Problem when submitting calls to gateway through PHP script

We’re working on an application that uses the Voicent Gateway, and we’re running into a few problems that I was hoping you could help us with. Basically, we have the Voicent Gateway setup on a computer and we have some PHP scripts that run to add calls to the queue. We were in the process of testing out our code, and had some strange things occur.

We set up our code to queue 5 calls in a row – all to the same phone number, just so we can test it out. All 5 calls were queued properly, and the system started calling the phone. We answered the first three calls, let it play a few seconds of the message just to make sure it was working, and then hung up, but it stopped after those 3 calls, and never called the last 2. We waited about 10 minutes, and then stopped the gateway, checked the scheduled calls – saw the last two calls still listed, and deleted them to try again. Our second attempt, we let all of the calls go to voicemail, and this time only 4 of the calls were made. We left the last one in the queue for several hours, and it never made the call. This morning, it showed a message on the screen that said “too late to call”.

We have the gateway setup to allow calls from 8am to 8pm, but we queued all the calls much earlier than 8pm.

I tried taking a look at the log files, but I couldn’t really make any sense out of them.

The code we have to make the calls sends over the “firstocc” parameter, which is currently set to “60″. According to your site, it looks like this is the number of minutes before you stop trying this call… does this mean that if I schedule 100 calls at, say 1:00, and it only gets half of them done by 2:00, it will never make the rest of them? And if the first call gets a busy signal or no answer, will it try to call again before 1 hour is up?

Can you tell me if there’s something we overlooked that would cause calls not to be made?

What you described is correct, so the problem is not in the settings. Your usage and understanding of “firstocc” is also correct.

If a call gets a busy signal, the gateway will try to reschedule it to call after 15 minutes. If it is later than “firstocc”, it will fail with a a “too late to call” message.

The scheduler log is under:
C:\Program Files\Voicent\Gateway\outcall\logs

And each call request is saved in a file under C:\Program Files\Voicent\Gateway\outcall\reqs. The scheduler log should give you some hint as why some calls are not made.