Hi people, this is my first appearence at this blog, by way of a small introduction  my name is Juan Pablo Bustos and I’m writing from Mendoza – Argentina, I’m a Systems Analyst and also I have my ECT Certification.

I’ve been talking with Rafael about publishing this method, and he suggested to share it in the Elastix Blog, so that’s why I’ve have published it, so we can polish it and see a way to implement it on a larger scale.

The objective of this implementation is to use Elastix’s dialer to call a list of customers to deliver a message and to be able to still use the Call Center with “real” agents. I have also added a little PHP script that logs the customer’s answer (number dialed) after the call is completed.

To get this to work, we need to create:

- Some “virtual agents” that are created in the same way as the “real” agents in the  Call Center’s GUI.

- A Custom Context to log them in with the command AgentCallbackLogin (sadly deprecated in Asterisk 1.6 , but able to be worked around).

- Another Custom Context to log them (for debugging purposes, but useful sometimes).

- A Custom Context to redirect the calls to a final custom context that will handle the calls.

It seems a little tricky, but with a few Custom Contexts you’ll be able to use a feature that is requested very often.

Now the question is, why “virtual” agents ? The answer is pretty simple, I needed to keep Call Center’s original functionality.

As you may noticed the way that Elastix’s dialer, before dialing, polls for the available agents, that’s why we are using AgentCallbackLogin, and to make it call.

So the overview of the process will be something like this:

1) We create the agent with the Call Center’s GUI.

2)  We delete the password of the agent at the file

In etc/asterisk/agents.conf , it will be something like this:
Agent prototype: agent => [Agent ID],[password],[Agent’s Name]

[agents]

Agent => 1001,,Virtual 1

Agent => 1002,,Virtual 2

Agent => 1003,,Virtual 3

Agent => 1004,,Virtual 4

3)  We create a Custom Context to login our virtual agent at extensions_custom.conf:

The prototype for AgentCallbackLogin is this:
AgentCallbackLogin([AgentNo][|Options[|exten[@context]]])

[login-agents]

exten => 1111,1,Answer

exten => 1111,n,NoOp(Logging Agents)

exten => 1111,n,AgentCallbackLogin(1001,s,501 at from-internal)

exten => 1111,n,AgentCallbackLogin(1002,s,502 at from-internal)

exten => 1111,n,AgentCallbackLogin(1003,s,503 at from-internal)

exten => 1111,n,AgentCallbackLogin(1004,s,504 at from-internal)

exten => 1111,n,NoOp(All Logged)

exten => 1111,n,Hangup()

4) We create a “Catch” extension to pick up all the calls directed to our virtual agents:

[catchcalls]

exten => 501,1, Goto(amessage,s,1)

exten => 502,1, Goto(amessage,s,1)

exten => 503,1, Goto(amessage,s,1)

exten => 504,1, Goto(amessage,s,1)

5) Finally we create the Custom Context to deliver the message:

[amessage]

exten => s,1,Answer

exten => s,2,Wait,2

exten => s,n,Read(tmp,custom/message1,1||1|5)

exten => s,n,Set(RESP=${tmp})

exten => s,n,Playback(thank-you-cooperation)

exten => s,n,Hangup()

exten => h,1,DeadAGI(llamadas.php,${RESP})

As you may notice if you want to store the answer in the case of a poll or similar, you can store the answer using the command read instead of playback, and once the call is finished call a script to handle the answer.

6)  Create a queue where you’ll put your virtual agents.

7) Create an outgoing campaign and start burning minutes!

For this implementation I used Elastix 1.5.2 and Call Center 1.5 with 50 virtual agents and it works like a charm.

I hope you weren’t bored if this mini guide is kind of basic or by my English.

Thanks for reading it and I hope It’ll be useful

Tags: Agents, Asterisk, automated message, broadcast, Call Center, campaign, Dialer, Elastix, message

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Community, Elastix, VOIP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.