Courts strikes down FCC’s new definition of autodialers

A circuit court of appeals in Washington struck down the FCC’s expansion of the definition of an autodialer, which could include smart phones, as over-reaching and unreasonable. The court rejected the assertion that any dialing equipment or device that could dial numbers using a random number generator or a sequential number generator was an auto dialer. (a smart phone with add-ons could be turned into an auto dialer by this definition).

The association of collection agencies and financial institutions was pleased with the decision. The current FCC’s chairman also supported the ruling.

Posted in News |

Fully automated political polling solution

Election polling has many challenges in recent years. One of the trend is the decline of people willing to answer surveys. This makes it necessary to call more people to get a reliable result. Without a fully automated polling solution, the cost can be prohibitive for many organizations.

The good news is that we have streamlined our software solution to provide organizations with an easy-to-use end-to-end solution – from survey app creation, automated dialing campaigns, survey data reporting, and all the way to data export. Customers only need to sign up for our cloud service to take advantage of our full polling solution. In addition, polling or survey by text message is also available.

To help you get started, we have created online demo videos and survey samples.

Our cloud pricing starts from $19 per month, which comes with 2 outbound lines. In addition, we offer calling packages to suit your call volume to save your phone bills.

Posted in Product Usage |

Set up caller ID from API

I have multiple “caller id” numbers set up and authorized for use in my callcentric account.  Is there a way to have the Voicent gateway request use of these different numbers as the outbound caller ID on various outgoing calls made from the gateway?

In the SIP advanced tab, there are a few check boxes about caller ID, such as use P-Asserted-Identity. Try to enable them one at a time to see which one works.

Ultimately, your VOIP service has to support these options. In your case, it seems callcentric uses P-Asserted-Identity based on their online info: “Once verified you may configure your IP PBX to pass any verified caller ID or any DID on your account during an outbound call (within the SIP INVITE message) by including the P-ASSERTED-IDENTITY, P-PREFERRED-IDENTITY, or REMOTE-PARTY-ID headers within the outbound call which will override any default Caller ID settings you have on your account.”

How does Voicent software set the caller ID info?

Voicent software sets the SIP INVITE message based on your caller ID settings. It could be the FROM field of the message or P-Asserted-Identity field.

How does Voicent software know which caller ID to use? So for campaigns, it is based on your selection of the caller ID (the last step of the campaign wizard). If you are making manual outbound calls using Agent Dashboard, the caller ID is based on your selection in your agent profile.

To add a caller ID to your system, go to Setup, Account, Caller ID to add. If you are using our cloud service, you need to make sure your plan has Caller ID feature.

I’m using only the Voicent Gateway and currently just the vb.net CallText function. In essence, I’m performing on demand dialing because I supply that function with the phone numbers to call and the TTS messages to relay. This information is pulled one-at-a-time from a separate database. Then, at a later time I use the CallStatus function to check the status of each individual call and use that result to update the database. I’m looking for a way to also include the correct outgoing caller ID that corresponds to the current call while still maintaining the simplistic approach of using the CallText and CallStatus functions. The idea of using a campaign seems to be overly complex and not a good fit for my particular project. Is it possible to use these functions and also have a selectable caller ID using the P-Asserted-Identity?

Yes. You need to include the parameter (callerid) in your API.

The included sample class does not include this parameter. But it should be pretty simple to update the calltext function to include this parameter and pass down to the lower level calls.

Ok, just to make sure that I understand what you’ve stated in your last email. I need to modify the CallText function (similar to what I’ve included below) so that the callerid parameter can be passed down to lower level calls. My changes are included below:


Public Function CallText(ByVal phoneno As String, ByVal callerid As String, ByVal text As String, ByVal selfdelete As Boolean)

Dim urlstr As String = "/ocall/callreqHandler.jsp"

' setting the http post string

Dim poststr As String = "info=Simple Text Call " + phoneno

poststr += "&phoneno=" + phoneno

poststr += "&callerid=" + callerid

poststr += "&firstocc=0"

poststr += "&selfdelete="

If (selfdelete) Then

poststr += "1"

Else

poststr += "0"

End If

poststr += "&txt=" + text

' Send Call Request

Dim rcstr As String = PostToGateway(urlstr, poststr)

Return GetRequestID(rcstr)

End Function

That’s correct.

Posted in Auto Dialer, Developer |