Creating a campaign in the Vicidial Administration Console is one of the most important steps in configuring your Freevoice Predictive Dialer. Multiple campaigns can be created and run at the same time, each campaign may have different settings.

How to create a basic Vicidial campaign

1. Login to the Vicidial Administrator page.
2. Click the Campaigns link at the top of the page, then click the Add a New Campaign link.
3. Set the following fields appropriately:
   Campaign ID: This is the short name of the campaign, it is not editable after initial submission, cannot contain spaces and must be between 2 and 8 characters in length.
   Campaign Name: This is the short name of the campaign, it is not editable after initial submission, cannot contain spaces and must be between 2 and 8 characters in length.
   Active:  This is where you set the campaign to Active or Inactive. If Inactive, noone can log into it.
   Hopper Level: Make this slightly greater than the number of leads you go through in a minute.
   Dial Method: This field is the way to define how dialing is to take place. If MANUAL then the auto_dial_level will be locked at 0 unless Dial Method is changed. If RATIO then the normal dialing a number of lines for Active agents. ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT will dial predictively up to the dropped percentage and then not allow aggressive dialing once the drop limit is reached until the percentage goes down again. ADAPT_TAPERED allows for running over the dropped percentage in the first half of the shift -as defined by call_time selected for campaign- and gets more strict as the shift goes on. ADAPT_AVERAGE tries to maintain an average or the dropped percentage not imposing hard limits as aggressively as the other two methods. You cannot change the Auto Dial Level if you are in any of the ADAPT dial methods. Only the Dialer can change the dial level when in predictive dialing mode.
   Auto Dial Level: This is where you set how many lines VICIDIAL should use per active agent. zero 0 means auto dialing is off and the agents will click to dial each number. Otherwise VICIDIAL will keep dialing lines equal to active agents multiplied by the dial level to arrive at how many lines this campaign on each server should allow. The ADAPT OVERRIDE checkbox allows you to force a new dial level even though the dial method is in an ADAPT mode. This is useful if there is a dramatic shift in the quality of leads and you want to drastically change the dial_level manually.
   Local Call Time: This is where you set during which hours you would like to dial, as determined by the local time in the are in which you are calling. This is controlled by area code and is adjusted for Daylight Savings time if applicable. General Guidelines in the USA for Business to Business is 9am to 5pm and Business to Consumer calls is 9am to 9pm.
   Dial Status - This is where you set the statuses that you are wanting to dial on within the lists that are active for the campaign below. To add another status to dial, select it from the drop-down list and click ADD. To remove one of the dial statuses, click on the REMOVE link next to the status you want to remove. if you want to use Callbacks make sure you add the CALLBK status.
4. Once all the settings have been set properly, click the Submit button to save the Campaign
5. Now that the Campaign is saved you may access all the Campaign settings by clicking the Detail View link.

Complete list of Vicidial campaign settings

 
Campaign ID - This is the short name of the campaign, it is not editable after initial submission, cannot contain spaces and must be between 2 and 8 characters in length.

Campaign Name - This is the description of the campaign, it must be between 6 and 40 characters in length.

Campaign Description - This is a memo field for the campaign, it is optional and can be a maximum of 255 characters in length.

Campaign Change Date - This is the last time that the settings for this campaign were modified in any way.

Last Campaign Login Date - This is the last time that an agent was logged into this campaign.

Campaign Stats Refresh - This checkbox will allow you to force a vicidial stats refresh, even if the campaign is not active.

Active - This is where you set the campaign to Active or Inactive. If Inactive, noone can log into it.

Park Extension - This is where you can customize the on-hold music for VICIDIAL. Make sure the extension is in place in the extensions.conf and that it points to the filename below.

Park File Name - This is where you can customize the on-hold music for VICIDIAL. Make sure the filename is 10 characters in length or less and that the file is in place in the /var/lib/asterisk/sounds directory.

Web Form - This is where you can set the custom web page that will be opened when the user clicks on the WEB FORM button.

Allow Closers - This is where you can set whether the users of this campaign will have the option to send the call to a closer.

Default Transfer Group - This field is the default In-Group that will be automatically selected when the agent goes to the transfer-conference frame in their agent interface.

Allowed Transfer Groups - With these checkbox listings you can select the groups that agents in this campaign can transfer calls to. Allow Closers must be enabled for this option to show up.

Allow Inbound and Blended - This is where you can set whether the users of this campaign will have the option to take inbound calls with this campaign. If you want to do blended inbound and outbound then this must be set to Y. If you only want to do outbound dialing on this campaign set this to N. Default is N.

Dial Status - This is where you set the statuses that you are wanting to dial on within the lists that are active for the campaign below. To add another status to dial, select it from the drop-down list and click ADD. To remove one of the dial statuses, click on the REMOVE link next to the status you want to remove.

List Order - This menu is where you select how the leads that match the statuses selected above will be put in the lead hopper:
  - DOWN: select the first leads loaded into the vicidial_list table
  - UP: select the last leads loaded into the vicidial_list table
  - UP PHONE: select the highest phone number and works its way down
  - DOWN PHONE: select the lowest phone number and works its way up
  - UP LAST NAME: starts with last names starting with Z and works its way down
  - DOWN LAST NAME: starts with last names starting with A and works its way up
  - UP COUNT: starts with most called leads and works its way down
  - DOWN COUNT: starts with least called leads and works its way up
  - DOWN COUNT 2nd NEW: starts with least called leads and works its way up inserting a NEW lead in every other lead - Must NOT have NEW selected in the dial statuses
  - DOWN COUNT 3nd NEW: starts with least called leads and works its way up inserting a NEW lead in every third lead - Must NOT have NEW selected in the dial statuses
  - DOWN COUNT 4th NEW: starts with least called leads and works its way up inserting a NEW lead in every forth lead - Must NOT have NEW selected in the dial statuses

Hopper Level - This is how many leads the VDhopper script tries to keep in the vicidial_hopper table for this campaign. If running VDhopper script every minute, make this slightly greater than the number of leads you go through in a minute.

Lead Filter - This is a method of filtering your leads using a fragment of a SQL query. Use this feature with caution, it is easy to stop dialing accidentally with the slightest alteration to the SQL statement. Default is NONE.

Force Reset of Hopper - This allows you to wipe out the hopper contents upon form submission. It should be filled again when the VDhopper script runs.

Dial Method - This field is the way to define how dialing is to take place. If MANUAL then the auto_dial_level will be locked at 0 unless Dial Method is changed. If RATIO then the normal dialing a number of lines for Active agents. ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT will dial predictively up to the dropped percentage and then not allow aggressive dialing once the drop limit is reached until the percentage goes down again. ADAPT_TAPERED allows for running over the dropped percentage in the first half of the shift -as defined by call_time selected for campaign- and gets more strict as the shift goes on. ADAPT_AVERAGE tries to maintain an average or the dropped percentage not imposing hard limits as aggressively as the other two methods. You cannot change the Auto Dial Level if you are in any of the ADAPT dial methods. Only the Dialer can change the dial level when in predictive dialing mode.

Auto Dial Level - This is where you set how many lines VICIDIAL should use per active agent. zero 0 means auto dialing is off and the agents will click to dial each number. Otherwise VICIDIAL will keep dialing lines equal to active agents multiplied by the dial level to arrive at how many lines this campaign on each server should allow. The ADAPT OVERRIDE checkbox allows you to force a new dial level even though the dial method is in an ADAPT mode. This is useful if there is a dramatic shift in the quality of leads and you want to drastically change the dial_level manually.

Available Only Tally - This field if set to Y will leave out INCALL and QUEUE status agents when calculating the number of calls to dial when not in MANUAL dial mode. Default is N.

Drop Percentage Limit - This field is where you set the limit of the percentage of dropped calls you would like while using an adaptive-predictive dial method, not MANUAL or RATIO.

Maximum Adapt Dial Level - This field is where you set the limit of the limit to the numbr of lines you would like dialed per agent while using an adaptive-predictive dial method, not MANUAL or RATIO. This number can be higher than the Auto Dial Level if your hardware will support it. Value must be a positive number greater than one and can have decimal places Default 3.0.

Latest Server Time - This field is only used by the ADAPT_TAPERED dial method. You should enter in the hour and minute that you will stop calling on this campaign, 2100 would mean that you will stop dialing this campaign at 9PM server time. This allows the Tapered algorithm to decide how aggressively to dial by how long you have until you will be finished calling.

Adapt Intensity Modifier - This field is used to adjust the predictive intensity either higher or lower. The higher a positive number you select, the greater the dialer will increase the call pacing when it goes up and the slower the dialer will decrease the call pacing when it goes down. The lower the negative number you select here, the slower the dialer will increase the call pacing and the faster the dialer will lower the call pacing when it goes down. Default is 0. This field is not used by the MANUAL or RATIO dial methods.

Dial Level Difference Target - This field is used to define whether you want to target having a specific number of agents waiting for calls or calls waiting for agents. For example if you would always like to have on average one agent free to take calls immediately you would set this to -1, if you would like to target always having one call on hold waiting for an agent you would set this to 1. Default is 0. This field is not used by the MANUAL or RATIO dial methods.

Concurrent Transfers - This setting is used to define the number of calls that can be sent to agents at the same time. It is recommended that this setting is left at AUTO. This field is not used by the MANUAL dial method.

Auto Alt-Number Dialing - This setting is used to automatically dial alternate number fields while dialing in the RATIO and ADAPT dial methods when there is no contact at the main phone number for a lead, the NA, B, DC and N statuses. This setting is not used by the MANUAL dial method.

Next Agent Call - This determines which agent receives the next call that is available:
  - random: orders by the random update value in the vicidial_live_agents table
  - oldest_call_start: orders by the last time an agent was sent a call. Results in agents receiving about the same number of calls overall.
  - oldest_call_finish: orders by the last time an agent finished a call. AKA agent waiting longest receives first call.
  - overall_user_level: orders by the user_level of the agent as defined in the vicidial_users table a higher user_level will receive more calls.
  - campaign_rank: orders by the rank given to the agent for the campaign. Highest to Lowest.
  - fewest_calls: orders by the number of calls received by an agent for that specific inbound group. Least calls first.

Local Call Time - This is where you set during which hours you would like to dial, as determined by the local time in the are in which you are calling. This is controlled by area code and is adjusted for Daylight Savings time if applicable. General Guidelines in the USA for Business to Business is 9am to 5pm and Business to Consumer calls is 9am to 9pm.

Dial Timeout - If defined, calls that would normally hang up after the timeout defined in extensions.conf would instead timeout at this amount of seconds if it is less than the extensions.conf timeout. This allows for quickly changing dial timeouts from server to server and limiting the effects to a single campaign. If you are having a lot of Answering Machine or Voicemail calls you may want to try changing this value to between 21-26 and see if results improve.

Dial Prefix - This field allows for more easily changing a path of dialing to go out through a different method without doing a reload in Asterisk. Default is 9 based upon a 91NXXNXXXXXX in the dial plan - extensions.conf.

Omit Phone Code - This field allows you to leave out the phone_code field while dialing within VICIDIAL. For instance if you are dialing in the UK from the UK you would have 44 in as your phone_code field for all leads, but you just want to dial 10 digits in your dial plan extensions.conf to place calls instead of 44 then 10 digits. Default is N.

Campaign CallerID - This field allows for the sending of a custom callerid number on the outbound calls. This is the number that would show up on the callerid of the person you are calling. The default is UNKNOWN. If you are using T1 or E1s to dial out this option is only available if you are using PRIs - ISDN T1s or E1s - that have the custom callerid feature turned on, this will not work with Robbed-bit service -RBS- circuits. This will also work through most VOIP -SIP or IAX trunks- providers that allow dynamic outbound callerID. The custom callerID only applies to calls placed for the VICIDIAL campaign directly, any 3rd party calls or transfers will not send the custom callerID. NOTE: Sometimes putting UNKNOWN or PRIVATE in the field will yield the sending of your default callerID number by your carrier with the calls. You may want to test this and put 0000000000 in the callerid field instead if you do not want to send you CallerID.

Campaign VDAD extension - This field allows for a custom VDAD transfer extension. This allows you to use different VDADtransfer...agi scripts depending upon your campaign. The default transfer AGI - exten 8365 agi-VDADtransfer.agi - just immediately sends the calls on to agents as soon as they are picked up. An additional sample political survey AGI is also now included - 8366 agi-VDADtransferSURVEY.agi - that plays a message to the called person and allows them to make a choice by pressing buttons - effectively pre-screening the lead - . Please note that except for surveys, political calls and charities this form of calling is illegal in the United States.

Campaign Rec extension - This field allows for a custom recording extension to be used with VICIDIAL. This allows you to use different extensions depending upon how long you want to allow a maximum recording and what type of codec you want to record in. The default exten is 8309 which if you follow the SCRATCH_INSTALL examples will record in the WAV format for upto one hour. Another option included in the examples is 8310 which will record in GSM format for upto one hour.

Campaign Recording - This menu allows you to choose what level of recording is allowed on this campaign. NEVER will disable recording on the client. ONDEMAND is the default and allows the agent to start and stop recording as needed. ALLCALLS will start recording on the client whenever a call is sent to an agent. ALLFORCE will start recording on the client whenever a call is sent to an agent giving the agent no option to stop recording. For ALLCALLS and ALLFORCE there is an option to use the Recording Delay to cut down on very short recordings and recude system load.

Campaign Rec Filename - This field allows you to customize the name of the recording when Campaign recording is ONDEMAND or ALLCALLS. The allowed variables are CAMPAIGN CUSTPHONE FULLDATE TINYDATE EPOCH AGENT. The default is FULLDATE_AGENT and would look like this 20051020-103108_6666. Another example is CAMPAIGN_TINYDATE_CUSTPHONE which would look like this TESTCAMP_51020103108_3125551212. 50 char max.

Recording Delay - For ALLCALLS and ALLFORCE recording only. This setting will delay the starting of the recording on all calls for the number of seconds specified in this field. Default is 0.

Campaign Script - This menu allows you to choose the script that will appear on the agents screen for this campaign. Select NONE to show no script for this campaign.

Get Call Launch - This menu allows you to choose whether you want to auto-launch the web-form page in a separate window, auto-switch to the SCRIPT tab or do nothing when a call is sent to the agent for this campaign.

Answering Machine Message - This field is for entering in an extension to blind transfer calls to when the agent gets an answering machine and clicks on the Answering Machine Message button in the transfer conference frame. You must set this exten up in the dial plan - extensions.conf - and make sure it plays an audio file then hangs up.

AMD send to vm exten - This menu allows you to define whether a message is left on an answering machine when it is detected. the call will be immediately forwarded to the Answering-Machine-Message extension if AMD is active and it is determined that the call is an answering machine.

Xfer-Conf DTMF - These four fields allow for you to have two sets of Transfer Conference and DTMF presets. When the call or campaign is loaded, the vicidial.php script will show two buttons on the transfer-conference frame and auto-populate the number-to-dial and the send-dtmf fields when pressed. If you want to allow Consultative Transfers, a fronter to a closer, you can place CXFER as one of the number-to-dial presets and the proper dial string will be sent to do a Local Consultative Transfer, then the agent can just LEAVE-3WAY-CALL and move on to their next call. If you want to allow Blind transfers of customers to a VICIDIAL AGI script for logging or an IVR, then place AXFER in the number-to-dial field. You can also specify an custom extension after the AXFER or CXFER, for instance if you want to do Internal Consultative transfers instead of Local you would put CXFER90009 in the number-to-dial field.

Agent Alt Num Dialing - This option allows an agent to manually dial the alternate phone number or address3 field after the main number has been called.

Scheduled Callbacks - This option allows an agent to disposition a call as CALLBK and choose the data and time at which the lead will be re-activated.

Drop Call Seconds - The number of seconds from the time the customer line is picked up until the call is considered a DROP, only applies to outbound calls.

Voicemail - If defined, calls that would normally DROP would instead be directed to this voicemail box to hear and leave a message.

Safe Harbor Message - If set to Y will play a message to customer after the Drop Call Seconds timeout is reached without being transferred to an agent. This setting will override sending to a voicemail box if this is set to Y.

Safe Harbor Exten - This is the dial plan extension that the desired Safe Harbor audio file is located at on your server.

Wrap Up Seconds - The number of seconds to force an agent to wait before allowing them to receive or dial another call. The timer begins as soon as an agent hangs up on their customer - or in the case of alternate number dialing when the agent finishes the lead - Default is 0 seconds. If the timer runs out before the agent has dispositioned the call, the agent still will NOT move on to the next call until they select a disposition.

Wrap Up Message - This is a campaign-specific message to be displayed on the wrap up screen if wrap up seconds is set.

Use Internal DNC List - This defines whether this campaign is to filter leads against the Internal DNC list. If it is set to Y, the hopper will look for each phone number in the DNC list before placing it in the hopper. If it is in the DNC list then it will change that lead status to DNCL so it cannot be dialed. Default is N.

Allowed Inbound Groups - For CLOSER campaigns only. Here is where you select the inbound groups you want agents in this CLOSER campaign to be able to take calls from. It is important for BLENDED inbound-outbound campaigns only to select the inbound groups that are used for agents in this campaign. The calls coming into the inbound groups selected here will be counted as active calls for a blended campaign even if all agents in the campaign are not logged in to receive calls from all of those selected inbound groups.

Agent Pause Codes Active - Allows agents to select a pause code when they click on the PAUSE button in vicidial.php. Pause codes are definable per campaign at the bottom of the campaign view detail screen and they are stored in the vicidial_agent_log table. Default is N.

Disable Alter Customer Data - If set to Y, does not change any of the customer data record when an agent dispositions the call. Default is N.

Allow No-Hopper-Leads Logins - If set to Y, allows agents to login to the campaign even if there are no leads loaded into the hopper for that campaign. This function is not needed in CLOSER-type campaigns. Default is N.

List Order Mix - Overrides the Lead Order and Dial Status fields. Will use the List and status parameters for the selected List Mix entry in the List Mix sub section instead. Default is DISABLED.

List Mix ID - ID of the list mix. Must be from 2-20 characters in length with no spaces or other special punctuation.

List Mix Name - Descriptive name of the list mix. Must be from 2-50 characters in length.

List Mix Detail - The composition of the List Mix entry. Contains the List ID, mix order, percentages and statuses that make up this List Mix. The percentages always have to add up to 100, and the lists all have to be active and set to the campaign for the order mix entry to be Activated.

List Mix Method - The method of mixing all of the parts of the List Mix Detail together. EVEN_MIX will mix leads from each part interleaved with the other parts, like this 1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3. IN_ORDER will put the leads in the order in which they are listed in the List Mix Detail screen 1,1,1,2,2,2,3,3,3. RANDOM will put them in RANDOM order 1,3,2,1,1,3,2,1,3. Default is IN_ORDER.

Manual Dial List ID - The default list_id to be used when an agent placces a manual call and a new lead record is created in vicidial_list. Default is 999. This field can contain digits only.

Taken from the Vicidial Admin Help Page