Vicidial Optimization

[mirchmedia]

Hello All,

I have spent the past 2 months working with my developers to create a custom Vicidial for our call center for which we've done quite well. We've added many customer features that have made reporting/calling very flexible.

My issue is I come from a background where I have been using Aspect, Avaya, and Noble hard dialers. I understand Vici will probably not be able to perform exactly as those dialers what are some additional optimizations I can make to increase the efficiency/performance of the dialer? Do these require further edits in the Asterisk code and/or playing around with the dialing settings. I'd appreciate any feedback available on this.

Thanks.

[gmcust3]

Vici will probably not be able to perform exactly as those dialers what are some additional optimizations I can make to increase the efficiency/performance of the dialer

First you need to enlist what those dialers have and Vici Not have.

As far as Performance is Concened , Its at par with other Hard Dialers.

[mflorell]

I think we need more details here since your posting is quite vague.

[williamconley]

Functional differences between Avaya and Asterisk (Noble and Vicidial) are primarily in the underlying packages.

AMD in Asterisk is substandard (look it up on this forum) but can be replaced by Sangoma CPD for much improved accuracy.

Call Quality is a basic difference as Avaya and Dialogic have unquestionable quality whereas Asterisk CAN be excellent, if you tweak it.

Data integrity is excellent on a rock-solid windows MSSQL server, but believe it or not they DO have an occasional bug (some of which are well-known and documented and have resulted in refunds of fees when found, I have some experience there). MySQL is a little LESS reliable from a "we never crash" standpoint. Do not risk losing power on a MySQL system. Ensure excellent backups. Learn how to repair MySQL tables. Get a spare box and "flip the switch" a few times with queries running and practice data restoration. MySQL is not actually "worse" than MSSQL, but the database engine in use to allow all this speed is MYISAM which is NOT transaction-safe and can be harmed easily, but is the only engine capable of the speed required by VICIdial. So it's a trade-off.

Beyond that there is the interactive functionality of the system itself, in which VICIdial stands up to any system on the market, paid or Free, proprietary or Open Source.

So: if you want to tweak to prepare for a launch, look into AMD and when you realize that it simply cannot be tweaked to a superior performance level, look at CPD. If you are NOT using AMD, congratulations! After that, it's about the quality of the calls themselves. This will depend on the protocol, codec, and/or hardware involved and CAN be tweaked within an inch of its life to get the same quality level as Avaya. Especially if you use Sangoma or Digium hardware which will essentially turn this VICIdial system into a box very similar to your prior proprietary systems ... except with the added power of EXTREME flexibility.

[mirchmedia]

Thanks for the feedback William.

In terms of getting more specific with what I am referring to is the AMD and idle time, (in this case I am assuming my idle time is higher because of a lower AMD percentage). My idle time currently averages around 1 - 2 mins on my better data set and up to 5 mins on lower quality data. To confirm my data is just not bad I've tested the same files at other call centers (either running their version of Vici, Contaque, Touchstar, Aspect, etc) and have found a much lower idle time at these other facilities with the affect of increasing our overall sales performance at those centers. I have been playing around with various settings (Ratio, Adapt etc) to no avail. Does anyone have an ideal setting to which Vici works best for bulk data?

In terms of tech specifics we are currently running on a Intel Xeon Server in house and using Flowroute and Voipo as minutes providers.

I'd appreciate any other additional feedback. Thanks in advance.

[williamconley]

Sorry, no magic pill. Such tweaking requires a personal touch. It is very possible to manipulate the system to under 10 seconds between call time per agent on larger systems, but on smaller systems with 1:1 dialing such a thing is not feasible.

You would need to post your settings and experience for someone to suggest changes to the settings.