Use Skype for Business

Posted on October 9, 2008 | By Voicent News

It is important to know the limits on your Skype unlimited subscription plan. There is a good chance your Skype account being blocked if you are not careful about your usage. You must stick to the fair usage of Skype. In addition, there are unpublished rules. Here is one of them, and it is based on the email communications of one of our customer with Skype support.

I wanted to use SKYPE to call a mortgage lead list everyday for my small mortgage office in the state of Florida (USA). I see that my personal account is limited to 10,000 minutes per month. This is per account on the USA unlimited plan.

I plan to use 4 people to makes calls for 7 hours a day and 5 days a week. At one call per minute (the average) that totals around 2,000 minutes per week for each person. That is around 8,000 minutes per month per person. I have no problem buying 4 seperate accounts for each person (as your website suggested) and giving them there own unique id, but I see there is no way to keep track of the minutes used? I want to make sure I don’t go over 10,000 just in case? Since you charge a “per minutes” rate for minutes over 10,000 there must be some way to keep track on your end. Is there a way to keep track on my end? I want to do it right the first time! I hope to hear back soon!

Skype reply: Thank you for contacting Skype Support. We apologize for the delayed response. Our goal is to respond to all customer e-mails within 72 hours, however due to a recent increase in inquiries it has taken longer to respond to you. Thank you for your understanding and patience.

We are sorry to hear that you are having difficulties with your subscription. We are sorry to inform you that there is also a daily limit on your subscription, not only monthly. Your subscription includes 10,000 minutes of unlimited calls to the destinations included in your subscription. This works out at approximately 6 hours of call per day, 7 days a week. After 4 hours of continually call, Skype will automatically disconnect the calling, this is for your safe (in case you have forget to stop the call). Also after 6 hours of calling a day your subscription become suspended. We monitor the use of subscriptions to ensure our fair use policy is followed. Also, if we detect any unusual calling patterns or activity we may temporarily suspend a subscription. This is primarily done to protect users from any possible misuse of their subscription occurring. Please be aware that your calls apply to our fair usage policy. For more information about this policy, please view the following page:
http://www.skype.com/go/terms.fairusage

In addition, please note that you have the possibility to see a detailed list of the calls you have made and their exact costs:

https://secure.skype.com/store/myaccount/history.html

We apologize for any disruption this suspension of your subscription may have caused.

Thank you for your quick reply. I certainly do not want to “break any rules” that Skype has which was the reason for my inquiry. Please confirm: I have the intention on using several unlimited accounts in the USA strictly for calling business leads. You mentioned that Skype monitors the account for “unusual activity.” Can I assume that this calling pattern is not considered “unusual” and is allowed as long as I do not go over 6 hours a day on my calls (per account) or 10,000 minutes per month? That as long as I stay within the “Fair Usage” agreement then my calls will not be stopped and my subscription(s) will not be suspended?

PS: I thought that the “4 hour rule” for Skype disconnecting a call was for a SINGLE call lasting that long…not multiple calls totaling 4 hours or more… Thanks

Skype reply Thank you for contacting Skype Support. We are very sorry for the inconveniences. You can use your account and the Unlimited subscription for calling about 6 hours a day. If you do longer calls the system will start to charge you. If you are stay within the Fair usage policy you will not be charged for your calls. We understand that you are interested in cumulating your free minutes from one month to the other. Unfortunately, the unused minutes included in your Subscription will not be carried over to the next month.

Posted in Auto Dialer, Skype |

Auto dialer use call specific audio file

Posted on October 9, 2008 | By Voicent News

I am trying to add a call specific audio file to my message in message designer. I understand how to add the text to speech but how do I add the audio file in each cell?

In the Message Designer, click New to add a new message item; select “specific to each call”, and make sure the column type is set to “audio file”; then specify the column header name.

Once you finished with the message, save it. Select Broadcast > Select Message from the program main menu. You will see the spreadsheet is updated and a new column with the specified header name is added. Simply type in the path name to the audio file in each cell.

I type in the path of the audio file into the cell. When I do this- the broadcast instantly fails- “Failed. Failed to sent call message to gateway”. Perhaps I’m not putting it in correctly. Could you tell me how to do this?

It is probably related to the slashes. The following is an example for the sample message:

C:/Program Files/Voicent/MyRecordings/sample_message.wav

I have also searched the tutorials and can’t find anything on how to use the feature in the Message Designer under Edit Confirmation and Response where is says to Specify your Own Meaning- what can I do here.

This is basically for display in the spreadsheet. For example, if you want to specify “press 5 if you want to be removed from the call list”, you can associate 5 with “remove”. When a call is made and the person presses 5, [remove] will be displayed in the confirmation column.

I would like to give the call recipient a button to rewind the message 2-3 seconds, but not start it completely over. Is there a way to do this?

No. This is a nice feature to have. We might add it to future releases.

Posted in Auto Dialer |

Hardware requirements when using Skype

Posted on October 7, 2008 | By Voicent News

I want to run BroadcastByPhone autodialer using as many Skype lines as possible. What is the hardware requirement? and how many lines can I run?

Bandwidth Requirement

128 Kbps upstream and downstream per line.

According to Skype, each instance/line requires 3-16 Kilobytes per second. This should be both upstream and downstream since voice is two way communication. Normally the limitation is from the bandwidth of your internet connection. For example, if you are using a basic ADSL with 1.5 megabits per seconds downstream and 512 Kilobits per seconds upstream, you can normally run 4 Skype instances (512/16/8 = 4, one byte is 8 bits).

Memory Requirement

70 Megabytes per line

Each running skype instance uses 60M RAM, and 10M for Voicent program, so you have a total of 70M. It is strongly recommended to have enough physical memory for your computer. Otherwise, the performance will suffer greatly. For a 32-bit operating system like Windows XP, you can have a maximum of 4G memory. So if you get the maximum 4G RAM for your computer, there might be 3G for skype instances (1G for Windows itself and other applications). With 3G, you might be able to run up to 40 Skype instances/lines.

CPU requirement

The CPU requirement largely depends on the number of lines used. But it also depends on the usage of speech recognition, text-to-speech, and caller interactions. The more CPU power you have, the better the audio quality and responsiveness. For example, if you use a 4 line system for autodialing, you can use a Pentium Duel Core CPU. For a 10 line system, get a Quadcore Pentium or Xeon CPU. For more than 10 lines, it is strongly recommended to get computers with duel processors and each processor with Quadcore CPU.

Additional Requirement for predictive dialing

Predictive dialing (AgentDialer) requires a lot more CPU and bandwidth than auto dialing (BroadcastByPhone) does. This is because the call transfer mode is different. For predictive dialing, the call transfer has to be done immediately. Otherwise, the person answering the phone will hear dead silence or ringback when the call is being transferred. In most cases, a screen popup is used for predictive dialing, and the call audio is redirected to an agent’s computer immediately. The server computer has to redirect the call audio in real time to and from the outbound skype line and the agent’s computer, thus requires more bandwidth and CPU processing power. On the other hand, for autodialing, a call transfer can be accomplished by Skype to a landline phone or another Skype account. Once a call is transferred, the Skype line is freed and the server can continue with the next call.

For predictive dialing, if an agent’s computer is not on the same local area network (LAN) as the server computer, then additional bandwidth of 16 Kilobytes per second is required for the agent. The is because the audio has to be transferred to the agent’s computer using the same internet connection.

Other requirement

It is strongly recommend to get Windows XP instead of Windows Vista. Due to the security limitations on Vista, you must run each Skype instance in a different Windows Login session. This is time consuming to start and hard to control.

It is also recommend NOT to run each Skype line to its full capacity if you use Skype’s unlimited subscription. Otherwise, you Skype account might rish being blocked by Skype.

Posted in Agent Dialer, Auto Dialer, Skype |