Debug autoreminder custom app crashes

Posted on July 18, 2007 | By Voicent News

We are running Voicent Auto-reminder and populating appointments from a custom application written in dot net. The Voicent app keeps locking-up and we can’t figure out why. We have reloaded Voicent a few times and this doesn’t help. The server doesn’t lockup, just Voicent. We can run other apps on the same server, Word, Excel, IE – all simultaneously – and they don’t lockup. Then, we close all those apps, and only running the auto-reminder and the Gateway, and within a few minutes, Voicent crashes. It seems very much like the software needs to be reloaded, but we’ve done that and to add to the confusion, last night, I logged onto our server at 10:30 PM and ran Voicent for 45 minutes and there were no crashes, which should indicate that it is installed correctly. I even had it makes calls and again, no problem. So, it seems like something that is going on during the day, like for instance, people are using the proprietary app that populates Voicent’s calendar, and it locks up.

It is possible that the server is over-burdened, but this, I would think, would cause Voicent to slow down, not completely lockup. We’re looking for any insight you can provide into why the Voicent auto-reminder would be dying. Here are some questions:

Is it possible that the way we are sending data to Voicent could cause it to lockup?.

Yes. You might want to look into possible race conditions or concurrent access situation.

Could it be something with Voicent’s database? What is the Voicent database? Is it proprietary or run time?

The “Voicent database” for AutoReminder is the Windows file system. All appointment data are saved under C:\Program Files\Voicent\AutoReminder\appt folder. AutoReminder does not use relational database.

Could it be that something went haywire and the hard disk and when we re-install, it is not overwriting the bad file, which is making Voicent crash? When we re-install, the Voicent installation program remembers all the licensing info. Do we need to complete some kind of total uninstallation in order to properly re-install Voicent? Thanks for your help

For a clean install, please see knowledge base article Doing a clean re-install

Posted in Developer |

Predictive dialer initial delay

Posted on July 18, 2007 | By Voicent News

I am having an issue with how long it takes for me to get on the phone with the customer after they say hello….I have tested it and after they say hello it takes about a second for the button on the screen to come up. Then you have to press answer then you have to pick the handset up. I just think there is too much of a gap in time to make this work. Is there anything I can do to shorten this period of time?

First of all, with release 6, you no longer need to press the Answer button to talk to the person. And when Skype is used instead of modem, the initial delay is further reduced.

The delay/time is mainly used by the system to tell whether a call is answered by a live human or an answering machine. All systems today need some time to make a better detection, since there is no hardware signal on the phone line to indicate human pickup or answering machine. The shorter the time, the more mistakes a system will make.

You do have some control over how long the system should take to analyze the pickup. Go to Gateway > Setup > Options > Detection page. The default is the balanced. When you make it aggressive, the system uses less time, but will make more mistakes for answering machines. The most aggressive setting will immediately popup the alert window whenever it hears human voice, and thus will mistake all answering machines as human pickup. You should experiment the settings according to your particular campaign. For example, if your calls are likely to be answered most of the time, you might want to set the setting to most aggressive.

Also, pickup the phone as soon as the alert window apprears. You can click the answer button later.

Posted in Agent Dialer |

Autodialer dialing speed

Posted on July 17, 2007 | By Voicent News

How can I improve the dialing speed of my Broadcast By Phone Autodialer

The time an autodialer to complete a phone call involves:

1. Dial the phone number

Few seconds. Depends on the length of phone numbers, and whether you need to dial 9 first for outside line.

2. Wait for answer

Normally 5 – 30 seconds. Each ringback is about 5 second.

3. Wait for answering machine or voice mail beep.

Normally, 10 – 20 seconds.

4. Play your audio message

5. Collect touch tone feedback, if it is required by your message

6. Hangup the phone and wait for the line to free up

5-10 seconds

The most time consuming part for an autodialer is playing your message and wait for answer.

The place you can change is the disconnect time. Please select Voicent Gateway icon, select Setup > Options from the main menu. Change the hangup time. The minimum is 5 seconds. Below that, your phone line is not going to be properly released. (This has nothing to do with the modem. It has the same requirement even for a regular phone)

Also, please make sure the “Call Interval” is not checked. This will limit the call on each phone line. The call interval is in the same options page.

If you do not want to leave message on answering machine, you can set the option “Disconnect as soon as answering machine is detected”. (Gateway > Setup > Options… > Advanced)

Besides that, there is not much you can do. The system has to make a call, wait for pickup, either by a live human or answering machine, play the audio message you have, and then hangup to free the line. Unless your phone company takes extra long time to connect, normally, you should get 1 minute per call per line for a 30 second message. (about 20 seconds for ringbacks and 5-10 seconds to free the phone line)

You can turn on record initial dialing to see how long it takes to get a call to connect. For details, please see:

Posted in Auto Dialer |