Voicent Gateway (starting from release 8.6.2) is capable of interfacing with a database directly for BroadcastByPhone, BroadcastBySMS, BroadcastByEmail, and Agent Dialer campaigns. These campaigns are normally referred to as direct database campaigns. This interface is part of the CRM product and requires Voicent Call Center CRM license. This interface contains three main features:

• Fetch call list directly from a database, and
• Update call status to a database automatically
• Display customer information on agent desktop software

This interface drastically simplifies the integration task involving a database or a CRM system. Campaigns can be started without the need to create a call list, import or export the list, and periodically polling the gateway for call status. In most situations, there is no need for an application GUI either.

Direct Database Campaigns

The same gateway call request scheduler interface (callreqHandler.jsp) is used for starting a direct database campaign. Instead of specifying a phone number to call, the database campaign specifies a call list with a SQL SELECT statement. Call status update is also specified by a SQL statement. With a direct database campaign, Voicent Gateway starts by fetching the next few phone numbers from a database based on the SQL statement specified; once a call is made, it invokes the status SQL statement to update the call status. It then fetches the next phone number and continues.

The following are parameters for direct database campaigns:

• Common parameters: phoneno (must be "dbquery"), campaign, camp_id, linesrequested, firstocc, txt, audiofile, pdcall
• JDBC parameters: connection, driver, jarfile, user, password
• SQL statement parameters: sql, idcolname, phonecolname, namecolname, fnamecolname, lnamecolname, statussql, statuscols.

For common parameters, please refer to the gateway call scheduler document. JDBC parameters are specific to the database used.

The sql parameter specifies a SQL SELECT statement, telling Voicent Gateway how to query the database for customer records. The phonecolname parameter specifies the database phone column name. Additional column names can be specified in the other column parameters. These parameters simply inform Voicent Gateway how to get the specific values for a database query result set. After a call is made, the gateway executes the SQL update statement specified by the statussql parameter. The required values are specifed in the statuscols parameter.

In addition to call status update after each phone call, conditional end of call actions can also be used

Example: Start A Predictive Campaign

The following form (HTML source code) starts a simple predictive dialing campaign.

Display Customer Info on Agent Desktop

Voicent's agent desktop software (RemoteAgent) contains an extensive callback mechanism for integrating with a database, CRM, or other products. Basically, when certain event happens, the RemoteAgent software will either execute an external program or post to an URL.

The following are the events supported: login, logout, alert, answered, onhold, resumed, recording, recorded, canceled, hangup, released, failed

For details of agent desktop callback, please refer to the program help file for RemoteAgent.