Can an agent dial out on their own trunk

[SPAMSAM]

Hi, I have a weird question.

I'm busy working on a client with a their own provider. The provider's billing structure is based on one sip per agent, and they start billing after the agent's trunk reaches a certain threshold of minutes. IE each agent logs onto a the main campaign, but dials out on their own trunk.

Currently, the dialer is still set up to dial out on a single trunk and IMHO I would like to keep it that way, but unfortunately I need to play nice with the provider for the client's sake.

Is it possible to configure vicidial so that each agent dials out on their own trunk?

Does vicidial have the functionality or do you perhaps have any suggestions?

VERSION: 2.14-683a
BUILD: 180809-1547
© 2018 ViciDial Group

[blackbird2306]

There is no setting for this in vicidial. For auto-dialing this is like "impossible" to achieve, but for manual dialing it is "possible" with code changes and some hours of work. If you like it or not, your client should go another way with another provider.

[SPAMSAM]

I wish it was that easy. Their billing structure strikes me as odd to say the very least. bBut unfortunately im stuck with it as per me boss.

It would be possible to do it via custom dialplan, right? I know it's a lot of work, but yeah, it is what it is.

[williamconley]

When Vicidial initiates a call, it does so based on the campaign having agent(s) available. The calls dialed are not assigned to an actual agent until after the call is answered. Putting each agent in their own campaign would of course accomplish this.

But ...

What would be the drawback of having the system dial one line at a time on each "trunk" and merely rotating among them? Is it necessary that each agent use the same trunk each time? Note that Vicidial tracks time on calls for each agent (for billing purposes) and trunks can be combined into failover/rollover dial groups using diaplan logic. From the point of view of the carrier, each trunk would have one agent (just not always the *same* agent, since the agent isn't chosen until the call is answered).

All that being said: Yes, it would be possible to create a dialplan method that would get very close to what you seek, but in the end there would need to be an identifier on each outbound call allotting it to a specific agent to then allow the dialplan to route the outbound call through "that agent's" trunk. Doable at several levels. More hours involved the deeper you go. And for the "pure" version, matching your description, ONLY possible with "one campaign per agent" or some changes to code or (as previously mentioned) Manual Dial.

Easier to help if you explain the Reaon for the requirement. For instance: Do the agents pay their own individual phone bills? That's the only reason I can think of that it wouldn't be possible to just rotate agents on trunks randomly.

[SPAMSAM]

Hi, apologies for the late reply.

It's essentially to play along with the providers billing model which is a fixed number of minutes per agent, after which they get billed for any additional minutes over the threshold.

[SPAMSAM]

I was able to create a custom context that I applied to the phone of an user and I can dial out on it if I dial directly from the phone, but not from the campaign.

Is it possible to route the campaign to a different context and then it just matches from there based on the phones context?

[dspaan]

You would do this from the dialplan field of the carriers section i believe, you've have to create a carrier for each sip trunk and like William said use dialplan logic to cycle through the carriers. But this sounds very much like a commercial person with understanding of how a dialer works wants something that's totally not worth the effort. With this setup you don't even have the advantage of using auto dialing or predictive dialing. These dial methods outweigh the use of a particular provider like in this case big time. It sounds you're working with a provider who's providing sip trunks for small office use instead of callcenter use. People are often focused on the pricing of some provider and forgetting all the disadvantages that come with them.

[roger.milligan]

As stated above, one could only do this for manual campaigns and/or manual calls within an auto campaign; and it would require code modification.

I have done custom development to alter the outbound CLI as well as the DialPrefix on a per call basis. If your provider can allow you one trunk, but bill based on outbound CLI (as the sub-account) that would be simpler, rather than to have to setup lots of Carriers/Trunks in Vici.

We do this customisation for numerous reasons -
a) we try alternative VoIP providers when we get certain error SIP return codes in order to get better connectivity
b) we use different CLIs to get people to answer (these are debt collection call centres):
i) Phone someone's mobile from an areacode the same as their home phone number
ii) Phone someone on the same CLI to get them to eventually answer out of curiosity
iii) Phone someone from the CLI that was used for them least recently
c) When mixing VoIP providers in the same campaign, one also needs to make sure that you use the matching campaign CID/CLI as well as the AREACODE CID/CLI for that provider

So, lots that can be done, but with quite substantial customisation.

Roger