Create Queue Campaign

What is a Queue Campaign?

In a queue campaign, the dialer generates calls to contacts within an associated list and puts answered calls in a queue. Available agents in the queue will connected with the contact.

This article explains the following steps in creating/editing a campaign:

• Create a new Queue campaign
• Settings
• Campaign
• Retry settings
• Advanced
• Hopper
• History
• Final
• Blacklist
• Add/remove agents from a queue campaign
• Add/remove list from a queue campaign

How to create a Queue Campaign

To create a new queue campaign go to Motion Bull -> Queue Campaigns and click the plus sign in the lower right corner:

Fill out the information:

Name: Name the Queue campaign.

Active: Whether or not the Queue campaign should be active.

Trunk: Choose what trunk to use for outbound calls.

Time Intervall: What time interval (e.g. Working hours) should the campaign be active. Choose "Always" for it to be active whenever assigned agents are logged in. Learn more about Time intervals >here<.

Check Duplicate:

- Never = The system will not check for duplicates, this means you can have more than 1 contact in the dialer with the same number and the dialer will ring both contacts.

- Always = Duplicated contacts, also on Open Status, are not uploaded.

- Only if open = The system doesn’t upload contacts already in Open Status.

Method: Choose which Dialer Method should be used on the Queue campaign. This can be changed at any time.

The following settings may change depending on chosen Dialer Method. Read more about Dialer methods and settings for each method >here<.

Description: Choose a clear description.

Then Click Add Queue Campaign:

To configure the Queue Campaign click the three dots to the right and then Edit Campaign:
Settings

Name: Once the campaign is created the name cannot be changed.
Active: The campaign can be activated/inactivated at any time.
Backup Trunk: Choose if you want the Dialer to use a backup trunk.
Time Interval: You can change the chosen Time interval.
Check Duplicate: You can change settings for duplicate checking.
Cut Digits: Insert how many digits of the dialed phone number to be cut automatically.
Description: You can change the description.

Campaign

Settings may vary depending on chosen Dialer Method.

Method: The chosen Dialer method. It can be changed at any time.

Max Concurrent Calls: The maximum number of concurrent calls that will be originated by the dialer for this campaign.

Agent Timeout: How many seconds to ring an agent’s device before the call is distributed to another agent assigned to the campaign.

Queue Options: Leave as is.
Voice queue option strings. For more details about the available options see >Asterisk 18 wiki pages<.

Queue Timeout: Time in seconds the dialer waits for a call in the queue to be answered before dropping it. If the call is dropped.
Strategy: Distribution strategy of queue calls to the agents in the queue. Read more about Queue Strategies >here<.
Retry: Time in seconds to wait before trying to ring the next agent in a queue.
Wrapup Time: The number of seconds to keep an agent unavailable in the queue after completing a call.
Weight: Defines the weight of the Queue Campaign. A Queue campaign with a higher value will get priority when agents are associated with multiple Queue campaigns.
Music On Hold: The music that is applied for this queue. Learn more about how to add your own Music on Hold >here<.
Cally Square Project: In most cases, leave as is.
If you select an IVR project from the list, the dialer will forward the call to the IVR before putting it in a queue. This is helpful if you want to perform other functions like: query a database, playback or set a variable and so on, before forwarding the call to a queue (Default=None). In all cases the IVR is started for the customer, excluding the Preview campaigns, where it is started for the Agent. To create an IVR Project, you need to use Cally Square.
Cally Square Project After Queue: If you select an IVR project from the list for:

• Progressive, Predictive, Power queue campaigns, the dialer will forward the flow to the IVR project only if the caller exits the queue for timeout (the IVR is started for the customer)

• Preview, the dialer will forward the flow to the IVR project when the contact is not reachable any more (for reasons like: busy, no Answer, congestion, no such number) or when the customer ends the call (the IVR is started for the agent).

If you select an IVR project in this field, the following switch is shown (in all cases excluding Preview):

Caller ID Name: When the dialer generates calls to contacts, it will set the outgoing caller ID name.
Caller ID Number: When the dialer generates calls to contacts, it will set the outgoing caller ID number. This needs to be a number assigned to your company.
Random Outgoing CalledId Number: The number of digits (starting from the end) to replace with random digits (0= none).
Originate Timeout: Time in seconds the dialer wait for a contact to answer the call (Default=30). If the call is not answered within the originate timeout, the call originate status will be set to No Answer and this contact will be recalled according to the Retry Settings parameters: 

• global max retries

• no answer max retries 

• no answer retry times

Prefix: In most cases, leave as is.
You can add numbers and/or "+" symbol. The Prefix will be added to every contact of the lists associated to the campaign. 

Retry Settings

Read more about Retry Settings >here<.

Advanced

After Call Work: Enable if you want the Agent to be set on pause after completing call on the queue.
After Call Work Duration: If the After Call Work is set to yes, insert how many seconds the pause should last.
Auto Pause: Set to Yes if you want to pause the agents who fail to answer a call.
Ring In Use: Leave at No if you want to avoid sending calls to agents whose status is in use. Be careful to use this parameter correctly, because it works differently for each method (>click here< to explore outbound dialer methods documentation).
Member Delay: Set a delay prior to connecting the contact and the agent.
Timeout Restart: If set to Yes, the timeout for an agent to answer is reset if either a BUSY or CONGESTION status is received from the channel
Recording Format: Specifies the file format to use when recording. If the value is inactive, calls will not be recorded.

Conext: Allows a caller to exit the queue by pressing a single DTMF digit. If a context is specified and the caller enters a number, that digit will attempt to be matched in the context specified, and dialplan execution will continue there.
Set Interface Variables: Can be skipped in most cases.
If set to yes, just prior to the caller being bridged with a queue member some variables will be set (see Asterisk wiki for more information):
MEMBERINTERFACE is the interface name (eg. Agent/1234),
MEMBERNAME is the member name (eg. Joe Soap),
MEMBERCALLS is the number of calls that interface has taken,
MEMBERLASTCALL is the last time the member took a call,
MEMBERPENALTY is the penalty of the member,
MEMBERDYNAMIC indicates if a member is dynamic or not,
MEMBERREALTIME indicates if a member is realtime or not.
Set Queue Variables: Can be skipped in most cases.
if set to yes, just prior to the caller being bridged with a queue member and just prior to the caller leaving the queue some variables will be set (see Asterisk wiki for more information):
QUEUEHOLDTIME callers hold time,
QUEUEORIGINALPOS original position of the caller in the queue.
Set Queue Entry Variables: Can be skipped in most cases.
If set to yes, just prior to the caller being bridged with a queue member some variables will be set (see Asterisk wiki for more information):

QUEUENAME name of the queue,
QUEUEMAX maximum number of calls allowed,
QUEUESTRATEGY the strategy of the queue,
QUEUECALLS number of calls currently in the queue,
QUEUEHOLDTIME current average hold time,
QUEUECOMPLETED number of completed calls for the queue,
QUEUEABANDONED number of abandoned calls,
QUEUESRVLEVEL queue service level,
QUEUESRVLEVELPERF current service level performance

Order By scheduledat: Choose the order of the list in the Hopper (desc/asc). If it is in ascending order and you have one call scheduled at 10am and another call scheduled at 10.05am, it takes 10am call first, descending goes in reverse order.
Mandatory disposition: Enable it you want the agent to be forced to dispose the interactions managed and set the pause status to be automatically applied during this operation.

Recall Me Timeout & Recall In Queue:
When the Agent closes and disposes a call in a queue campaign, he can set an automatic recall request to the system: in this case the system tries to recall the customer and to pass the call to the specific agent for the time (in minutes) inserted in the Recall Me Timeout (default 30min). 

Scenario: agent does disposition with recall me at 10.40am with recall me timeout 10min. If no one has connected on until 12pm, call is no longer made because recall me time exceeded. 

So if this is not possible (e.g. the Agent indicated for Recall Me option is not available) the call is dropped and moved to final, unless the Recall in Queue enabled: this option enables the call to be passed to any available agent belonging to the same queue.

Scenario: agent does disposition with recall me at 10.40am with recall me timeout 30min and recall in queue enabled → if the agent does not answer within the inserted timeout, the contact is not closed but entered back into the hopper, allocation to assigned agent is removed and any agent in the queue campaign can handle the call.

Global Interval:  Before calling a contact the system checks if the global interval is OK and then it considers the other interval set (default: 07:00-22:00,*,*,*). So Global Interval is a security check, to verify that the campaign can generate call;. if the time is outside the global interval the campaign is not activated. 

Please note that the system default Global Interval is from 7 AM to 10 PM: it means that the campaign will never be operational out of this range unless you change it, even if the Time Interval in the General Settings is set to always.

We advise you to pay attention to the regulations that apply to calls campaigns in your country.

Timezone:  Before calling a contact the system checks if the time is right. In this field you can choose a different time zone for the specific campaign you're configuring, e.g. if you have a server in Italy and you configure a global interval (18:00-20:00,*,*,*) and timezone Australia/Sydney, the system will start to call in Sydney when it is 18:00 and in Italy when it is 10:00.
Note that the timezone is related to the campaign (not to single contacts). It is better to separate the list of contacts with different timezone.

AMD: Enable if you want the system try to detect Answering Machine (Asterisk feature). When you set this flag to yes you need to insert all the parameters (see the picture below) which are necessary in order to tune your actual system properly. It is used to understand if the caller is human or a machine (e.g. voicemail).
Be sure you are enough skilled to do this: this may cause losing contacts interactions if the system doesn't recognize properly a human from a machine answering! For more information see asterisk documentation >here<.

Hopper

• Total: Total number of contacts in the list

• Fresh: Total number of contacts that are in line to be dialed by the dialer for the first time

• Open: Total number of contacts that have been dialed (at least once) and are still in line to be dialed

• Closed: Total number of contacts already called and closed, or contacts for which max retries are reached
  
  

The Hopper contains list of contacts that are going to be called by the dialer at a scheduled time: 

• When you add a list in a queue campaign, all contacts in the list are placed in the hopper. 

• When you add new contacts in the associated list, the system will automatically add the new contacts to the hopper.

Note: Before placing a call to a contact in the hopper, the dialer checks if the contact exists in the blacklist (read about Black lists >here<) and skips it if it does exist.

Click the three dots on the scheduled call to:

• Delete the scheduled call

• Edit the scheduled time for this call

History

The Call history list contains history of calls originated by the dialer. Read >this article< to learn about call statuses.

Final
The Hopper Final contains list of closed contacts (because successfully managed or for other reasons, e.g. max retries reached).

• If a contact is successfully connected to an agent, the contact is moved from the Hopper to Hopper Final and will not be called again.

• If a call has failed, the number of times it failed for congestion, busy and no answer will be shown in the Hopper as long as the max retries are not reached. When the max retries are exhausted, the contact will be moved to the Hopper Final and the status will show the reason the contact has been closed.

• Once contacts are moved to the Hopper Final, if you remove the list from the campaign and add it again, only open contacts (contacts that are not in the Hopper Final) are placed in the Hopper and dialed by the dialer. This will avoid unnecessary calls to closed contacts.

How to Restore Contacts

You can move one or many contacts from Final to Hopper: they will be restored in the Hopper and the Dialer will call them again.

This function is not allowed

• if they have Status=Answered

• if a Contact Id is already in the Hopper (this prevents multiple identical contacts to be restored in the Hopper)

You can restore a contact in several ways:

• By clicking on the button below and selecting one of the Calls Status List to restore
• By selecting one item in the list and clicking on the three dots and then choosing Restore contact
• By selecting one or more items clicking the checkboxes and then click this icon:
  

Blacklist

Here you find the list of all contacts in the blacklist (if a blacklist is connected to the campaign).

Above icons explained from the left:

1. Create a clone of the campaign
2. Add a list to the campaign (read more about creating lists >here<)
3. Add a Blacklist to the campaign (read more about Blacklist >here<)
4. Add an agent team to the campaign
5. Add an agent to the campaign
6. Reset lists on the campaign (restoring contacts to "Fresh")
7. Go to the Realtime view of the campaign
8. Save campaign

How to add or remove agents from a Queue Campaign

There are two ways to add/remove agents from a Queue Campaign:

1. Edit the voice queue campaign and click this icon:

In the left list are agents who are not associated with the queue campaign and in the right list are agents associated with the queue campaign.
Add agens
Click on the agents to the left to add them in the right list, or add all agents by clicking the two arrows pointing to the right at the bottom.
Remove agents

Click on the agents to the right to add them in the left list (remove them from the queue campaign), or remove all agents by clicking the two arrows pointing to the left at the bottom.

Then click Save and save the Queue Campaign.

2. In the list of all queue campaigns, click the three dots to the right of the campaign and then Add Agent:

Then follow the steps described above.

How to add or remove a list from a Queue Campaign

There are two ways to add/remove a list from a Queue Campaign:

1. Edit the queue campaign and click this icon:

In the left list are lists not associated with the queue campaign and in the right list lists associated with the queue campaign.
Add list
Click on the lists to the left to add them in the right list, or add all lists by clicking the two arrows pointing to the right at the bottom.
Remove list

Click on the list to the right to add them in the left list (remove them from the queue campaign), or remove all lists by clicking the two arrows pointing to the left at the bottom.

Then click Save and save the Queue Campaign.

2. In the list of all queue campaigns, click the three dots to the right of the campaign and then Add list:

Then follow the steps described above.