vicidial.org

It's amazing that after 10 years of using vicidial i only just found out today this is possible.
If you go to the manual dial screen and DON'T input a number and just click on Dial Now, the next number in the hopper will be dialed. I suppose this is not a bug but by design.

However this way of dialing is counter productive if you have a RATIO or ADAPT campaign. We found out agents were clicking the manual dial button after they had dispositioned every call just beause they thought calling a number would go faster that way. But of course in an autodial campaign the dialing is happening in the background already and if you start doing manual calls while this is happening you are causing unessary drops.

So my question is, is there a way to disable the feature where agents can click on Manual dial>Dial now without inputting a number?
And no i don't want to disable the manual dial button because they will still need in the case they really want to dial a new number that does not exist on the system yet.

I think for this you will need to modify that portion of code with some javascript function , to disable the dial now button if the phone field is empty

You could turn on manual dial preview ...?

Or ...

Campaign setting:

Manual Dial Hopper Check -Setting this to Y will mean that any manually dialed campaign phone call through the agent screen will first check for a lead in the hopper with the same phone number, and if one exists it will be deleted before the manual dial call is placed. Default is N.

User setting (not sure how this works exactly, never tested it, but may be able to block of blank for instance):

Lead Filter -This option allows you to set a Lead Filter for an individual user. To use this option, the user must be logged in to a campaign that has No Hopper Dialing enabled. Default is EMPTY for disabled.

But this is a RATIO campaign, i think this is a bug? I can't imagine the system was intended for users to bypass the campaign defined algorithm.

dspaan wrote:But this is a RATIO campaign, i think this is a bug? I can't imagine the system was intended for users to bypass the campaign defined algorithm.

You sound like some technicians I've had to "have a discussion" with. The Vicidial System is designed to allow as much flexibility, control, and power as possible. It allows the room manager to rely on the intelligence of the agent (and/or training) to allow the flexibility for the agents to do anything they like, but it also allows for (up to) severe restrictions.

All of this, of course, is based on Who has Paid for What to be included. If nobody has found a restriction important enough to be included, it's ... not.

So, yes: If an agent wants to "jump outside the algorithm" and rogue dial (for the purpose of making $$, obviously), they can do so. And possibly jump on leads that the other agents wish they had gotten to. Incentive. Cut-throat. I assume you are familiar with call centers. Some room managers even encourage this behavior because it shows who can sell the most and incentivises the hungry agents to "dive in" and make more money.

Other rooms have minimum wage clock-watchers who require something akin to a watchdog to keep them on the phones talking to clients instead of their friends all day. go figure. lol

In this case agents who this are only creating unneccesary outbound drops and disrupting the outbound dialing process. They are also acting in their own disadvantage because when doing this they will have less human contacts per hour. So i can't imagine this is by design. I've reported this in mantis:
http://www.vicidial.org/VICIDIALmantis/view.php?id=1188

Ok I help you with this. You need to put only 5 lines of code in vicidial.php:
Find the function "NeWManuaLDiaLCalLSubmiT(tempDiaLnow,NMDclick)" (it's about line 8505 on newest svn revision 3134) and place the red part between the normal black code:

if (MDPhonENumbeRform == 'XXXXXXXXXX')
{MDPhonENumbeRform = document.vicidial_form.MDPhonENumbeRHiddeN.value;}

if (MDPhonENumbeRform.length < 5)
{
alert_box("<?php echo _QXZ("YOU MUST ENTER A PHONE NUMBER TO USE MANUAL DIAL"); ?>");
return;
}

if (MDDiaLCodEform.length < 1)
{MDDiaLCodEform = document.vicidial_form.phone_code.value;}

Thanks Blackbird!!