VICIDIAL Installation

[D]

We have installed VICIDIAL and are wondering on how to input or import data into MySQL. Did not see any documentation on it.


We are trying to use it with Asterisk and VOIP. Do we need to install a Soft Phone separately for the dialer to dialer to work or can it work without a soft phone? Our temination provider supports SIP and H323.

I look forward to your response.

Thanks

[mflorell]

Have you read through the SCRATCH_INSTALL document?

leads can be loaded in through the lead loader, linked form the LISTS section of the vicidial/admin.php page.

What kind of dialing are you trying to do with VICIDIAL?

[D]

We are trying to do lead generation using a predictive dialer that would take care of ans machines, wrong numbers, fax tones, etc and for the most part only forward the live calls to the agents. We would be using VOIP - SIP and asterisk pbx.

Do we need to install separate soft phones on each machine for the dialer to work?

Thanks

[mflorell]

VICIDIAL can be used to do what you are looking to do. Wrong numbers can't be detected by any software that I'm aware of, Busy, Disconnect, and Answering Machines to some degree can be detected.

You don't have to have softphones, but you do need a phone of some kind for each agent to use.

You might want to consider contacting a consultant if you need more in-depth help with starting up:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/consultants.html

[D]

Thanks for responding back. We currently have our own web-based CRM that has options for dispositions (No Answer, Not Interested), etc and buttons for clicking and getting Next Call. VICIDialer has some of the same dispositions. Now, for us to be able to make calls using VOIP - Do we need to have separate phones (Soft Phone or Analog phone connected to VOIP) integrated with the VICIDialer? Does VICIDialer need a separate phone in order to work or the Dialer and Asterisk PBX enough to make calls with live agents?

Thanks Again.

[mflorell]

As long as you have phones hooked up to your Asterisk server you can use them for VICIDIAL. You can even set up EXTERNAL phone records that allow you to have an agent at the end of any direct dial number that can be called form Asterisk.

As for your CRM, you can use the "Get call launch" and Web Form features to open up your CRM automatically when VICIDIAL connects a call to an agent. You just need a search form on your CRM system that will accept the variables sent by VICIDIAL.

[D]

Thanks. Since we need to have phones hooked up - Can we have the soft phones hooked up to Asterisk and VICI Dialer. If yes, are there any softphones that you would recommend. Thanks Again.

[enjay]

IDEFisk
FireFly
w3cx

they're all good softphones depending on the level of functionality you want.

-enjay

[mflorell]

VICIDIAL works through Asterisk, so you only need the softphone set up on one machine and then just use IAX trunks between the two to pass calls between them.

I recommend IDEfisk, it is free, works on Win32, Linux and Mac and has an active development team behind it.
http://www.asteriskguru.com/idefisk/index.php

[enjay]

Yea per Matt's recommendations I just switched all of my softphones to IDEFisk and am very happy with the functionality.

-enjay

[D]

Thanks guys.

[D]

Hi Guys

I am having a similar problem during configuration as some one else on this forum. When manual is attempted it times out after 60 seconds without actually dialing the number. In addition, we are getting the following error:

screen -r
There are screens on:
29590.ASTsend (Dead ???)
15226.pts-1.asterisk (Attached)
4988.ASTlisten (Dead ???)
Remove dead screens with 'screen -wipe'.
There is no screen to be resumed.

Appreciate your feedback. Thanks

[mflorell]

It looks like none of your keepalive cron scripts are running properly. Did you enter all of the entries into the crontab as it states to do in the SCRATCH_INSTALL?

If you did then we need to start by trying to run them manually from the command line and see if they are giving you any errors.