DNC list

[Ioannis]

Hello,

I am new to vicidial and I am trying to setup a small call center. I have installed vicibox 9.0.2. The most important feature to be able to start calls is the DNC list, as approaching a customer that has declared specifically that does not wish to accept sales calls will result to large fines. I have received the DNC lists from local carriers and I am trying to populate the internal DNC lists but I am totally "blind" about it. There is no referenece in the manual about its size or any other limitations. There is no way in vicidial to view the list' s entries or even only the number of entries in the list. The only option is to download them in a file but it will be too large to open it with excel. There is no information about potential double entry check. (Or, at least, I haven't been able to locate the information, perhaps searching with the wrong keyword or just overlooked it). This list is going to have 5-6 million entries for start and will have to be updated at least once a month. Local carriers send the full list each time. So, if you could please shed some light, I 'd be gratefull! Here come some questions:

1. How do we update the internal DNC list? Only through copy/paste from the add-delete choice within lists? Is there any way to load a file, just like leads' lists?
2. How do we find the number of DNC entries (to verify e.g. that the proper number of entries has been uploaded)?
3. Is there any duplicate check performed while uploading phone numbers to internal DNC list?
4. Can I specify a list as DNC list, like the leads' lists, and attach it to a campaign, instead of using campaign's own DNC list? (I believe it would be quite useful to have something like a DNC_campaign and gather all DNC lists there, as a DNC repository and then choose which one (s) will be used for a certain campaign, much like the leads).

Thank you very much for your time!

[mflorell]

Some questions first:
1. Please post the version and build of your admin.php page(lower left corner)
2. What country are you calling?

[williamconley]

If calling in the US ...

1)The carriers can not provide you with a list of DNC numbers that will stop your client from being fined. ONLY purchasing the required area codes/states/entire list from https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov/ will provide this protection IF you follow the Laws which are (conveniently?) provided/referenced/included in the site signup. On a lighter note, your client can get FIVE free area codes just for signing up (and the laws will be part of the signup process ...)

2) Putting hundreds of thousands of entries in the DNC list table in Vicidial will bring down the server. The DNC check happens with each call and each hopper load. Comparing the entire public NDNC list against millions of prospects with every call is not viable even with the most powerful database server. Instead, pre-process leads before uploading them and then check them again nightly or at the very least Monthly (which is how often your client is required to update their National NDNC list in the US)

3) We have a product designed to block dialing until after the check which also automatically checks all leads nightly. To maintain the system, you download each state or area code list from the NDNC site (as often as you like, but monthly at the longest) and upload them to our system in your dialer. Nothing else, takes only as much time as logging in, downloading, uploading ... and forget about it.

Vicidial NDNC Nightly Checker

[Ioannis]

Hi, thank you very much for your time. We are based in Greece and legislation is a bit different. We have to get the dnc lists from the local carriers. The first one (and largest one) sent me 1.4 million numbers. I am expecting a total about 5M...

Our version are:
2.14-756a
build: 200609-2257
asterisk 13.29.2-vici
opensuse leap 15.1

[Ioannis]

Hello,

Information that I got from a local engineer working on another vicidial installation is that the dnc table of asterisk is populated with the DNC numbers (a process that can be done directly on the database) and that, when you upload a leads file, the entries are checked against the DNC entries and the matches are removed from the leads at that point. So, when the time comes to use the list, only the allowed numbers populate the hopper. This is significantly different from the procedure described above, so, could somebody clarify please which procedure actually takes place?

Thank you for your time!

[mflorell]

As long as you have a good enough database server, you can have several million records in your DNC lists and not completely crash your system, however it will slow some things down. Our usual recommendation is to DNC-filter your lists outside of VICIdial, although we have had clients successfully run with a few million records in the DNC lists, on properly sized server hardware.

As for how it would work if you use the Internal DNC list, the DNC scrubbing happens when the hopper is loaded, not when leads are imported into the system.