o 10 8 Chent A 2000002 0108 02 11 48 104 1011 5173 TERMINATEO Ust Ti 0 9 Chent A 2000003 01 08 02 11 48 104 4112 2074 TERMINATEO o 8 Chent 2000000 01 08 02 11 48 115 4085 5183 TERMINATEO Usti 0 P d Cien A 2000004 01 08 0211 48 102 9268 0 Busy List Ti 10 8 Reports are performed per run so the first thing you have to do is to search a set of runs by selecting a suitable time period and selecting runs of campaigns that were started within that time period Each run is identified by the date and time it was started When you click on gt gt gt statistics are computed and displayed in the right hand side of the screen You can see The total number of calls placed The total talk duration in seconds The total wait pre and wait after times in seconds Wait pre is linked to PBX latency while Wait After is actual time waiting
37. 9 Context from internal By the end of the configuration your page should look like the following one Getting started with WombatDialer wom ba t amp Demo Admin Administrator dialer eakal Home Asterisk servers 4 1 10f1 gt Description Address Port Login Max msg MyPBX 127 0 0 1 5038 admin 5 50ms 9 3 s Trunks M 4 1101 gt Name Asterisk Server Dial string Capacity Local S num from Trunk MyPBX eos 10 S Le a End Points 4 110f1 gt 4 Channel name Asterisk server Extension Capacity PHONE 999 MyPBX 999 from intemal 10 ej 2 5 Create a list of numbers to be called Now go back to the main page click on Edit lists and create a new list called TestList The list has no settings just a name Now select the list just created on the left and then press on the Numbers for list control From here we add numbers you may enter any numbers you want using the same format you would use to dial them from Elastix wombat amp Oemo Admin BP Administrator dialer Home Call lists Numbers for list TestList gt 1202 List name Hidden Number Attributes ws 7 19 sot Uploadlistofnumbers call list Logs for lt 1100 Campaign Number Attempted wiPre Talk Status Xt Stat List Trunk Retry Noxt rtr m You may want to add local extensions and remote channels WD will work just f
38. A RUNNING campaign run may be manually PAUSED and from PAUSED it can manually be made RUNNING again If a run is no longer needed it can be manually set to REMOVE when in REMOVE status the run is terminated and cannot be restarted 3 7 2 A call s life cycle When a call is started it is first loaded in a cache called hopper that contains calls that are to be dialed soon This way it is not necessary to consult the database for each and every call to be made RS FAX RS VOICEMAIL comno Call OK Agent reqd a RS AGENT Y DER i I DIALLING sine REQUESTED E AGENTREQ RS NOAGENT gt IN HOPPER RD RESERVEE eC FS AGENTSKIP gt RD_SCHEDULED When WD is about to place the call it marks it as SCHEDULED and sends it to Asterisk for processing if all goes well it then goes from REQUESTED to DIALLING to CONNECTED and then TERMINATED Call life cycle Reverse 19 WombatDialer Concepts Of course it may not be possible to start the call so you get BUSY NUMBER and NOANSWER states or the call might be ended by WD because it exceeded the maximun allowed duration TIMEOUT When using reverse dialing a call starts its life being RD SCHEDULED so that the agent can be called When this happens the call progresses forward In preview mode the call is first RESERVED and when the agent approves it it is placed Initial states IN HOPPER
39. BC Pause a running campaign This call pauses a campaign that is running or idling if no run is found in a suitable state the call is ignored http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api campaigns op pause amp campaign ABC Unpause a running campaign This call unpauses a run that is currently paused when unpaused it may start dialing or keep on idling or start waiting for a correct time to place calls http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api campaigns op unpause amp campaign ABC Clone a campaign http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api campaigns op clone amp campaign xx amp newcampaign yy This will clone existing campaign named ABC to a new one named DEF It will clone only the campaign definition so no activity statistics just like if you were to create a new one from the GUI After cloning you ll have to start the campaign run Add an existing list to a campaign This call lets you add a list to an existing campaign usually on a cloned one It will not work on running campaigns as they will not pick up the new configuration until restarted http 127 0 0 1 8084 wombat script api campaigns op addList amp campaign QMS2 amp 1list Zl 8 3 3 Call lists Add numbers to a list This call adds the numbers passed in numbers to the call list ZEB 2 if it does not exist it will create it Numbers are a pipe separated list of numbers and optional attributes http 127 0 0 1 8084 wombat script api lists op addToList amp list ZEB 2 amp numbers 1234 AA
40. ED I HH 11 retry 0 RO num 5552012 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate state RS_REJECTED I HH 11 retry 0 RO num 5551234 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate 1 state TERMINATED I HH 10 APPT APPE retry 0 RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate state RS NOANSWER I HH 11 retry 0 RO num 5552012 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate 2 State TERMINATED I HH 11 O APPT PSYC retry 0 RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate 0 SCENES 5 WIINMAINAIID Lib erry sl RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate 0 State TERMINATED I HH 11 retry 2 RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate 0 State TERMINATED I HH 11 retry 3 RO num 5556785 reschedule 0 I MM 00 extstate 0 SCENES g JEIENDLNNANNTSID 3r eig Lib You see that for each call num is set to the number dialed state is the call state at its completion extstate is the call s extended state if present retry is the retry counter reschedule is set to the time to be waited before a reschedule if no reschedule is necessary it will be set to zero all inbound attributes the ones you set with the telephone number are passed along prepended by all outbound attributes the ones you read from the callee if any are passed along prepended by O_ This way you can easily create an integration script that stores the results of the call on a database or passes them along for furter processing Further developments By con
41. EN tai 61 8 API reference eee Een cess HR dated ARR ERROR EA A RENE AR RAPERE RR EEE A Ed 63 8 1 Gontrolling Asterisk from WD ndash t E ERI EPA 63 8 2 Controlling WD from Asterisk 2 25 coerente tee den ph Gece p RR epe ded RP 63 8 3 Controlling WD over HTTP ane ici rosa ep nete Er EE bined de dae teresa dex Pe dg trage d da pig Dern Edo de 64 8 4 HTTP life cycle notifications Of CallS err rrr temen rh nen hn ren rh Ren n ed hah REY Ph RH 66 9 System configuratiori IER MATRE URP ee ended needed lant RR A Dep aaie apr 68 9 1 Security Keys REDE 68 9 2 Default CE m 68 10 For more information cetero rnnt te nt ne bia cecegundeedet sieeeceaUeacedcpbiacecegecgegdeb 69 List of Tables Ae Live calls pae lo fe ici pyR il t tec RI tb af ia dede tse decr x erdt eiie y 28 4 2 Campaign runs 6 1 Recipes 9 1 System KEYS i M M 68 9 2 Default users he wombat dialer Chapter 1 What is WombatDialer WombatDialer is a new generation mass outbound
42. MINATED I HH 11 APPT PSYC retry 0 RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate 0 S AL RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate 0 State TERMINATED I HH 11 retry 2 RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate 0 state TERMINATED I HH 11 retry 3 8 z ES A D H You see that for each call num is set to the number dialed state is the call state at its completion extstate is the call s extended state if present retry is the retry counter reschedule is set to the time in seconds to be waited before a reschedule is attempted if no reschedule is required it will be set to zero all input attributes the ones you set with the telephone number are passed along prepended by I all output attributes the ones you set in the Asterisk dialplan if any are passed along prepended by O_ This way you can easily create an integration script that stores the results of the call on a database or passes them along for furter processing The HTTP notification server works asynchronously on a dedicated thread so it is possible that there is some latency if your script has long completion times The notification server does not retry on errors 67 Chapter 9 System configuration 9 1 Security keys The following security keys are reserved for use by WombatDialer and have a pre defined meaning Table 9 1 System Keys All interact
43. Next to the Details section there are buttons with possible actions for the item being displayed you may for example start and stop campaigns When you perform an action a pop up will be displayed to confirm that the action was received The Live page does not work unless the dialer is running state READY So if you try starting a campaign but the dialer is not working you will see the notification but nothing will happen 4 3 1 Campaigns and runs On the right hand side of the screen there is a box made up of three sections plus one labelled Available campaigns the set of campaigns that can actually be run As a campaign can be run only once campaigns that are running and therefore not startable are displayed in italics 27 Running WombatDialer Running campaigns these campaigns are running now or could be running if some condition was met e g having some more calls appended for IDLE canpaigns or a different moment in time for WRONG TIME campaigns Recently closed campaigns here are displayed the detaiils of each recent run For each campaign run a color code is used to display the state it is in You will also see when the run was started as to distinguish it from other runs the number of calls placed an estimate of the current backlog for this run The section labelled lets you modify the order under which campaigns and runs appear Available Campaigns 5 Active Runs S Recently C
44. RA stented EROR IRAM RR TERRE ex AR PUR 38 6 2 Helping Wombats one Carrot at time sesion ehh kh ERR RR ERR 41 6 3 Outbound IVRs and dr Strangelove 5 cose adate Edda ilta dnb pr dre eR UR ee ER Ediz ER RR eE Edi 42 6 4 Understanding queue end points 20 iere rrr eben ARRAS 46 6 5 A custom QueueMetrics integration II HH meme emen e sen en enm enhn en nnne 48 6 6 Elastix queue call backs 5 Ee DER Re eee Eres abere 51 6 7 Automated recall of lost inbound calls II I e eme eme e e e re ee rennes 53 6 8 Preview dialing with QueueMetrics Elastix and SugarCRM I IH I mme nre 55 7 Administering WombatDialer 2 erred ERER ORE RR EROR RR 58 7A Installing 58 VEM oco A ences vats 60 732 Starting stopping o torte e ee dla e ee 60 7 4 2 E 61 7 5 LOQS ANGOQGING 61 7 6 Troubleshooting a running Instance gt ose ee caver ecw Re IRR ERR ERES karatadi danad raa didda R
45. RS AGENTSKIP Agent decided to skip this call RS BLACKLIST The call was skipped as the number was blacklisted States not already implemented RS AGENT Agent requested special retry Not implemented yet 20 WombatDialer Concepts RS FAX Found fax Not implemented yet RS VOICEMAIL Found voicemail Not implemented yet 3 8 Call logs After a call record is processed it leaves a trail in the form of a call log Views log record Information Outcome From here we can see Call this section displays the number that was called and any attributes that are set on that call record Any output attributes coming from Asterisk are marked with a gt prefix Campaign the name of the campaign that this call was placed on Run as the name of the campaign run that had this call placed Run started when the campaign run was started List The list this number belongs to Attempted when the call was actually attempted Wait Pre the difference in milliseconds between call stages REQUESTED and DIALLING Wait After the difference in milliseconds between call stages DIALLING and CONNECTED Talk the duration in milliseconds of the active call that is while the callee was connected Status code the call status code when it was closed Extended status the extended status set by Asterisk Retry The number of retry this call was on 0 initial attempt Next retry When t
46. S 30808 Bootstrap The line containing Boot st rap contains the PID of the Java VM running Tomcat 61 Administering WombatDialer root wombat1 usr local queuemetrics java bin jmap F dump live format b file heap Attaching to process ID 30808 please wait Debugger attached successfully Server compiler detected JVM version is 17 1 b03 Dumping heap to heap bin Finding object size using Printezis bits and skipping over Bit cibi eo lose etse WIS sia 20 5 lowes Skiora a o Finding object size using Printezis bits and skipping over ID ALOKCLIONS OSE 52072 WS iliac 12 5 lont earl Skeiljsjouliae Oweie Finding object size using Printezis bits and skipping over Heap dump file created The resulting file called heap as specified on the command line might be very large and it might take a while to create on busy systems with large Java heaps Before sending the file over it is better to compress it root wombat1 ls 1 heap bin ubxy a6 3 6 il oor wood 4077 9016 vein 10 gedi5 6 rootQwombatl bzip2 heap bin rootQwombatl 15 L heap bin bz2 3L OOK LOGE 90554 74 Jain 10 OSsdS leu sor 7 6 3 Logging all MySQL queries Edit the my cn f file usually in et c mysql my cnf Look for the section called Logging and Replication Logging and Replication
47. The WombatDialer User Manual Loway The WombatDialer User Manual Loway Table of Contents EE T What is WombaltDialet are nnee a AURIS PAIR o AUDIO EP RUE e LED 1 1 1 Why was WombatDialer created itp eed rte ERR He ere aa a Eaa S ERROR dX DX REDE ER 1 i2 Koy foat reS ET O 1 1 3 Typical sage scenarios saada a 2 2 Getting started with WombatDialer toe dni hte cee eh Dated aa RT Rd ea buen RR BRA DRE 3 2 1 Install WombatDidler PT 3 2 2 Greate a recording to be broadCast 12 2 scs sider een ER EATUR LER EE DR P GR ogy ies 4 2 3 Create a PBX application to play back the recording 5 244 Set p WombatDialer eet 6 2 5 Create a list of numbers to be called rore rette rtu E IE a RR DA DRERTUUR D 7 2 6 Greate a new Campaign RO REN ID PUER aa owed cg RA apa UR needed D pA RR RN diene 7 2 7 Create reschedule rules oe e ee ER Gece lap ch da eR 8 2 8 Run your first campaign etre oen rennen ie Rex ded RA nex
48. You will of course have some lost calls e g because the called person hung up before the agent was connected The difference between the number of successful calls in the campaign versus the total number of calls in the physical queue is due to calls that were hung up before reaching the queue e g during an initial IVR phase 5 3 Real time monitoring You will be mostly interested in monitoring only the physical queue here actual agent activity is displayed and agent presence information log ins log offs and pauses is immediately available When you use a queue for inbound it is often better to avoid playing music on hold and to offer ringing instead 35 QueueMetrics integration 5 4 Reporting You might be interested in running reports on both the campaign and the physical queue in order to gather information on actual PBX usage times versus agent activity 5 5 Using the agent s page QueueMetrics offers an interesting Agent s page from where the agent can get a screen pop to an external application e g a CRM when they receive an inbound call If you use the telephone number as the main key that is used to connect to an extenral CRM then this will work natively with the basic WD integration as the caller id us usually preserved You may want to have finer control on the CRM pop up by tracing not only the number dialed but also the campaign ID or some of the variables that WD sends along the call This can be
49. You can queue calls for the future by adding a reschedule attribute either as an offset in seconds positive integer or an absolute date having the format YYYY MM DD HH MM SS schedule 15 Schedule 2012 03 18 00 00 00 You can also set multiple attributes as in attrs ID 2301 PERS John Doe If you add the same number multiple times it will be dialed multiple times Set extStatus and attributes on a live call While a call is being dialed it is possible to set a user event externally in a manner that exactly matches normal UserEvents The important difference is that you do not need the UniquelD but the WombatlD Set a call s extStatus to XY http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api calls op extstatus amp wombatid 123456 amp status XY Create or set attribute AB to value CD http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api calls op attr amp wombatid 123456 amp attr AB amp val CD Append string EF to the current value of attribute AB http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api calls op attrAppend amp wombatid 123456 amp attr AB amp val ial nj Remove all outbound attributes for this call http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api calls op attrClear amp wombatid 123456 64 API reference 8 3 2 Campaigns and runs Start a new run with an existing campaign This call starts a new run an existing campaign if the campaign is not startable e g because it is already running the call is ignored http 127 0 0 1 8080 wombat api campaigns op start amp campaign A
50. achieved by rewriting the caller id field in Asterisk and using a decoder script that will in turn launch the actual CRM application An example can be found in the Cookbook 5 5 1 Using the agent s page for preview dialing WombatDialer includes an HTML preview panel that lets your agents preview process or skip calls WombatDialer Preview Panel for SIP 302 Delnow Recadpens Loway re rea ro renearen SUGARSUr me Pilot Bree diu ene Bie Ble di onines den fois i Search Results rn i It can be reached at the URL http myserver 8080 wombat agents rd_pop jsp and accepts the following parameters agent the channel being used as present on the queue It must match exactly the Asterisk id url an URL that can be opened for this call Note that special characters must be quoted e g must be written as 3F and amp will appear as 9626 Any variables will be quoted when written like lt NUMBER gt inset if 0 the page will display a list of known variables for this call and a link to the URL If 1 the URL will be opened within an IFRAME right in the page For example to have calls opened from the agents page in QM you would use one of the programmable buttons to link to WD like in realtime agent button l enabled true realtime agent button l caption Wombat realtime agent button l url http 10 10 5 30 8080 wombat agents rd pop jsp agent SIP a amp url http 10 10 5
51. al or external caller id Output attributes instead are values set by Asterisk on this call and are meant for data collection You can manually edit the number or the attributes from the web GUI though you cannot delete an existing call record 3 6 Campaigns A campaign is the basic unit of work of WD It behaves as a template for running an actual campaign that we call a Campaign Run A campaign defines aset of general properties aset of trunks aset of end points aset of list zero or more They are further claassified as normal or black lists aset of reschedule rules A campaign can only be run one at a time before running it again you must make sure that any actual runs are terminated Trunks end points and list are instead shared entities you can have multiple campaigns using them at the same time Campaign namo 2014 Basics Call placing details CM COMPATIBLE c2 ul ch The following properties are defined for a campaign Name a name to display in WD Priority the relative importance of this campaign against any other see below 15 WombatDialer Concepts Status this field lets you decide what to do with the campaign RUNNABLE this campaign can be run CLOSED this campaign cannot be run but it is still visibile in the default editor HIDDEN this campaign is not visible anymore unless you set the flag Display hidde
52. al string to something like SIP 5 num and set its capacity as the total number of parallel calls you want to place Then go to the Live page and reload the campaign When you want to stop the campaign you have two choices You can temporarily pause it You can remove it from running campaigns when it is paused Of course you can have this campaign run on multiple trunks and multiple endpoints using multiple separate Asterisk servers just by gies ei iE items and telling the campaign to use them This way handling hundreds of channels is just as easy as testing with Further evolution You could create your own audio recordings the example here was created with sounds present in a standard Asterisk distribution but of course you should record your own messages You can do even better and embed a Text to Speech engine script so you are not limited to inserting numbers but can play back nearly anything You can add an IVR option to the telecast context so that if the callee wants to talk to a live person they are sent to a queue By monitoring the number of lines that you are using on your trunk and the number of available agents the WombatDialer acts as a simple progressive dialer As all the configuration is GUl agnostic you can use your favourite Asterisk configuration GUI to create End points play messages read IVRs add time dependent rules like you would for incoming calls All you need to
53. alls this is a rough estimate of calls that remain to be placed Might be rather inaccurate consider it only a basic indicator that will converge to zero as the run terminates 18 WombatDialer Concepts Running for is the total time that this run has been going Estimated completion tries to display the remaining time to completions This time may actually vary strongly from what is displayed depending on what happens during the campaign Estimates will be produced after a few calls have completed Attempts per hour its the average number of calls attempted per hour on this run Completions per hour is the average number of calls completed per hour High water mark the last call record added to the cache 3 7 1 A run s life cycle When a run is first started it goes through a set of stages COMPLETED Preload E Added retries Run life cycle pcc Initially the will be made RUNNABLE WD will prepare to run it and will put it in RUNNING state A run stays in state RUNNING as long as it has retries to complete or calls not yet placed When a RUNNING campaign is out of the allowed time period it is put to WRONG TIME from here it goes back automatically to RUNNING state when time conditions hour and day of week are successfully matched When out of calls a run can either COMPLETE or become IDLE when IDLE it waits for new calls to be added through the API and goes back to RUNNING mode to process them
54. ampaign Run your first campaign Run areport on the campaign 2 1 Install WombatDialer We will be installing the dialer on the same box as your PBX is Installation is very easy on an Elastix box it is enough to login as root and enter the following commands wget P etc yum repos d http yum loway ch loway repo yum install wombat A number of packages will be selected and installed on your local system This may take a while Getting started with WombatDialer When done go to http serveraddress 8080 wombat and follow the on line instructions to create the database the default MySQL password in earlier versions of Elastix used to be pas swO rd On newer versions you decide it while you are installing Elastix When done login as demoadmi n password demo by clicking on the Users icon on the top right If all goes well you should be presented a screenshot like the following one wombat amp Demo Admin Administrator sU dialer 9 3 Wombat 0 6 4 3 Dialer operation Dialer status News Up 0 00 Status Down WombatDialer 0 64 WombatDialer 0 6 0 Basic configuration Edit basic settings v Edit lists User manual now available Edit campaigns Version 0 5 4 released 4 Administration Edit Users View Syslog ER QueueMetrics intecration 2 2 Create a recording to be broadcast First we create an extension on
55. ampaign runs are real out calling instances of campaigns You start them from the Live page by selecting one of the available campaigns They are named after their parent campaign and the time when they were started The system displays a set of information on the Live page Campaign name Cl Siawce eng Wecl 17 15552822 2012 Seerces COMPLE NED 1O Calls placed 40 Items in call cache Calls terminated 10 Life cycle termination rate 25 Reschedule rate 75 Est remaining calls O0 Running for 00 00 05 Estimated completion in 00 00 00 Attempts per hour 72720 Completions per hour 72720 High water mark 20 in L2 The run name is actually made of the Campaign name plus the time it was started This uniquely identifies a run in the system The other parameters are as follows Current state is the state the run is in see below Priority is the campaign s priority Calls placed is the total number of call attempts made Items in call cache is the number of calls currently held in the hopper plus any open reschedules Calls terminated is the numbers of calls that have either been successful or gone through the last possible reschedule so they will not be retried Life cycle termination rate is the percentage of calls that are not to be retried terminated Reschedule rate is the percentage of calls that are to be retried Est remaining c
56. ant to handle at least the following cases RS_REJECTED the network could not place the call RS BUSY the number dialed is currently busy RS NOANSWER the number dialed does not answer For each case add a new reschedule rule Just enter a time in seconds after which the call is to be redialed and a maximum number of retries You would expect to have something similar to the following example Reschedule Rules 4 13of3 gt Rule On status lea 1 RS_REJECTED 120s FIXED 2 ftl 2 RS_NOANSWER 90s FIXED 3 FL RS BUSY 300s FIXED 2 Att ie Ca Note that for each rule you may have a different retry delay and a maximum number of retry attempts that is different based on the status encountered A detailed explanation of completion codes and how reschedule rules interact can be found at Reschedule Rules Section 3 6 3 Reschedule rules 2 8 Run your first campaign Now go back to the home page and start the dialer by clicking on the Play icon under Dialer status After a few seconds click on the Refresh icon to confirm WD is up and running 3 Dialer operation Q Dialer status A Up 00 00 03 Status READY T State READY Rev 1 Snt 0 Licensed channels 2 Basic configuration Edit basic settings Edit lists Edit campaigns Administration Edit Users View Syslog Debugger Getting started with WombatDialer If you want to see what the dialer is doing witho
57. atus code for each call through QueueMetrics e g if the sale was successful or not and this lets you measure your agent s performance You may also use QueueMetrics s extensive QA monitoring features to analyze calls and improve the process Analyzing outbound campaigns If you set your campaign to have QM COMPATIBLE logging you will find data abpout two different queues on QueueMetrics If you run a report for queue QmSample you will see all calls that WD attempted the successful as well as the unsuccessful ones This is basicall the activity that WombatDialer performed and the actual telephone usage durations In a real life scenario the vast majority of calls will be unanswered If you run a report for queue 999 you will see activity about calls that were successfully connected and were actually queued to be answred by agents You would expect to have a very low unanswered rate here if it is high it means something is not working as expected You will of course have some lost calls e g because the called person hung up before the agent was connected The difference between the number of successful calls in QmSample and the total number of calls in 999 are calls that were hung up before reaching the queue e g during an initial IVR phase 6 6 Elastix queue call backs You are called in to a client site they seem to have a problem They run a small 10 agents inbound call centre and when you join everybody else in the
58. ay morning This of course depends on what you are doing and the local customs set up reschedule rules in order to handle calls unanswered and busy lines correctly It would be too bad not to be able to recall just because the caller s phone was busy at the moment it could also be useful to connect the caller to a reverse IVR first so that they get a message like Hello we are calling you back because of your call made at 10 30AM If you d like to talk to one of our agents please press 1 now before being routed to an agent a simple addition that could be made to the script would be to set up a minimum wait time to qualify calls that is you would recall only people who waitied in queue for more than 10 seconds using a technique very similar to the one explained here it would be trivial to set up campaigns for quality assessment or customer satisfaction run as reverse IVRs 6 8 Preview dialing with QueueMetrics Elastix and SugarCRM Preview dialing is a type of reverse dialing where the agent has a chance to preview the number that is to be called before actually having a call placed The way it works is The agent logs on to a queue WombatDialer uses the queue as it usually does in Reverse dialing modes to know which agents are available This makes integration with QueueMetrics very easy The agent asks WombatDialer for a number to call WombatDialer gets the next number out considering all its dialing and reschedule ru
59. batDialer is easy it is basically a matter of implementing an outbound IVR and tracking call parameters and call completion codes Doing so will also let us show how WombatDialer handles call retries As an added bonus we ll see how WombatDialer notifies other systems over HTTP To get us started we create a list of telephone numbers called Appointments with custom attributes in order to do this we log in to WombatDialer go to the Lists page and create a new list After creation we select it and upload a list of numbers like the following one 55512 341 BB LO MMs S40 53956785 lalate 111 MMS OO 93920127 Biag Ili bite S10 This means that the person at number 5551234 is to be reminded an appointment for tomorrow at 10 30 We use two separate variables as this makes life easier for our Text to Speech engine 42 A WombatDialer Cookbook wOmbAt Genome Gomme D Vl duster tome A Call lists Numbers for list Appointments tnt name Number taten Acer nt mets L4 I PELE f m C0 P 2 2 oj e d isi d members Logs for record 5551234 Ctm Mior wise an Tum ae x Um We now have to program the outbound IVR context in Asterisk we do that easily with the help of WD call attributes so that we know what we have to tell our customer In this example we will also use the Google Text to Speech engine to synthesize audio on demand drstrangelove
60. calling platform for the Asterisk PBX It can be used to implement many different services By offering a set of ready to use components and a monitoring GUI you can create complex solutions in minutes WombatDialer can work on pre defined call lists or can dynamically create them over API e g dial number X after 10 30 AM It shares the load on one or more PBX servers and has a flexible rescheduling logic to handle missed calls It is built to be used with your existing Asterisk PBX and does not require separate servers or a separate set of lines It can call over VoIP or through the public telephone network WombatDialer is built to integrate with your business processes can receive calls to be made over HTTP and or notify an external system in real time about calls made and results gathered WombatDialer works natively with the QueueMetrics Call Center Monitoring Suite in order to produce state of the art campaign analyses and insight 1 1 Why was WombatDialer created If you are an Asterisk integrator it may have happened to you one of your clients requires simple outbound capabilities e g calling back a customer who filled in a recall form on their website Simple enough You start by creating an Asterisk callfile to generate each call it works nicely and it is easy to set up but if the call does not complete then it is lost So you have to create a process that keeps track of the call and retries it in time And that s not a
61. ccount CUD Presentation Logging kios et 10 RUNNABLE 30000 QM COMPATIBLE No 10 RUNNABLE 30000 QM COMPATIBLE No d RUNNABLE 30000 QM COMPATIBLE No 9 QmSamtpie 10 RUNNABLE 30000 CM COMPATIBLE Yes 8 Trunks EndPoints Lists 4 1 101 b 1 10 4 1100 b Trunk Endpoint Pos List P QUEUE 999 a el amp Reschedule Rules lt 1202 4 Rule On status On custom Fore status anor mode timos si RS NOANSWER 10s FIXED 1 211 RS BUSY 103 FIXED 1 14 Now start the campaign It will go in status IDLE immediately as it has no numbers to dial you will see it all yellow the Live page of WombatDialer wOmbAt Bowen ducens EG pte arced Volo cler fees O mpgs Lord Orgrute Connect Trent tnd port d ware Carpage At this point it is time for your agents to log in in QueueMetrics Have them log in to their Agent s page and from there log them on to queue 999 At this point make sure that each agent s browser allows QueueMetrics to open pop up windows this is usually disabled in modern browsers Now for each call you d like to be started send an HTTP request to WombatDialer that looks like the following one we do this through the Linux shell but there is nothing preventing you to script this in some other way curl netos 7 10 3 10 5 1 6 8 90 indez op addcall amp campaign QmSam
62. complete each campaign The status of each running campaign If you fly over each pie slice in the graphs then a legend will be shown explaining what that slice means Note that for live calls and campaign runs the color codes are fixed to make them easily recognizable at a glance Just below the graphs there is a row displaying for all campaigns The number of open calls The total number of calls placed on running campaigns since they were started The call termination rate that is the percentage of calls attempted for which a reschedule was not necessary An estimated backlog of calls that have to be placed for running campaigns This only counts calls in the dialing buffer Below is a pageable list of live calls that is refreshed every few seconds For each call you can see The number dialed When the call was originated When the call was answered The trunk used The end point the call was connected to 26 Running WombatDialer The number of times this call was attempted If present the actual agent taking the call depending on whether the call is dialed in reverse or direct mode the agent may appear immediately or only when the call connects In this list only calls managed by WD are shown so you can still use your PBX as usual and such calls will not be displayed By the bottom of the page there is a Details section where you see the details for the last item you selected be it a ca
63. des Then you enter a name for the new list to be created and click on Run job A new list will be created under the new name and containing the records for the calls you just selected In order to see it you must go to the Lists page it might be necessary to close the Lists tab and reopen it You can also use this feature to create lists of numbers that were answered correctly in order to prune existing lists of old and invalid entries By creating a call list numbers you know to be invalid you can add it to your campaigns as a black list so that those numbers will be immediately discarded 4 5 Importing and exporting call lists From the Lists page you can import and export data to and from call lists WombatDialer lets you select either native or CSV format 4 5 1 Importing call lists Native mode By clicking on Upload list of numbers when a list is selected you can copy and paste a set of numbers to be added to an existing list As numbers might have associated call attributes there is no control over possible duplicate numbers as you may want to dial the same number multiple times 31 Running WombatDialer 5551235 X 10 Y 20 5551236 X 20 Y 20 5551237 X 10 Y 30 Numbers should be uploaded as a set of rows each starting with the number to be dialed If you want to add attributes to be passed to the PBX you should have them in the format ATTR VALUE separated by a comma For example the line sop
64. dial string willbe Local num 8 rom internal An end point of type QUEUE which name is 400 so that it observes queue 400 located at extension 400 context from internal this is not really needed if you run only reverse campaigns setting both Reverse dialing yes and Manual preview yes We create a list called Numbers and leave it blank for now e We create a campaign called Reverse which has logging set as QM COMPATIBLE and which logging code is 400 We add to it the trunk the EP and the list we just created Now we go to the list manager and upload the following list John Mike 300 NAMI 301 NAMI h h a This tells WD to dial numbers 300 and 301 and sets a NAME attribute for each call that will be useful when previewing 6 8 3 Step 3 Installing and configuring QueueMetrics Install QueueMetrics on the same machine as the Elastix system by typing yum install queuemetrics espresso Now log in into QM and configure An agent called agent 302 user for agent 302 called agent 302 password 999 class AGENTS A general monitoring queue called 400 Set agent 302 in the MAIN level of that queue Now edit the System parameters and edit the section realtime agent button 1 as follows realtime agent button l enabled true realtime agent button l caption Wombat realtime agent button l url http 10 10 5 30 8080 wombat agents rd pop jsp agent SIP a Edit the public IP
65. e call center manager can monitor the current call backlog and decide who and when it is to join the callback queue Further improvements If there is a caller id on the call you could ask the caller whether to use it as the number to be called back You could add time limits to the WD campaign so that you are sure that no calls are made otside acceptable periods 6 7 Automated recall of lost inbound calls If you run a call center serving clients in a timely way is often very complex as it requires having enough people available to handle traffic Spikes The number of callers that disconnect because they have been waiting too long in a queue is then an important driver of the quality of your work and these frustrated callers are the focus of much attention and scheduling planning efforts in all call centers This is because in a traditional setting doing inbound calling you basically had no other way of servicing the client but waiting for the person to call in With an Asterisk based PBX and using digital lines this scenario changes a bit as Your average caller has an associated caller id that often matches a physical phone in their proximity Telephone traffic is very cheap compared to the cost of agent time for call handling You have ample means of programming the PBX to suit your exact needs So it is now a conceivable scenario to improve the services you are offering by adding an automated call back option so that you search th
66. e logs of lost calls and you actively schedule recalls on them in order to get back to people who hung up in frustration 6 7 1 The plan automatic queue recalls In this article we explain how to implement a basic call back scenario using QueueMetrics and WombatDialer What we do is very easy as in We periodically run a script to gather the caller ids of lost calls that were handled on a queue We check each caller id as to be sure is a valid number We check that there is no subsequent successful call on the queue from the same caller id as to prevent recalling people who already retried themselves We schedule those calls for dialing no more than once per number per day As our dialing schedule happens a WombatDialer campaign we can control the flow of calls through it by adding and removing agents supposed to handle outbound traffic or pausing it completely during periods of high inbound traffic 6 7 2 Step 1 Configuring QueueMetrics In order to gather information from QueueMetrics to an external script we need to enable XML RPC access credentials This is usually very easy to do as QueueMetrics ships with a disabled ROBOT login that allows external access Enabling it is very easy log in as an administrator click on Edit users edit the robot user and set Enabled to yes While you are at it take a second to change the default password 6 7 3 Step 2 Configuring WombatDialer Set up WombatDialer with a
67. e must provide events to Wombat about agent activities Therefore you must set eventswhencalled true otherwise the queue will be unobservable It is also important that extension presence is correctly observed e g if an end point is busy because the agent is doing a personal call its queue status should immediately reflect this Whenther this happens or not on your system is a matter of Asterisk version and type of channel that is used to reach the agent with recent versions of Asterisk and SIP channels this should work automatically the queue should connect calls to agent as efficiently as posssible when there are multiple calls waiting and multiple avavilable agents So it should have the autofill option set to true In order to run a campaign with a Queue endpoint it is best to create a campaign with a Queue endpoint You may create it IDLE and add no call lists so the campaign does not actually do anything until fed some numbers run that campaign reload the Dialer status in order to see if the queue is being observed you have to click on the reload icon manually each time If the queue is present you should see it something saying Free 4 of 7 W 2 This means that WD is seeing 7 agents connected of which 4 are free where 4 is the result of multiplying the actual number of observd channels by its boost factor and that there are 2 calls waiting on the queue try and log on log off pause and unpause an agent You should s
68. ed to make sure it is available If the response block does not contain the string WBTUP the dialer is supposed to be down and in need of a restart 8 4 HTTP life cycle notifications of calls In order to enable HTTP lifecycle notifications you must set a URL in your campaign definition that points to an HTTP script This causes WD to POSTs the result of each call to your HTTP server 66 API reference On the server you ll have a script that accepts notification like the simple PHP script that follows m Sout Os foreach _POST as Sname gt Svalue Sout Sname Svalue print Sout error_log RQ Some 0 WU uy 25 The script above basically logs all activity on the HTTP error log What you get is sequence of calls like RO num 5551234 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate state RS REJECTED I HH 10 retry 0 RO num 5556785 reschedule 0 I MM 00 extstate state RS REJECTED I HH 11 retry 0 RO num 5552012 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate state RS REJECTED I HH 11 retry 0 RO num 5551234 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate 1 state TERMINATED I HH 10 APPT APPE retry 0 RO num 5556785 reschedule 300 I MM 00 extstate state RS NOANSWER I HH 11 retry 0 RO num 5552012 reschedule 0 I MM 30 extstate 2 ROS impune55567 state TE 5 reschedule 0 I MM 00 extstate 0 ED Islas til decet e d il state TER
69. ee the number of free and available channels change accordingly Try also sending calls to the queue and see if the number of free agents and of waiting calls is correct try also placing calls from some agent extensions and see if the number of free channels reflects this correctly if you plan to have agents working on multiple queues at once run the tests above while the agents are logged on in at least two queues and make sure statues are updated correctly wOmbAt advanced VolP dialer FU Savors Lists O Campaigns 3 Wombat 0 4 9 3 Dialer operation Q Dialer status _ nr un Uptime 01 26 03 Status READY 13 State READY Basic configuration 20 CONNECTED it basi in P OmSample IDLE Edit campaigns 3 T10 it li 3h 999 QUEUE Administration 47 A WombatDialer Cookbook The Queue EPs let you use WD as a powerful progressive dialer and can lead to very complex integration scenarios but as it involves actual people being called and answering the phone it is better to understand it well before actually using it in production 6 5 A custom QueueMetrics integration The WombatDialer can be used as a stand alone product for message broadcating but it was built to integrate easily with QueueMetrics the premier call center monitoring and reporting tool for the Asterisk PBX WombatDialer and QueueMetrics do different things but together can be a very powerful call center solution e WombatD
70. es The status code considered is always the current status code so for example given this set of rules Attempts Retry in RS_BUSY 3 300s RS NONASWER il 600s If we get a BUSY on first attempt and a NOANSWER on second attempt as the NOANSWER retries only once the call is not retried You can also have an extended status set through the APIs if that is present on the call the rule matches only if the extended status matches see Controlling WD from Asterisk Section 8 2 Controlling WD from Asterisk 3 6 4 Black lists WombatDialer has the concept of Black Lists they are lists like any other but are used to collect numbers that are not to be called When WombatDialer is loading numbers to be dialed they are checked against all black lists defined for that campaign This is done automatically and behind the scenes if a number is found it is logged as dialed in state BLACKLIST without actually trying it Blacklists are checked dynamically when a number is first scheduled so if you add numbers to a blacklist while a campaign is running new numbers to be scheduled will be checked against the blacklist Numbers that are already scheduled e g to be recalled will not be affected WombatDialer schedules numbers well in advance before they are called so it may take a while before it starts checking the blacklists You may have multiple blacklists on a campaign their order in unimportant 3 7 Campaign runs C
71. essful run you can see its statistics by viewing the Campaign Report screen wOmbAt ed Vow disier Mome Live Activity reports by campaign ton dae Ept 06 26 00 06 00 Te cme 2011 0322 58 89 Search Appearances Statistics for selected calls outcomes FP tw May 31 13 29 18 CEST 2012 Number of cate 16 R NOANSIWER 1 10 the May 31 1224 24 CEST 2012 Toti am unga 64 5 MEJECTED 2308 wat pe 9 TEPMINA EO 440 Select tate STs T MMINATEO 1 1 10 weed tre ua TERMNATEO2 1 108 Calls per trunk PRX LOCA 100 Unselect af 4c 2 Ment p Pert Lun pd wre Tum aun Dem 8 nim oor Lars Me w Appontmenty LOCA 0 cant 57 012810 o EJECTEO Appoetme s LOCA o o oS AAI 012030 at 41 REJECTED No remets LOCAL 0 ont 4 TERMINATE 1 Ajo artt LOCAL o 4 Cn os m Two o NONSE RI Ngareret LOCA o You will see that some calls appear as TERMINATED 0 some as TERMINATED 1 some as TERMINATED 2 based on the extended call status entered through a user selection Only calls in state TERMINATED 0 are retried You can also see the state of attributes for each call by going to the List editor wOmbAt andear ed vol disier nme Campen Lv Call lists Numbers for list Appointments 44 53593 o 1903 o Lm hme 3
72. eters e g IVR responses right from the Asterisk dialplan 8 2 1 Format of User Events User events are triggered through the dialplan through the UserEvent Asterisk application They are used to Setthe completion code for a given call Store additional outbound attributes on the call in WD 8 2 2 Triggering a user event You can esily trigger User Events by calling the Asterisk dialplan like exten gt s n UserEvent name Uniqueid S UNIQUEID P0 parml or exten gt s n UserEvent name Uniqueid UNIQUEID P0 parm1 P1 parm1 In case you want to pass two parameters The event name is not case sensitive 8 2 3 Setting call status codes In order to set the extended status completion code of a call you should trigger an UserEvent like exten gt s n UserEvent CALLSTATUS Uniqueid UNIQUEID V XXX This sets the completion code for the current call to XXX If multiple completion codes are received for the same call the last one wins Completion codes are then used by WD s Reschedule Rules in order to decide what to do with the call 8 2 4 Output call variables You can set an output attribute for the current call by running exten gt s n UserEvent ATTRIBUTE Uniqueid UNIQUEID name value This will create an attribute called name with value value If the same attribute altready exists it is replaced As an alternative you can append values to an existing attrib
73. etrs are set as follows On status the call status this rule applies to With custom status the custom status to consider see below Custom statuses can be set through the API see Controlling WD from Asterisk Section 8 2 Controlling WD from Asterisk Max Attempts the maximum attempts this rules applies to Retry after the number of seconds to retry after With mode the way to compute the retry period When rescheduling you can set the mode to FIXED or MULTI In fixed mode if you set the retry time to 5 minutes it tries after 5 minutes at every attempt In multiplicative mode the retry period is computed multiplying the number of the current attempt by the number of attempt it s trying so it would be 5 minutes on the first attempt 10 minutes on the second 15 minutes on the third and so on If a call has a normal completion or is over the maximum number of retries then it is not rescheduled You can look up the status of the last attempt in order to know why it was not rescheduled Writing advanced reschedule rules It is valid to have multiple reschedule rules that pertain to the same status code in this case WD will find the rule that matches For example imagine we have two rules Attempts Retry in RiSm SB Usa 2 300s RS_BUSY 5 1800s 17 WombatDialer Concepts Up to the second BUSY attempt WD will retry in 5 minutes 300 seconds from the third to the fifth it will retry in 1800 seconds 30 minut
74. he AMI interface for these PBXs You must know the names of the trunks WombatDialer will use they depend on the local setup E g SIP myprovider 123456 or DAHDI g0 123456 might be valid formats to dial the number 123456 When a call is started WombatDialer directs it to some place in the Asterisk dialplan in order to be processed So you should have a general idea of how to program your Asterisk PBX in order to execute the functionality you re after e g playing a broadcast message recording an audio message setting up an inbound queue You should know where in the dialplan these actions will happen in terms of extension and context as used by Asterisk In the following example we will show you one of the simplest things you can do with WombatbDialer that is calling a list of numbers and playing back a pre defined message All numbers will be called in sequence if any of them cannot connect then it will be retried To make life easier we will run the following example by using the free 2 channel demo key that is embedded in WombatDialer You may want to test more complex scenarios by getting a free demo key from our website in order to test drive WombatDialer thoroughly This is our battle plan Install WombatDialer Create a recording to be broadcast Create a PBX function to play back the recording Setup WombatDialer Create a list of numbers to be called Create a new campaign Create reschedule rules for our c
75. he next retry is scheduled If set to zero this means the call was not set to be rescheduled Trunk The trunk the call was placed on Log Id The internal log id Asterisk channel The Asterisk channel that was created for the first leg of the call Asterisk unique The Asterisk internal Unique Id that was used 3 9 Users and security WombatDialer offers a powerful and pervasive security model that is similar to the one used in QueueMetrics It is built around the concepts of users classes and keys The idea is that each user has a keyring and all features are controlled by keys Every time WombatDialer has a possible feature to show the user e g editing servers it checks whether the current user holds the correct key in its keyring If he does not have it the feature is hidden or grayed out Each user has a keyring that is composed of their personal keys plus all the keys for their class This way you can organize multiple groups of users e g administrators monitors etc with different grants and then give each specific user additional keys to fine tune each person s profile A set of default users Section 9 2 Default users and of security keys Section 9 1 Security keys is available below 21 WombatDialer Concepts 3 9 1 The security model You can set security keys on most entities in WombatDialer you can have them on servers trunks end points campaigns and lists They will be enforced for Selectio
76. ialer If you want a customized preview panel you can create one by using the WombatDialer 57 Chapter 7 Administering WombatDialer 7 1 Installing WombatDialer is easily installed using yum or it can be installed manually It can be installed on the same server as Asterisk is for small Systems or testing but on larger production systems we recomment that it should be installed on a dedicated system even a virtual machine will do WombatDialer can share a Tomcat instance with QueueMetrics for smaller systems up to 50 agents 50 lines but it should be really installed on a separate machine for larger systems as it might use large quantities or RAM and CPU WombatDialer can also be easily deployed using Docker as explained in Docker installation Section 7 1 5 Installing on Docker This is perfect for installing a test system and although currently experimental we have run real life workloads on it 7 1 1 Installing using yum On a CentOS or derived Linux distribution just run the following commands wget P etc yum repos d http yum loway ch loway repo yum install wombat This will in turn install Java install Tomcat install MySQL server if missing download the MySQL driver install the dialer 7 1 2 Manual installation You can install WombatDialer within any working servlet container version 2 5 or newer You will also need a working MySQL server Any recent version of Apache To
77. ialer is able to use a Queue as and end point in order to connect calls to a set of agents e QueueMetrics is able to monitor extensively the queue and provides a convenient agent interface that works well with WombatDialer In this example we improve the scenario described in a previous tutorial Section 6 2 Helping Wombats one carrot at a time imagining that the want to use a custom CRM interface so that agents can immediately see the name of the person being called and can open up an external CRM application for each client so they can gather donation data monitor each agent s performance use a dynamic list of people to be called so that as soon as you know of an interesting lead you can add it to the list of persons to be called You can have WombatDialer and QueueMetrics installed on the same server unless you have a very high load or a very high number of lines As a first step we ll have to create a small interface script that will be our CRM application We will call it wombatPopup php and will store it on one of our servers ashttp 10 10 5 10 lenz wombatPopup php Plain WombatDialer Agent Panel lt hr gt Ke Snumber REQUEST caller Sagem ROUSTI tagane 2 Sunique SEES TRUST preg_match d s Snumber matches Sid Smatches 1 name Smatches 2 2x Person is lt name gt ID lt Sid gt lt p gt Agent is lt Sagent gt
78. ible that either some agent logs off after being counted to place calls or some calls reach a queue without passing through Wombat This also acts as a counterbalance to high boost factor values it will never place more than max channels calls on the queue this lets you use a shared queue where some calls come from inbound activity and some come from Wombat itself Of course you can turn this off by setting max channel to a value higher than the total number of agents on the queue It is also important to notice that the queue is used only as a way to know how many calls can be placed on a queue but calls will still be transferred to a point in the dial plan that should lead to the queue This lets you execute dial plan logic e g playing pre recorded messages or running IVRs on the calls it just placed In order to use WombatDialer effectively with a queue the following guidelines are best followed though Wombat would work with static member channels if you want your calls to go through to agents who may or may not be available e g some days they may be sick it is strongly advisable to use dynamic agents who log on and off from the queue as an agent cannot be physically available at all times during the day it is important that they have a way to pause themselves be it to run wrap up activities after calls or to take breaks The QueueMetrics web interface offers an excellent panel that lets you add pause codes as well the queu
79. ign running at priority 10 If there are available agents it is just natural that the campaign at priority 1 has its go first at placing calls But if for example some of your agents are paused then not all outbound lines are used in this case they are used by the campaign at priority 10 As soon as your agents go back on line calls for them are dialed first If you have multiple campaigns at the same priority level they are offered a fair chance of placing calls so you would expect them to place roughly the same number of calls if calling an homogeneus set of callees In practice the numbers may differ based on call length call completion ratio and average answer times You can define an active period for calling so that you can e g tell WD to place calls between 9 AM and 4 PM of working days Any reschedules will be placed only in the active period There is no guarantee as which trunks and end points will be chosen when a campaign is running Call lists instead are processed in order from the first to the last If you want WD to send you e mail when something happens on a campaign you should make sure that you configured the SMTP parameters as explained in Configuring e mail Section 7 1 4 Configuring e mail You can have WD send you notifications for all campaign life cycle event changes or simply when the campaign completes 16 WombatDialer Concepts 3 6 1 What happens to hidden campaigns Hidden campaigns are removed f
80. ine In our example we added a local extension and a non existent local extension in order to display what WD does when a number cannot complete For real life usage you may prepare a CSV file with your favourite spreadsheet and upload thousands of numbers at once 2 6 Create a new campaign Let s go back to the home page and click on Edit Campaigns Add a new campaign by setting the following parameters name TestCampaign status RUNNABLE Then save it and select it add the trunk the end point and the list you just created At the end of the configuration the campaign will look like Getting started with WombatDialer wombat Boerne 5 dialer Home Lus Campaigns T 10f 1 2 Channel name Priority Pace Timeout Account cuo Presentation Logging 5 TestCampaign 10 RUNNABLE 30000 NO No Trunks EndPoints Lists 4 1310f 1 gt T 310f1 gt 1 10f 1 gt Trunk Endpoint Pos List Trunk a PHONE 999 59 s TestList lo e Reschedule Rules 1 100 A Rulo Onstatus Dou ane mode limes s Campaigns have many options you can set to control their behavior a detailed description is availble on the Campaigns Section 3 6 Campaigns chapter 2 7 Create reschedule rules While the campaign is selected take a second to add resechedule rules Basically they tell WD what to do in case a call does not go through You will typically w
81. ing too many of them as visible selectable items it is possible to set a hidden flag so that they disappear from normal views As happens with the campaigns you can enter a tilde symbol in the search box to see all lists including hidden ones All searches happen on both visible and hidden lists If you add calls to running campaigns through the APIs WD will create a list called CampaignName AUTO to which all of your new items will be added to This list is just a placeholder for those numbers and should not be run manually or added to existing campaigns It is possible to import and export data from lists through the GUI and it is possible to create new lists based on the final state of existing campaign runs from the Reports page A call list will store multiple instances of the same number and will dial them in succession so if you upload the same set of numbers multiple times you get them called multiple times As with other WD resources call lists can be proteced by Security keys 3 5 1 Call records A call record represents a single number to be dialed by WD Number is the number to be dialed Attributes are an optional set of variables that are sent or read from Asterisk during the call processing phase Attributes make WD very powerful input attributes are sent to Asterisk along the number and are availble at the dialplan level as standard channel variables and can also be used to compose the interrn
82. ion you might be asked to upgrade the database the dialer will not start until the database is up to date Database upgrades will be applied automatically 7 2 2 Manual upgrade Stopthe servlet container Download the latest version of WombatDialer as a tar gz package from the website Move the current wombat webapp to a storage place do not delete it Unpack the file in your servlet containers s webapps directory and rename the folder to wombat Download the MySQL Connector J jar file and add it under the WEB INF lib folder Copy the tof properties file from the old wombat webapp to wombat WEB INF Restart your servlet container When the update is complete on the first connection you might be asked to upgrade the database the dialer will not start until the database is up to date Database upgrades will be applied automatically 7 3 Starting and stopping If you installed using yum you should be able to run etc init d qm tomcat6 stop ete ima oW ewe tewwdcet6 stat to stop and start the Tomcat servlet container and thence WombatDialer If you installed manually see the user manual for your servlet container aN Before stopping always make sure that no calls are in progress and that the dialer is turned OFF If you have running campaigns you should pause them and wait for all relevant calls to terminate If not those calls will end up in status LOST 7 3 1 The dialer status at startup The dialer
83. iple times splitting its capacity again in the example you have a 15 channel trunk you might define it as two trunks in WD one having 10 channels and another having 5 Then you can assign each or even both to campaigns to control the maximum number of parallel outgoing calls A note on the dial string it must be a valid Asterisk channel name and the string num is replaced with the actual number being dialed So the following ones are valid examples DAHDI g0 0 num dial the number through group 0 of your PSTN interface prepending the digit zero SIP myprovider num dial the number through the SIP server myprovider defined in sip conf Local num from internal n dial the number as if was input on an local extension when using a popular Asterisk GUI When using channels of type Local Asterisk will sometimes change them during the call so that Wombat may lose them In n b order to avoid this we strongly suggest adding the option n at the end of the channel name so that it s never renamed The i GUI will display a warning message if you try to enter a Local channel that does not end in n 3 4 End points An end point is where a call goes after being answered on the trunk 12 WombatDialer Concepts Queue parameters Boost fact F a aleje ix Server is the Asterisk server the EP is on EP Type it can be QUEUE if it is an Asterisk queue see below or PHONE in all other cases
84. is happening on the PBX are paramount 5 2 Understanding QueueMetrics integration In order to turn on QueueMetrics integration you simply need to enable the dM COMPATIBLE logging option for WD campaigns This will tell WD to produce a log on each Asterisk system that closely resembles the one created by inbound calls on queues This log will be created with the following peculiarities the name of the queue is the name of the campaign that is the name that needs to be configured in QueueMetrics the agent name answering the call corresponds to the end point being used to place the call the extended call status reported to WD will be logged The most common case of QueueMetrics integration happens when you use an end point of type QUEUE to have outbound calls routed to agents through a queue In this case you will have two different queue entities producing data for QueueMetrics The queue that matches the campaign here you will see all calls that WD attempted the successful as well as the unsuccessful ones This is basicall the activity that WD performed and the actual telephone usage durations In a real life scenario the vast majority of calls will be unanswered If you run a report for the physical queue used you will see information about calls that were successfully connected and were actually queued You would expect to have a very low unanswered rate here if it is high it means something is not working as expected
85. ise Logged on are the number of successful log ons for this user and Last logon is the time this user last logged on successfully Comment and Token are free fields you can use to keep track of your users 3 9 3 Classes Classes are common profiles to be given to all users of a certain kind So you do not have to remember which keys to give users for each specific functionality but you can group them all together Ble je x Any class has the following properties Class name is the name used in the User Editor to choose the class Description is a long version of the class name Keys are a space separated set of keys that are granted to all users of this class 22 WombatDialer Concepts You can create new classes than the ones that ship with WD in order to fine tune access controls for your instance 3 9 4 The system log When something important happens in WombatbDialer it is written to the System Log The system log tracks Campaign lifecycle events User logins and log offs System errors wom ba t Bdemo Admin Administrator a er dialer m Home 3 System log viewer 4 12082 gt Date User Action m 2 3 2013 01 04 10 36 33 Brain nda Tui 2013 01 04 10 32 45 Brain Startup E 23 Chapter 4 Running WombatDialer 4 1 Understanding the GUI The WombatDialer GUI is made up of a set of editors there can be multiple editors on the same page An editor can disp
86. it You have to handle invalid numbers busy numbers and the like if we promised to call back the client we cannot just try once and forget about it You ll have to have a GUI of some kind for the manager to start and stop dialing You ll have to adapt to the number of available agents You ll have to report on this activities You ll have to avoid flooding the trunks of your PBX with too many calls In short it s the kind of thing that gets more complex the more you think about it That s what WombatDialer is for What we plan to do is to use WombatbDialer as the call back engine It can be controlled by an external HTTP API so you can do that from the Asterisk dial plan It has exact knowledge of the current set up and call back rules so you get the number of calls you expect on one or more Asterisk servers It can work with an existing PBX and does not interfere with calls that are not its own It keeps track of call completions and knows what to do in case of invalid and busy numbers It has reports of its own and can work with QueueMetrics for powerful and detailed reports A WombatDialer Cookbook The client uses Elastix as PBX system so we ll have to integrate it with WombatDialer No problem So what we do is First we create a normal queue for inbound We call it 400 Then we create a call back queue If our main queue is called 400 then let s call this second queue 401 The idea is that WD will monitor this queue when y
87. ive users must hold this key User can access the Live page User can run reports User can edit configuration and users User can view the system log User can view lists User can view campaigns LICKEY User can add edit licenses User can view the dialer status CTRL WBT User can start stop the dialer DEBUG AMI User can see the extended AMI status Do not turn on in production unless explicitly told so All other strings can be freely used as feature security keys 9 2 Default users The following users ship in the default database installation They are meant as a template you should create your own or at least change the default passwords Failure to do so isa major security risk Table 9 2 Default users 68 Chapter 10 For more information To know more about WombatDialer in your specific setting or inquire about commercial licences please feel free to contact Loway The latest version of WombatDialer can be found on the home page located at the address http wombatdialer com There is a WombatDialer section in the QueueMetrics users forum for mutual support troubleshooting and ideas at http forum queuemetrics com To stay updated on the latest developments of WombatDialer you may read our blog at http blog wombatdialer com join the Facebook group at http www facebook com WombatDialer read our Twitter feed at http twitter com WombatDialer 69
88. l completes naturally but its extended status is 0 no choice we retry it for up to three times after 300 seconds each e If a call completes naturally but its extended status is not 0 then it is not retried Campaigns Chat rent rece Tens cuo Deere o Mes Acte MPA 2M COMPATERE Yes 9j Trunks EndPoints Lists A PHONE Ors anges 4 pepureracts ets oj oj Reschedule Rules On elatus On contes states Metry anes Petry vate fw man teres LI TE Oe FOE 11 n AS MOAMSR XX EO 287 n R BUSY x IE AS EAROR xx x Pan r RS TMMEOUT ti Now it is time for us to start the campaign make sure the WD is running go to the Live page select your campaign and run it If all goes well you should start receiving calls on your test extension While the campaign is running you can add more calls to it via HTTP by issuing 44 A WombatDialer Cookbook curl http server 8088 wombat api calls index jsp op addcall amp campaign AppRemiders amp number 45678 HHZ TMM 1 5 and you can even specify a minimum time for calls to be placed at like e g curl http server 8088 wombat api calls index jsp op addcall amp campaign AppRemiders amp number 45678 amp attrs HH 12 MM 15 amp schedule 2012 06 01 10 00 00 When the campaign terminates it will be in IDLE state In order to close it first pause and then remove it After a succ
89. lay a set of records e g a list of servers campaigns or end points select a record in the set usually in order to load a dependent editor e g when you select a List then the editor for the numbers of that list will be enabled edit a record 4 1 1 Using editors Editors let you search by text in their items and let you sort data by clicking on the relevant columns When you are editing an item the following fuctions might be available amp e e 8 From left to right these icons mean Save current record Add a new record Clone the current record Delete the current record Know who created the current record when it was created who modified it last time and when it was last modified Sometimes when an editor has an item selected and it s impossible to unselect it it is then necessary to close the relevant tab and reopen it from the Home page 4 1 2 Hiding and deleting entities In many cases it will not be possible to delete records when you created them This is because such records are referenced by other records that cannot be deleted for example a campaign that has run cannot be delete anymore as it is referenced by the logs created during the run Still it would sometimes be useful to hide things you do not currently need So campaigns and lists have the concept of visibility you can make them invisible so they won t appear anymore in selection menus and on the main screens They will n
90. les and reserves it for the agent The agent uses a GUI where they can see the number to be dialed and typically embeds or links to an external CRM app so that they can review the call When the agent is ready they ask for the call to be either placed or skipped If the call is to be placed the agent is connected immediatately and listens to Music on Hold until the callee is on line If the call is not to be placed it is maked with a special code Reschedule rules apply so error states are handled correctly 6 8 1 Step 1 Installing Elastix In order to run this tutorial we install a brand new Elastix 2 4 system On it we create Three SIP extensions 300 301 and 302 We will use 302 as the agent extension while 301 and 300 will be used as sample end points One queue called 400 to hold our agent Note that calls will NOT be processed through the queue but we will use the queue to keep track of which agents are available When defining it we make sure that we set Ring Strategy rrmemory Event when called yes Member status yes so that WombatDialer can fully observe it 6 8 2 Step 2 Installing WombatDialer We install WombatDialer on the Elastix system using yum When we log in we create 55 A WombatDialer Cookbook An Asterisk server that can talk to Elastix We can use the AMI user admin with the default password you gave during the system installation A trunk named named Trunk which
91. ling the dialer deen ener teens ens sted age cide edad een Eqs ious OP ee DER ae Oleo Hp ie seed arte 24 4 3 osi irrst m 25 4 4 RUNNING CAMPAIGN reports ss tde dapt didani teta 29 4 5 Importing and exporting call liStS i isc ner menn seh tock test eina exp Rar sents 31 4 6 2 2 A EAE AEN a AEN EE 33 5 QueueMetrics integration pete io ae pipe Rr de DER ERA E do E ERRORS EY ERE qe ERE Oe UE Pax PEE RR eee 35 5 1 Installation 35 5 2 Understanding QueueMetrics integration mm m meme ment e enm hee ener nnn 35 Realtime mionitoring 22 tree rete n Rd ea ae RR ERR TERRI a eR ERES IRR RR ERR ERREUR ERR ERR PER E dA 35 5 4 Reporting EET 36 5 5 Using the agent s REM ERN 36 6 A WombatDialer Cookbook 2 tta toe RR LERRA AER OE Ede pia ERA ee pRE d 37 6 1 Asocial media dialer sie estes rrr re tien e pana aa gea EROR IRE RR RR Ped ERE I
92. ll a campaign to be started a running campaign or a closed campaign For example here is what you would see by selecting a connected call Home Lists Campaigns mem License 6650660 es 15 Cate places poemas 232 Cat etc caw 92 1 emang cats 7240 Available Campaigns Number Originate Connect Trunk End point Retry SS Running Campaigns 2000037 14 14 06 Xtwotact 8432121468 Client A RUNNING 130108 14 11 47 37 1963 2100111 14 13 55 14 14 04 Xtwotact E 2525232574 Client B PAUSED 2100115 15 19 67 2 Xt wotact s 2778778473 130109 14 11 53 70094 Client C RUNNING 2100117 14 13 59 T2 Xt wotact Lu 2743337555 1301 08 14 12 09 1192881 2100119 1414 00 141407 T2 Xt wotact Li 2220575475 2100120 14 14 00 T2 Xtwotact a1 2414543672 2100122 14 14 01 141406 T2 Xtwotact a 2824567241 2100123 12 14 03 Xt Lu 2824228713 2100124 14 14 03 T Xtwotact Lu 2278122455 2100127 14 14 05 2 Xtwotact 2567356126 a m m m z M 4 1166015 Details Campaign C ent C Number diallod 2100111 Retry 0 On trunk T On end point Xt wotact Server E19 Wombat ID 525222574 Asterisk ID 1357650835 31608 Channel Lcc3 210011 amp dialin 624e 1 state CONNECTEO Originated at 2013 Jan 8 14 13 55 Connected at 2013 Jan 8 14 14 04 Closed at amp Recently Closed Campaigns And here is what you would see by selecting
93. losed Runs Current sort order By name ascending By name descending C By creation ascending By creation descending The selection you make will be applied to all campaigns and runs while the page is open 4 3 2 Using dynamic lists Right from the Live page you can control the lists that are run on a campaign You can access this information by clicking on the Lists button next to a campaign run details You can add new lists to a running campaign pause and unpause lists on existing campaigns and see how far lists were processed so far If you stop all lists on a run that does not IDLE on termination the campaign run will simply terminate make sure this is what you want to do 4 3 3 Color codes used for live calls Table 4 1 Live calls C A complete description of a call s life cycle be found in call s life cycle Section 3 7 2 A call s life cycle 4 3 4 Color codes used for campaign runs Table 4 2 Campaign runs 28 Running WombatDialer MM C A complete description of a call s life cycle can be found in chapter A campaign run s life cycle Section 3 7 1 A run s life cycle 4 4 Running campaign reports You can use WombatDialer to get hands on details on the activities it performed wombat dialer Boemo Admin Administrator Fale Activity reports by campaign Running cate 1 01 02 00 00 00 To date
94. may not work on older browsers The CSV file must be created so that The first line of the file contains the labels for attributes THe first label should be NUM or NUMBER The first column must contain the numbers to be dialed Subsequent columns will contain attributes if any 4 5 3 Exporting call lists You can export a call list in textual format By pressing on the Export calls button while a list is selected you get a new text page with data in the format ING iL EIS 5551235 X 3203 10 55512367 3 8 20 9x 8 20 5551 2 57 X 8 SO 2x8 10 All current attributes inbound and outbound are reported If you click on Export CSV the export file will be downloaded as a CSV file 4 6 The License page You can access the License page by clicking on the key icon on the top right of the WombatDialer instance 33 Running WombatDialer wom ba t amp DOemo Admin Padministrator ge dialer Home cen 3 WombatbDialer 0 6 4 Licenses Key Licensee Valid from Expires on State Channels DEMOO070 DEMO WombatDialer 070 2012 12 18 2013 12 18 REVOKED Ch 2 LOWAYTEST Test Loway 2013 01 08 2014 01 08 ACTIVE Ch 60 MAddpewRcense ay Max licensed channels 50 WombatDialer home page hitp wombatdialer com Loway home page http www loway ch Software version 0 64 Software build 4412012 12 19 13 34 Loway TPF TPF 212
95. mcat will do we strongly suggest using a Sun JDK Download the latest version of WombatDialer as a tar gz package from the website Unpack the file in your servlet containers s webapps directory and rename the folder to wombat Download the MySQL Connector J jar file and add it under the WEB INF lib folder Restart your servlet container Example manual installation on Debian Ubuntu The following example was tested on an Ubuntu 12 10 system First make sure you are running your shell as as root First install Sun s JDK WD should also work with OpenJDK add apt repository ppa webupd8team java apt get update apt get install oracle java7 installer Install general dependencies Apache Tomcat the MySQL Connector J package MySQL server and client apt get install tomcat7 apt get libmysql java apt get install mysql server apt get install mysql client Make sure you can connect to MySQL as root by issuing mysql uroot p mysql You need to know the default MySQL password in order to install the database If you do not know the root password for MySQL you can reset it manually by following the instructions at http ubuntu flowconsult at en mysql set change reset root password 58 Administering WombatDialer We are now ready to proceed with the installation you will likely need to edit the download URL for the WombatDialer package cd var lib tomcat7 webapps wget http www wombatdialer com download Wombat
96. n campaigns ERROR this campaign is marked as an error Cannot be started but visible Idles on termination whether this campaign terminates when out of numbers or will live on waiting for more numbers to be added via the API Batch size The number of calls to be placed that are cached in memory when reading from the database They should be roughly 2x the size of outgoing trunks Security key is the optional key that protects this resource Start active period the time of day after which this campaign can place calls End active period the time of day before which this campaign can place calls Allowed Days of Week the days of the week that the campaign is allowed to run on Answer timeout if the number dialed does not answer within this period expressed in milliseconds consider the call to be a NOANSWER Forced closure the maximum length of this call in seconds If reached the call is forcibly closed and set to status TIMEOUT Set to zero to turn off Dial CLID the caller id to use for this campaign Agent CLID the caller id that will be set on the end point This might for example be the internal code of the campaign or the name of the called person Dial account the account code that will be used by Asterisk when writing CDR records Dial presentation The number to set as call presentation that is the number that callees are expected to see as the caller id This may be overridden by your pro
97. n easy feat to pull off when starting from a callfile The first thing your client notices is that calls end up using an unpredicatble amount of lines as they basically have an office PBX people cannot dial in because at peak times your script is saturating all outgoing channels Management is not happy and you have to keep track of trunk usage not only your own but your client s as well Then your client notices that those calls should not be made outside business hours a customer might require a call at night but there must be someone at their offices in order to call back So you have to implement a calendar in your custom application Now that you have the calendar your client notices that calls are generated at inconvenient times sometimes all of their service reps are sitting idle and other times they are all busy and calls keep piling up So you have to edit your scripts to keep track of the current end point statuses and decide when it is a good time to call Just at this point they start to saturate their existing PBX so they need to set up a cluster of boxes and they want your application to handle this And while you are at it what about usage statistics and why not running different outbound services at once and did they tell you they need to integrate their existing CRM and could you add predictive capabilities to the set and It looks like a nightmare And it actually is been there done that That s why WombatDialer
98. n of items to be added to camapigns Live monitoring Reporting The following rules apply Elements are visible both to users holding the required key and to their creator even if he does not hold the required key in order to avoid locking yourself out Elements having no keys will be visible to everyone Key security is not transitive that is if you can observe a campaign you can observe it in its entirety even if say one of the trunks it uses is protected with a key you do not hold 3 9 2 Users A user is some person who can log on to WombatDialer user ix aamcacmin 2 _ Realname Demo Admin Enabled ves 0 Has Master key No Class User keys Loggedon Lastlogon 20130102 18 59 28 Comment Token mekle ix They have the following properties Login and Password are used to log on from the main page Real Name is displayed on the WombatDialer page Enabled may be toggled to avoid a user logging on without deleting it E mail The user s e mail address Master key if set to yes all security checks are bypassed You should only set it to yes for testing and debugging Class is a pre defined set of keys that is used for this user Any user must have a class User keys are additional keys granted to this user They are space separated If keys are prefixed with a minus sign they are revoked if present in their class and ignored otherw
99. n through that queue Now log on to WombatDialer create an EndPoint of type Queue set for queue 999 and its entry point in the dialplan to 123580 f rom internal custom Do not forget to set the Boost factor to 1 and the Maximum queue length to 2 Edit end point On server A20 X EP Type Queue Phone 999 Max Channels fo N Located at Extension Rs NR Located at Context Queue parameters Boost factor f Max waiting calls Then create a campaign called QmSample that idles on termination Edit campaign Campaign name omsamie s lt CsSSSC C S Priority fo Campaign status RNNRE v Idles on termination Yes z Batch size calls fo Active Period Start hour HHHMMSS 000000 End hour HHHMMSS 235959 Allowed DOWs 1 Sun 1234567 7 Sat Call placing details Answer timeout ms Boo Forced closure s do Dial CLID Dial account E Dial presentation Logging Additional logging _ v HTTP notification URL amp je eJ Set the trunks the EP we just created add no lists and define any reschedule rules you need The end result should look like the following 49 A WombatDialer Cookbook wOmbAt Boome Admin gi advanced VoiP diater Live O Sees uss Campaigns 4 4 T4ct4 Channel name Priory Teneowt A
100. necting multiple trunks and end points residing on multiple servers you can scale this example up to hundreds of parallel lines If you have clients living in different time zones you could have multiple campaigns active with different time windows to place calls Itis often a good idea to set call attributes that are not actually used by Asterisk e g a patient ID but make life easier for third party Systems to find out what the call was about The Google TTS script used is available at http zaf github com asterisk googletts 6 4 Understanding queue end points An end point of type queue in Wombat tries to determine the number of available channels based on the number of available agents on the queue it is observing An agent is considered available if it is logged on to the queue is not paused and is not currently in conversation After getting the number of available agents it multiplies it by the boost factor that is used to account for the success rate in connecting the numbers to be dialed and tries to schedule as many calls Therefore if you have e g 7 available agents and a boost factor of 1 3 it will try to connect to 9 numbers at once 7 x 1 3 9 1 46 A WombatDialer Cookbook It will also enforce two limits If there are more than max waiting calls waiting on a queue it will not try and place new calls in theory there should never be calls queued as they follow the number of availble agents but it is poss
101. ng 20 usr bin php root WombatDialerExamples AutoRecall autoRecall php This is how a simple run looks like the scripts logs its activity to STDOUT so you may want to redirect it to some log file for the keeping S gt php autoRecall php Finding applicable period Loading call log file for 2013 01 24 MOONE oie claica lexeuwecer 203 9 003 52 21 4 00 7 854218 3 3 20 S 0L 24 4 1 58 54 g 33 on server 10 10 5 25 queues 300 54 A WombatDialer Cookbook Query took 0 seconds 201 call lost 2013 01 24 15246839 Adding 201 to campaign cl on WombatDialer Saving call log After running this you should see that new numbers are added to an AUTO call list like the one shown in the following screenshot and if the campaign is not paused and agents are availble on the recall queue calls will be dialed as needed Home Live MESA servers o Call lists Numbers for list c1 AUTO 120f2 gt 130f3 gt List name Hidden Number Attributes 203 gt 9 9 203 b 9 J Upload list of numbers Export call list 6 7 6 Improving the solution In order to run this solution in a real life scenario you should edit the campaign in order to set up a time window that matches your agents presence and when it is customarily allowed to recall For example even if a call is queued at 11 PM on a Saturday night a recall might be acceptable only on Mond
102. once If more calls are completed successfully than the available agents the remaining calls are held waiting on the queue The boost factor is applied only on the number of calls that should be made to saturarte agents that do not have a call currently in progress for them Max waiting calls if there are more than this number of calls waiting on the queue then stop making calls The number of waiting calls is computed as the number of available channels on the queue minus the numbers of calls currently waiting as Asterisk will report a call to be waiting even when it s being connected In theory there should never be calls queued as they follow the number of availble agents but it is possible that either some agent logs off after being counted or some calls reach a queue without passing through WD This also acts as a counterbalance to high boost factor values 13 WombatDialer Concepts Reverse dialing check to make this EP use Reverse dialing see below for Dialing mode Preview check to use Preview mode only valid in Reverse mode In addition to these parameters the maximum capacity of the EPs is used so if you have a queue with 100 agents but you set the EPs capacity to 10 WD will never use more than 10 lines on this EP at once General Asterisk tips for using Queue endpoints In order to use WD effectively with a queue the following guidelines are best followed though WD works with static member channels if you wan
103. ook If you look at the Live page on WombatDialer the call should appear as Reserved When the agent clicks on Dial the call should start Once the agent answers your dialer will try and connect the other extension When dialing the Live page will show what is going on wombat amp oemo sm Pacministratee 2 dialer Home Lists Campaigns 1 0 o 2 Up000738 P Available Campaigns Camp Number Originate Connect Trunk End point Retry Agent R Outbound MyRoverseOutbound a x 16 4 Trunk L s IP 13 06 06 16 38 24 8 46 00 SiP 302 4 4 tioi Details Campaign MyReverseOutbound Start 5 Running Campaigns z 56 Recently Closed Campaigns And the same thing will happen on the Agent s page ix Agent 302 Individual agents S O OG F a elastix QueueMetrics cali center monitor Home tne Chiamate attive per l agente Agent 302 PRERIO Agente loggato ve ogie 400 Ricanca ora na Aggiungt alla Lascia coda Pausa Fine pausa Chiama Inizio Atesa Chiamante Coda URL Trast Risultato 05 6 164550 10 x6 9 Wombat Nice work isnt t it 6 8 5 Improving the solution You can add PSTN numbers to your lists and the will be dialed as if the had been entered on a local extension If you want WombatDialer to dial without waiting for an agent decision just remove the Manual preview check and restart the d
104. ot be deleted though you can still search them by name and you can get a complete view of all records including deleted ones by searching for 4 2 Controlling the dialer From the main page you can control the status of the dialer process Dialer status w 4 Iv X Up 00 01 10 State READY T State READY 245 Snt 0 Licensed channels 100 A19 CONNECTED Att 1 14 02 SP CampaignWithQueue RUNNING 1 12 25 42 S Tk Free 89 of 100 EP q1 QUEUE Free 0 of 11 Idie 50 00 w2 U 11 24 Running WombatDialer You can see how long the dialer has been used its current status and the entities currently loaded that is the campaigns trunks and end points being used The dialer is lazy and loads entities only when needed so entities do not appear until they are actually used The check box next to the Reload button is used to set the control in auto reload mode this way the current state of the dialer is refreshed automatically every 5 seconds You should see for the dialer the current state usually DOWN or READY and the number of licensed channels For each PBX whether it is successfully connected or not For each running campaign the current status the total number of calls placed Att and the size of the current reschedule buffer Rtr plus the date when the run was started For each trunk the total capacity and the current used channels A green red icon shows whether the
105. otifications section Section 8 4 HTTP life cycle notifications of calls without delaying the main dialer Both the dialer and the GUI use a persistence layer that reads and writes to the MySQL database used for long term persistence and log tracking 3 2 Asterisk servers WombatDialer can control activities on multiple Asterisk servers at once It does so by keeping a control channel open with each server through its Asterisk Manager Interface AMI for short Each server is managed independently and in case of failure does not stop the rest of WD from running Servers can be on the same network as WD is or can be in remote locations When editing an Asterisk server the following information is required Server description the name that this server will appear under in WD Server address the PBX server s name or IP address AMI port the port that Asterisk s AMI interface uses Default 5038 Login and Password the login and password for the AMI user Unit length and Max msg per unit these settings work as congestion control on the AMI port Security key is the key that will protect this resource Leave blank if not needed 3 2 1 How congestion control works In order to avoid flooding the PBX with too many messages at once WD uses the concept of Time Unit this is a period of time in which no more than a fixed number of messages can be sent For example using the default values if WD has to star
106. ou have members on this queue then WD will start placing calls This way an inbound call center with multiple queues will find it very natural to have some agents join and leave a call back queue When you creet this queue make sure you set Ring Strategy rrmemory Event When Called Yes Member Status Yes Autofill yes so that WD can use it effectively we create a piece of dialplan that will handle the exits from queue 400 and will gather the telephone number we create a new custom extension 399 that will jump in the dialplan at Local 1 9queue leavenumber In Elastix we create an IVR menu and set it as a destination for queue 400 This menu has only one option 1 that basically jumps to the custom extension 399 that we just created in order to call our script we go back to the queue 400 and set its Fail Over Destination as our IVR we just created We start by editing the extensions custom conf file in our system adding a new stanza like queue leavenumber exten gt 1 1 NoO0p exten gt 1 n Start agi googletts agi Please enter your telephone number and we will call you back en exten gt 1 n agi googletts agi The number must be composed of 7 digits en exten gt 1 n Read CBNUM beep 7 2 5 exten gt 1 n NoOp Num CBNUM exten gt 1 n Gotolf LEN CBNUM 7 lenOk exten gt 1 n agi googletts agi The number you entered has the wrong number GuE Chiguics 1
107. phase to actually dial our own SIP phone to do this we create a new context called dialout that routes any number to our extension dialout exten gt X ljDuel SIP 590 SSSI gt _ jp ily MEI QUO We reload Asterisk to pick up the dial plan changes Then we log in in WombatDialer and configure it so that AS is our Asterisk server We create a trunk called Out on server AS that points to our telephone We enter Local num dialout as its dial string and set its capacity to 1 so we never receive more than one call 38 A WombatDialer Cookbook We create an end point called Msg on our server AS with extension 1008 telecast and a capacity that is enough for the campaign let s say 10 lines Your configuration will look like the following screenshot wOmbAt Bomo dmi lra advanced VoiP dialer Home Asterisk servers Description Adress ron Login AS 10 03 199 wombat 6 40 s Trunks 2 Mame Asters Server Dia string Capacity oa i rc i LocavVinerm aicut We F Tic AS Locaw Sinan 3 ts End Points a Channel name Aster serwer 1 onnon Capacity PHONE A5 100 nroa 2 PHONE Mag AS 1O0 Dtenecast o d I At this point we create a new List called Test and add only one number to it you may enter the number as 0916300000 user 10 friends 100 This uploads the number and associates the variables user with value 10 and friends with
108. ple amp number 2000136 amp attrs ID 2301 PERS John Doe Note that you associate two parameters ID that is a unique id used by your CRM and PERS that is the called person s name You could also add additional parameters you may need e g a person s class or their thelephone number What happens now is that when the call goes through its caller id is rewritten as 2301 John Doe as soon as it reaches Asterisk When your agent receives the call they will reload the agent s page and the pop up will be immediately opened 50 A WombatDialer Cookbook apes amp O0 2 7 tour Logi QueueMetrics Active calls for agent ag 501 Agent n o6 Qerveo v vr Rae ho Log en Log ef Add Member Renne enter Pause Unpavse ILL Wense Taie Calw Done uia EL mn eu pte m etr 1 ro ent Cal Deals Signal Protiem Secoetary 10 106 5 10 lenz wombothopup 232301 Pian Wombat Agent Panel Person e john doe ID 2921 Agent 501 141712940 7 In the pop up you parse the caller field and extract your CRM id so you can use this for your external application to display the correct data From the agent s page you can also manually open other forms for recent calls The agent will also see the person s name in QueueMetrics so this makes their life easier The agent may also set a manual st
109. queue how many of them are currently available that is neither in conversation nor paused how many calls are currently queued without being answered The difference between the number of available agents and the number of calls queued is taken as the current capacity of the queue This value is computed in real time so the EP will immediately respond to changes in state to its agent set and to calls queued Please note that you can use a single queue both for inbound and outbound activity if the number of free agents exceeds the number of queued calls WD will try and fill in the rest This makes it easy to implement small blended inbound outboung call centers If the number of free agents is below the number of calls waiting WD will not place any call and will wait until there are free slots on the queue This way calls are in general distribuited to agents as soon as they are queued if the number of available agents is not enough to serve calls at once e g because some logged off or pause in the meantime then calls are queued and picked up by available agents when they become free Queue EPs have a few additional parameters that control their behavior Boost factor as most of the calls in a campaign are going to be unanswered it is often effective to have WD place a number of calls that is a multiple of available agents For example if you have a boost factor of 1 5 and 4 available agents it will try and place 6 calls at
110. queue end point as described for example in Elastix Queue call backs with WombatDialer Section 6 6 Elastix queue call backs and make sure everything is working Create a new campaign for calling back people set its Idles on termination property to yes and make the logging QueueMetrics compatible This way the campaign can run until needed waiting for more numbers to be added when idle Do not add any call list as we will load numbers to be called through the WombatDialer APIs Before you start scheduling recalls your campaign should look like the following one 53 A WombatDialer Cookbook Home FTP usis9 servers 9 0 6 100 Up 604 0526 Available Campaigns Camp Number Originate Connec Trunk End point Retry WBT ID R ing C igns c1 IDLE 13 01 24 15 27 31 60 You might also want to pause it so you can decide when to run it 6 7 4 Step 3 The script Scripting QueueMetrics and WombatDialer is really easy It can be done in any language we chose PHP as it is well known has good XML RPC support to query QueueMetrics and is very simple to edit and customize We created a sample script that can easily be downloaded from GitHub as you will likely edit this to suit your needs feel free to fork a new project and work on that Our script is available from https github com Loway WombatDialerExamples in a folder named AutoRecall The following parameters should be edited in the script Scu sesver Wi0 10 5513
111. r demo keys as only one can be active at a given time Any disabled keys will appear in state REVOKED 34 Chapter 5 QueueMetrics integration QueueMetrics is a powerful call center reporting suite that can be used together with WD for extensive and accurate reporting of the whole call center activity inbound and outbound QueueMetrics offers strong analytic capabilities with over 150 elements computed live monitoring of agent status quality review and assessment of calls access to call recordings a powerful agent panel and many more features QueueMetrics can be found at http queuemetrics com WombatDialer and QueueMetrics do different things but together can be a very powerful call center solution e WombatDialer is able to use a Queue as and end point in order to connect calls to a set of agents e QueueMetrics is able to monitor extensively the queue and provides a convenient agent interface that works well with WombatDialer 5 1 Installation Both QueueMetrics and WD can be installed on the same server that may or may not be the same server running the PBX If installed automatically through yum they will share the same Tomcat instance As QueueMetrics is a CPU and memory intensive application as you could run reports on millions of calls at once it might be better to put each application on its own virtual or physical machine in order to avoid slowing down WD for which timely responses to what
112. r verification services 1 3 2 Telemarketing Send a pre recorded message to a list of contacts and offer them an option to be put in contact with an operator if interested When required a maximum call duration can be enforced Appointment reminders and cancellations for physicians dentists etc Track subscription expirations and process renewals Product offerings Debt tracking and collection 1 3 3 Voice conferencing Ever tried setting up a conference call with many attendants WombatDialer can connect them all in parallel at the click of a button no more wasted time and manually dialing busy numbers Connect tens or hundreds of parties at once Different parties can have different access levels e g some may speak and some may only listen Virtual town hall 1 3 4 Automated phone interviews Connect to a group of receivers and offer them a set of IVR options reverse IVR WombatDialer keeps track of selected options and forwards them to your tracking system Automated service satisfaction interviews Quality Assessment of your services Instant automated polling stations Chapter 2 Getting started with WombatDialer Using WombatDialer is easy once you get the hang of how it works In order to work profitably with it there are a few prerequisites that you should be aware of e WombatDialer drives one or more Asterisk PBX s and uses them to place calls You should have the logins and passwords of t
113. relevant PBX is online or not For each EP the total and used capacity A green red icon shows whether the relevant PBX is online or not For Queue EPs a number of additional entries are displayed You can see the number of free agents in respect to the currect queue capacity the number of idle entities the overdialing channels O D the number of queued calls that are ringing or waiting to be connected W and the used channels U If dialing is currently not allowed because the queue has too many waiting calls the string BK W is displayed A list of statuses that are reported by the queue AS and a set of statuses that are computed by Wombat C A list of queued calls if any A list of agents working on the queue and their current status Paused Talking Ringing Idle or Error When you restart the dialer all state is synchronized to disk and all entities are reloaded In general the dialer is supposed to start automatically when the system starts see Dialer startup for more information on the issue 4 2 1 Observing Asterisk queues When an EP of type Queue is used its status should immediately reflect the state of the underlying queue a Dialer status 1S Upro0 08 25 Status READY GB state READY ca A19 CONNECTED RUNNING A Before using those EPs it is advisable to run limited test to make sure the configuration is working order In order to run such a tes
114. rent dialing modes Direct dialing is the default and works with extension and queue end points When doing direct dialing WD will first try to connect the callee and will then route the call to a local extension that may or may not be a queue This is fine for delivering voice messages or for situations where any agent can process any call When working with call queues this dialing mode might introduce a slight delay as the call has to be answered by the agent not usually a big deal but it might be there Reverse dialing has WombatDialer connecting the agent first and then placing the call This is less effective in terms of agent efficiency than direct dialing as the agent has to wait for the call to connect The big advantage is that when the callee picks up he is immediately on line with your agent Reverse preview dialing has the agent reviewing the call before the call is made This may happen through the API or by using a special page that WD offers A number is reserved when an agent is to dial it and the agent has 10 minutes to accept it and have it placed or skip it Calls skipped are marked as such and not retried unless you set up a reschedule rule to have them retried Calls for which a decision is not made within 10 minutes are simply returned to the pool of callable numbers When using reverse dialing vanilla or preview WombatDialer uses a queue to keep track of agent presence This lets you manage log ons log offs agen
115. retry after a few seconds The current Asterisk status is propagated to the entities that belong to that instance that is its trunks end points and queues If there are calls being processed while an Asterisk system becomes unreachable WD will try and reconcile them to the current status as soon as the system comes back up This should work even if WD is restarted in the meantime 3 3 Trunks A trunk is a set of lines that are addressed as a single logical entity They can be a set of physical lines like a DAHDI interface in Asterisk or a set of logical lines like a connection to your SIP provider or to another PBX It may be one single line as well if nothing else is available Asterisk server is the name of the PBX on which this trunk is located Name is a logical name for the trunk to appear in WD Dial string is the actual Asterisk channel name that WD will invoke see below Capacity is the number of parallel calls that WD can dial Make sure you do not exceed the trunk s physical capacity Security key is the key that will protect this resource Leave blank if not needed You do not need to define all the trunks that are on your PBX or to define them to their full capacity For example if you have a 15 channel E1 to your telco you might define the trunk in WD as being a 10 channel one so that you can use the rest with your PBX without any special rule It is also perfectly legal to define a physical trunk mult
116. rks like Facebook or Google So every time someone befriends one of their clients we want WombatDialer to call the client telling them their current number of friends The call would say something like Hello Customer 1234 has 127 friends Goodbye This example shows a couple of features that are not trivial to implement on most dialers notably The message will be customized with a number of parameters so that each client receives a personalized version and not just a pre recorded note The dialer starts calling on demand when something happens and handles reschedules internally In order to implement this we start by editing the Asterisk dialplan and create a couple of new contexts The first one is called telecast and is used to generate the message being played telecast exten gt 100 1 Wait 1 exten gt 100 2 Answer exten gt 100 n Playback hello world exten gt 100 n Playback agent loginok exten gt 100 n SayDigits 5 exten gt 100 n Playback vm youhave exten gt 100 n SayDigits friends exten gt 100 n Playback vm Friends exten gt 100 n Playback vm goodbye exten gt 100 n Hangup As you can see the context above introduces two channel variables user 5 friends that are placeholders for the user id of our client and the number of friends they currently have As a convenience when testing we want all numbers dialed during the test
117. rom the editor so that you don t have to see them all of the time They are still present on the database and may be found again by entering a search string It will match all campaigns including hidden ones this way it easy to access them and un hide them if necessary entering a single tilde in the campaign search box This will display all campaigns whether they are hidden or not 3 6 2 Using attributes in Caller Ids WombatDialer lets you enter placeholder values in the Dial CLID Agent Dial account and Caller presentation fields These values are expanded when a call is actually being connected using the values of attributes set for the number dialed For example you may be dialing number 5551234 to reach mr White You may upload a list of numbers setting the attribute NAME to the name of the person called and you may want the caller id changed when the call reaches your agents so that they see WHITE instead of the campaign s caller id Or you may dial a list of numbers by setting an unique call presentation for each of them In order to do this you have to specify attributes to be expanded For example if you set the agent CLID of your campaign to C1 NAME agents will see on their phone C1 WHITE C1 SMITH and so on You may use multiple variables in the same ID so that you can pass along a practice ID or the code used to find the person called in your CRM Together with the custom attributes you manuall
118. rtant to understand the impact of different boost factor settings in general having more calls made than agents may result in calls waiting in queue when all of your agents are busy in call center parlance this is usually referred as nuisance calls WombatDialer tries to minimize the impact of this case by continuously monitoring the number of calls waiting on the queue and avoiding placing new calls if there are too many If you don t want to have cases where calls are not immediately connected to an agent you should leave the boost factor to 1 that is place no more calls than available agents The trade off here is that agents end up being under used as they have to wait for a successful call to come in We then create a test trunk upload a list of test numbers and create a campaign called friends as in the previous examples we now start the dialer and start the campaign from the Live page When we start running it we notice that it does not seem to work the campaign is running but no calls are placed How comes If we reload the current Dialer status we see that it is saying that the queue has 0 channels available this is because there are no agents on the queue If we log an agent on e g by entering 999 on Elastix we will notice that WombatDialer starts dialing If you pause an agent or log him off WombatDialer will immediately react and adapt to the changed number of available end point channels Another thing that we do is to
119. s what the campaign is for If the callee is interested they press 1 to be put in conversation with a volunteer that will explain how to send a donation This setting leads to two huge efficiency boosters As numbers are dialled automatically and error conditions are handled behind the scenes a lot of drudge work with paper and telephone keyboards is automated no more post it notes to recall a busy number As they noticed that about 50 of the calls made manually result in calls to busy numbers or numbers where nobody picks up and that only 50 of the callees are actually interested after an initial interview they expect that 75 calls out of every 100 they make can be screened out automatically So if they have 4 volunteers on shift WombatDialer could start 16 calls at once on average and have all of our volunteers busy most of the time with people who are actually interested in contributing In order to implement such a campaign with WombatDialer we start by creating a call queue that will hold our agents and will send them calls You can use any Asterisk GUI to do this in the example below we use Elastix but you can choose the one that suits you best We go to Queues Create new set the extension for the queue as 999 enter any name you want and look on the settings below so that Strategy is set to rrmemory Queue events yes this is very important if you don t do this Wombat won t be able to observe your queue at all
120. strator la dialer Home Lists Campaigns FT License fia m 3 F lt E vus 15 27 70 ic 4339 Available Campaigns Number Originate Connect Trunk End point Retry WBT ID A 2000010 14 12 00 Tt Xtwbtact 1 2864657356 Al 2000012 14 12 03 veste 2127645317 2000014 14 12 04 Campaign Client C started 3941341602 2000013 14 12 04 141206 TI Xtwotact 2842326161 e 2000016 14 12 08 Xtwotact 2464718437 2200010 14 11 58 14 12 00 T2 Xbwotact 2424523683 2200012 14 11 59 T2 Xtwetact 2573572315 2200014 2 Xtwetact a 2565625128 vs 2200016 14 12 04 T2 Xtwotact s 2563754887 2200018 14 12 04 2 Xtwetact m 2242362846 manaman m zi 1 15 0716 gt Details Campaign C Stat B Running Campaigns s amp Recently Closed Campaigns The top part of the page displays a set of doughnut graphs showing The active channels per Asterisk servers involved Each Asterisk server is displayed in a different color and you can see which is which by hovering over it The status of calls on trunks This shows how many calls are in each state The usage of trunks by campaigns The relative number of calls per each trunk The usage of end points by campaign An estimated number of remaining calls divided by campaigns This number is estimated as it is impossible to know in advance how many recalls will be necessary to
121. t create a campaign with a Queue endpoint You may create it IDLE and add no call lists as we do not need the campaign to do anything special run that campaign reload the Dialer status in order to see if the queue is being observed you have to click on the reload icon manually each time If the queue is present you should see it something saying Free 4 of 7 W 2 This means that WD is seeing 7 agents connected of which 4 are free where 4 is the result of multiplying the actual number of observd channels by its boost factor and that there are 2 calls waiting on the queue You should be able to see the current agents and waiting calls if any the queue is processing try and log on log off pause and unpause an agent You should see the number of free and available channels change accordingly Try also sending calls to the queue and see if the number of free agents and of waiting calls is correct try also placing calls from some agent extensions and see if the number of free channels reflects this correctly if you plan to have agents working on multiple queues at once run the tests above while the agents are logged on in at least two queues and make sure statues are updated correctly 4 3 The Live page The Live page lets you interactively control and monitor what the dialer is doing You will be able to see at once all the Runs of Campaigns that you can access 25 Running WombatDialer wombat Boemo Admin Admini
122. t s n agi googletts agi Boo the appointment was cancelled Scena gt Sym Bleue Notable points in the code above are Custom call attributes HH and MM are passed along with the phone number so we can know what to tell each client We set the call status to 0 1 or 2 0 means that the call was connected but no choice was made 1 means that the appointment is confirmed and 2 is that it is cancelled We generate some UserEvents in order to populate the outbound that is coming from outbound attribute APP T with the patient s choice 43 A WombatDialer Cookbook We now have to create an end point for our campaign that points at extension s drst rangelove so that WombatDialer knows where to connect successful calls We will also need at least one trunk to send calls through to get us started it is advisable to have a dummy trunk routing everything to a local extension If you have not already done so it would be advisable at this point to have a look at our previous tutorial Section 6 1 A social media dialer to see how to create and control a simple campaign When done we create a new Campaign to connect all pieces together wOmbAt Bonon denne GER Baler ome Campaigns Mu came ADOS Lage eee cme a te natn esl Trunks En 9 rm em we Lists Actes Perot e ma LA End r
123. t 100 calls at once it will send no more than 5 requests to Asterisk every 50 ms and will queue the rest for the next time unit This still amounts to a respectable rate of about 100 messages per second though multiple messages are needed to track a call s lifecycle 11 WombatDialer Concepts The difference is hardly ever noticeable from a human point of view but sometimes the PBX might crash if it receives too many requests at once If your PBX runs on low end hardware you may want to reduce the number of messages per unit on the other side if your PBX is on a high end server you may want to increase it In general the defaults work fine in the majority of cases 3 2 2 Do I have to configure Asterisk to work with WombatDialer You need to tell Asterisk that WD is allowed to connect and send commands Our suggestion is to have a dedicated AMI user on each machine so it is easier to keep track of which applications are connected to the PBX at a given time You could e g have a stanza in your etc asterisk manager conf file like the following one wombat secret dials read system call log verbose command agent user originate write system call 109 verbose command agent user originate 3 2 3 What is the Asterisk status When WD is running it will display the current Asterisk status if a successful connection is possible then the Asterisk instance will be UP otherwise it will be DOWN and WD will simply
124. t of dialed calls interactively is useful to undertsnad what went on but someti