Vicidial installation- suggestions?

[okli]

Hi,

First of all- thanks all for this great product.

We are a small call center with 5 agents currently, mostly outbound telemarketing calls. The system in use is xsellerator. We are looking to move on asterisk based solution.
Linux experience is very little, but learning, asterisk exp. is similar.

We need to have remote agents, working from abroad in several countries. At the moment we have a SIP account, which does all calls, a server Dell Power edge 1750 with a SCSI drive, 1 Gb Ram, it's on the SIP company premises and as far as I know it's running Trixbox with 2 Digium te212 cards. T1 cards were for compatibility with the old system. Details could be requested.
We could have another server there for vicidial.
A few questions-
1. Can vicidial handle remote agents, some in other countries for outbound calls, if not what could be done?
1.1 What about the sound quality for the remote agents? Some of them would be in other continents.
1.2 For example if we get 10 agents in one country in Europe would a dedicated asterisk server close to them be of any help or is not needed?

2. Following scratch install for Debian after a few attempts I got to the point when asterisk must be set up.
2.1 Can I use a GUI for that purpose, which will not interfere with vicidial scripts? I read already Matt Farell's thoughts about FreePBX and take his words of course.
2.2 In order to connect the 2 boxes is IAX setup enough when following scratch_install manual?

3. How do we add a few more fields for client details? If it is in manager's manual we are going to buy it anyway if vicidial can serve our needs.

Thanks in advance.

[mflorell]

VICIDIAL does support remote agents in multiple locations.

Audio quality depends on your bandwidth speed and quality.

Having a local server can help, since the latency of going around the world can lead to poorer audio quality.

Using a GUI like FreePBX can complicate a VICIDIAL installation. I would suggest getting familiar with the asterisk conf files instead or maybe hiring some help to guide you.

As for adding more fields, I recommend using either the WEB FORM or the SCRIPT tab with an IFRAME to load another web page that you can do any kind of data entry you want. The Agent GUI screen is not really designed to add data fields to.

[okli]

Thanks for your answer, we are currently installing the system and next week should be able to start tests, there is so much to learn

Regards