I’m developing a predictive dialing system using Vincent Gateway. Basically what I’m trying to achieve is pulling phone numbers from our SQL database, and scheduling phone calls while integrating with AgentDialer. I have a couple of questions that I hope you can answer.

1. Is there a way to retrieve all the calls that are scheduled on the Gateway, or do I have to keep an external record of all the reqIDs and fetch call statuses one at a time?

No. One reason for not providing this feature is to avoid less locking time on the gateway, especially during call time. It is also better to have the gateway client to manage the calls, such as keep track of the reqIDs, etc.

2. Once a call has been transferred to an agent we need that a webpage containing necessary information from our own system will pop up rather than the call pop-up you offer. I also need to pass the “phoneID” to that webpage. when I schedule a call to the gateway I pass our system’s phoneID as “info” to the gateway. Is there a way that in the event of a call passed to an agent the browser will pop up referring to a URL with the phoneID specified as the “info” value in the gateway?

You will have to use Voicent popup window. Otherwise how are you going to control the call, such as hang up, access a dial pad, record, play audio message etc? So the best way is to utilize the popup window, AND launch your own web page or application.

Obviously you need to pass information, such as “phoneID”, to your web page or program from the gateway to the RemoteAgent (Voicent Popup window) and to your program. The first step is done automatically by AgentDialer, so as long as you have the “phoneID” as a column in the AgentDialer spreadsheet window, the information will be passed to the RemoteAgent program.

You can then utilize the event callback method to launch your web page or program. For more details, please see utilizing status callbacks. All column info, such as “phoneID”, will be passed to the callback function.

3. We need to differentiate between whether the line is busy and no answer/voicemail when it comes to retries. If the line is busy we want to keep trying within minutes and for other cases we want to try a couple of days later. what’s the best way to achieve this behavior?

You can parse the return status and then reschedule calls. Basically you set the AgentDialer retry to zero and use your own program to manage retry.

4. I need to update our database according to the call status (e.g. busy, no answer, answered…). I so so that using vxml I can invoke a jsp file on failure using “telephone.noanswer” etc. How can I update the database on successful calls. Thanks,

Or you can use the callback function in AgentDialer or RemoteAgent.