astGUIclient User Log

ViciDial 2.0.5 Released

2009-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_2.0.5

For this release we have added hundreds new functions as well as the usual bug fixes.

Among the changes are:

Redesign of the agent and administrative interfaces
Asterisk configuration of phones, carrier trunks and DIDs through the ViciDial web-interface
Several new additional In-Group features including Queue Prioritization and place-in-line/estimated-hold-time
Agent login shift enforcement
New API for controlling the agent screen as well as adding leads to the system
Agent phone login load balancing and failover on multi-server systems
New Time-clock feature that logs time outside of the ViciDial agent interface
New lead exporting utilities
Several new reports
New agent and administrative website language translations
Several new integration ad synchronization features with VtigerCRM
Compatibility with Sangoma Call Progress Detection(CPD)
Many other changes and bug fixes listed in the TODO Wiki webpage:

Wiki TODO:2.0.5

We have also released an update to the VICIDIAL Manager manual.

Enjoy the new release and as always let us know what you think.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 2.0.4

2007-12-02T22:43:00.000-08:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_2.0.4

For this release we have added several new functions, streamlined how several processes work and of course we have fixed many bugs.

Among the changes are:

Easy control over System Statuses, including the addition of Status Categories
Several new additional In-Group features including music-on-hold, alert messages and call times
Skills based ranking and call routing for inbound and outbound
Agent call routing based on the number of calls taken today per in-group or campaign
Added the ability to copy the settings of an existing User/Campaign/In-Group into a new one
Changing the Transfer feature in the agent screen to allow for more transfer In-Group choices
Dynamic display of available campaigns for an agent in the agent login screen
Many other changes and bug fixes listed in the TODO Wiki webpage:

Wiki TODO:2.0.4

We have also released an update to the VICIDIAL Agent manual and the VICIDIAL Manager manual.

Enjoy the new release and as always let us know what you think.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 2.0.3

2007-04-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_2.0.3

For this release we have added several new functions, streamlined how several processes work and of course we have fixed many bugs.

Among the changes are:

Added optimized manager sending scripts
Made several changes to admin.php and made it more customizable
Made changes to HotKeys to allow for manual auto dial and auto alt number dial
Added ability to dial alternate lead phone numbers in auto-dial modes
Added ability to send more calls to agents at once, improving efficiency at large installations
Added more levels of access control to the administrative interfaces
Added Agent Pause codes to alow agents to categorize their PAUSE time
Added VICIDIAL outbound compatibility with QueueMetrics
Many other changes and bug fixes listed in the TODO Wiki webpage:

Wiki TODO:2.0.3

We have also released an update to the VICIDIAL Agent manual and the VICIDIAL Manager manual.

Enjoy the new release and as always let us know what you think.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 2.0.2

2006-12-22T12:50:00.000-08:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_2.0.2

For this release we have mostly done server-side changes, including merging several similar functions together as well as many bug fixes.

Among the changes are:

Updated Daylight-Savings-Time schemes for 2007
Merged astguiclient web admin functions into the vicidial admin pages
Allow for campaign-specific outbound dialing trunks
Agent controllable volume levels for each person in their session
Replaced standard AGI call logging scripts with a single FastAGI server script
Several changes to the VICIDIAL reporting screens
Added a script to easily change the server_ip of a VICIDIAL server
Added ability to restrict agents to specific campaigns
Many other changes and bug fixes listed in the TODO Wiki webpage:

Wiki TODO:2.0.2

We have also released an update to the VICIDIAL Manager manual and we should have the updated Agent Manual out some time soon.

Enjoy the new release and as always let me know what you think.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 2.0.1

2006-09-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_2.0.1

In this release we've reworked all of the server-side scripts to be more efficient and added several new features and fixed a lot of bugs as usual.

Among the changes are:

Changed all Perl script to use DBI instead of Net::MySQL
Completely new interactive install script with new astguiclient.conf file
Ability to turn off or on logging of server scripts
Ability to redirect AGI output to file, STDERR, both or nowhere.
Code and process optimization of many of the server-side scripts
Added a Predictive outbound dialing algorithm with many user-defined settings
Wrote new BASE_INSTALL.txt doc for simple install and added sample conf files
Many other changes and bug fixes listed in the TODO Wiki webpage:

Wiki TODO:2.0.1

We have also released an update to the VICIDIAL Manager manual and we should have the updated Agent Manual out some time next week.

Enjoy the new release and as always let me know what you think.

VICIDIAL Manager Manual Released

2006-06-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

after 4 months I have finished the VICIDIAL Manager Manual. It is available for download at:
http://www.eflo.net/store.php#MANAGER

The manager manual is targeted at Call Center managers and Administrators, and it goes over all administrative web page functions needed to run VICIDIAL. There are also several tutorials on setting up different types of campaigns.

The full color Hi-Res version download is 77 pages and includes free updates for one year.

A free sample is also available that has the first 2 chapters and the first 2 tutorials.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 1.1.12

2006-06-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_1.1.12

In this release we've fixed some major security holes, added several new features and fixed a lot of bugs as usual.

Among the changes are:

Security enhancements of PHP scripts to reduce SQL-injection and other threats
Completely redesigned local call time system in VICIDIAL for more flexibility
Added Drop-call and safe-harbor options to campaigns and inbound groups
Added option for allowing wrapup time between calls in vicidial.php
Multi-language translation rewritten for more flexibility and easy of use
Added more user-permission options/restrictions for both agents and admins
Added option of using app_conference instead of meetme engine
Added internal DNC list for Do-Not-Call entries across the system
Added automatic lead recycling to call back Busy calls at definable intervals
Added listID override and timezone lookup to all lead importing scripts
Added easy-prompt-recording AGI and playback: agi-record_prompts.agi
Many other changes and bug fixes listed in the TODO.txt file

A detailed record of all that has changed is available in the 1.1.12 TODO.txt file

We have also released an update to the VICIDIAL agent manual and are over half done with the Manager manual. Look for that later this summer.

Enjoy the new release and as always let me know what you think.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 1.1.11

2006-04-28T09:43:00.000-07:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_1.1.11

In this release we've finalized a few major new features and fixed a lot of bugs as usual.

Among the changes are:

Added Agent Specific Scheduled Callbacks
Added Lead filters for campaigns to use custom SQL to narrow calling scope
Added Agent manual-lead-insertion capability
Added more user-permission options/restrictions for both agents and admins
Fixed PHP variable checking in all PHP scripts to be more compliant
Several small bug fixes for better Asterisk 1.2.6 and SVN compatibility

A detailed record of all that has changed is available in the 1.1.11 TODO.txt file

We have finished and released the VICIDIAL agent manual and have started writing the Manager manual. Look for that later this summer.

Enjoy the new release and as always let me know what you think.

New astGUIclient snapshot package

2006-04-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

I've created a new snapshot package on sourceforge so that we can
upload snapshots of code changes more frequently and quickly for you
all to test.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=95133

This snapshot includes several display changes to the admin.php page
as well as a first draft of Agent-Only callbacks and new-lead
manual-entry-and-dial for vicidial.php.(these two features are
hard-coded as enabled in this snapshot but will be user-enablable in
the next release)
Please download it and try it out.

Take a look at the TODO for changes made in this snapshot since 1.1.10:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/TODO.txt

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 1.1.10

2006-03-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_1.1.10

In this release we've finalized a few major new features and fixed a lot of bugs as usual.

Among the changes are:

Added Answering Machine Detection capability and associated features
Added ability for agent to schedule callbacks with customers
Added more security and user features and controls
Added several other small features and fixes

A detailed record of all that has changed is available in the 1.1.10 TODO.txt file

We are still trying to squeeze some time out to finish writing our agent manual and start writing the Manager manual. Look for those later this summer.

Enjoy the new release and as always let me know what you think.

Snapshot build 2006-03-03

2006-03-03T13:23:00.000-08:00

We've fixed lots of new bugs and have added a few small features so it's time for another snapshot build. Thanks to all of you that tested the last snapshot build. This one is very close to a release so test away and we'll do the release next week.
Changes documented in the TODO.txt file for 1.1.10.

Download the snapshot(astguiclient_snapshot_2006-03-03.zip) in the experimental downloads section of the project site or just click here.

To install the build, update your database with the upgrade_1.1.10.sql file and replace the perl, agi and web files on your system with the ones in the build(or run the install script)

Let me know what you think of it.

Snapshot build 2006-02-17

2006-02-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

We've finished a whole bunch of features and want to get them out so you can test them so here's another snapshot build. A snapshot build has tested fine on our system, but has not necessarily been put into production testing.

The major features we've added to this are basic scheduled Callbacks, Basic skills-based call routing, many new admin features and the option to install Answering Machine Detection. There are also many other small features and bug fixes in this snapshot, to see them look at the TODO.txt file for 1.1.10.

Download the snapshot(astguiclient_snapshot_2006-02-17.zip) in the experimental downloads section of the project site or just click here.

To install the build, update your database with the upgrade_1.1.10.sql file and replace the perl, agi and web files on your system with the ones in the build(or run the install script)

Let me know what you think of it.

astGUIclient VICIDIAL Release 1.1.9

2006-01-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

We've finished our latest project release: astguiclient_1.1.9

In this release we've finalized many compatibility and security issues, and fixed lots of small bugs as well as adding several new features to both vicidial and astguiclient.

Among the changes are:

Added Load Balancing of Inbound and Outbound calls across multiple Asterisk servers in the same setup
Removed all PHP globals requirements, can now use register_globals=Off in PHP
Add fully translated Greek admin and agc scripts(agc images to come)
Added security elements to admin pages and added record deletion functions
Added a script tab to VICIDIAL to have a variable-populated agent script
Added new Super lead loader with field chooser and CVS/XLS-format capability
Added favorites panel to astguiclient.php that shows off/on hook

Here are some screenshots of a couple of new features:
- astguiclient with new favorites panel
- vicidial with new SCRIPTS panel
- vicidial main screen with a few new features

A detailed record of all that has changed is available in the TODO.txt file

Now that we have finished with this release we are going to take a few weeks off developing to write some documentation and finally move our offices. This would be a great time for those developers out there that have expressed interest to make your changes to the codebase while you are not working on a moving target.

I would also like to welcome BinFone Telecom as our Premiere Project Sponsor. They have helped us out in the past with some free IAX testing accounts and are now actively sponsoring the project which will allow us to pay for
some hosting for a live vicidial demo website(when I get some free time ha ha) and some prettier project literature when we go out to conferences.

Enjoy the new release and as always let me know what you think.

A Christmas snapshot build with more new features

2005-12-23T11:42:00.000-08:00

We've finished several new features that I wanted to have people test out, but we have not thoroughly tested this code(although this is the code running live at our company so it works for us) or finished our TODO for 1.1.9 yet. We want to make sure these features have enough testing time out there in the wild before they make it into the 1.1.9 release. Here is the major list of changes since the last snapshot:

- Added Load Balancing documentation file LOAD_BALANCING.txt to docs
- vicidial_user default phone and option to have vicidial login first in vicidial.php
- Added SCRIPT tab to vicidial.php and supporting admin backend functions
- Added ability to have webform or script popup upon agent receiving a call
- Added ability to log out all agents in a campaign through admin section
- Added answering machine message button to vicidial transfer-conf frame to be able to blind transfer the call to an exten that will play a message when an agent receives an Answering machine call
- And lots of little stuff(see the TODO.txt)

There are lots of tiny bug fixes in this snapshot, thanks to the many people out there who submitted their bugs and suggestions.

The SCRIPT tab is the biggest change in this snapshot. This tab has the ability to show a script for the agent to read with select variables plugged into it from the database such as name, address, phone number, agent name, etc... We have found in the short time that we have been using it in production that it works well and allows our managers the ability to change the script very quickly without having to run to the copier with every revision and redistribute hard copies.

The LANG_admin and LANG_agc translations files have also been updated in this snapshot so you non-English-speakers please try those out as well.

We hope to have the new lead-loader available next week for download. It will have the ability to do PIPE, TAB and CSV files as well as properly formatted Excel spreadsheets.

Download the snapshot(astguiclient_2005-12-23.zip) in the experimantal downloads section of the project site or just click here.

And let me know what you think of it.

Snapshot build available with new features

2005-12-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

We've finished enough new features that we wanted to have people test them out, but not we have not finished our TODO for 1.1.9 yet. We want to make sure these features have enough testing time out there in the wild before they make it into the 1.1.9 release. We have been running this code for the last few days in our main office so they work for us. Here is the major list of changes over 1.1.8:

- Added Load Balancing of Inbound and Outbound calls across multiple Asterisk servers in the same setup
- Removed all PHP globals requirements, can now use register_globals=Off in PHP
- Added security elements to admin pages and added record deletion functions
- And lots of little stuff(see the TODO.txt)

Other than the obviously security-motivated changes to the admin pages, the other major feature in this snapshot is load balancing of Outbound and Closer calls(Inbound load-balancing will be included in the 1.1.9 release). There are two types of Load-balancing:
1- Overflow Load Balancing, where the call will first go to the next agent that is available on the server that the call is originated from and then it looks for the next available agent on any other server on the network.
2- Load Balancing, where the call will look for the next available agent across the entire network with no preference for a particular server

The Overflow balancing is preferrable if you want to reduce on calls going over IAX channels between servers thus reducing load in some instances.

We have been running this in two of our locations for the last two weeks and it has improved our efficiency by upto 20%.

Download the snapshot(astguiclient_2005-12-09.zip) in the experimantal downloads section of the project site or just click here.

And let me know what you think of it.

Beta non-global admin scripts ready to test

2005-11-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

We've finished our conversion of the admin pages for vicidial and astguiclient to use non-global vars in PHP. This is a big improvement for security reasons and now together with the agc scripts that are already globals-off compliant you can run your entire web server with the php.ini setting of "register_globals=Off"

Please test as much as you can to find bugs with this in the next two weeks. These pages will work in place of the admin scripts shipped with release 1.1.8.

admin_pages_non_global_2005-11-28.zip

All feedback/errors/bugs are great encouraged.

Code updates and new translation

2005-11-22T12:47:00.000-08:00

We have posted new web admin and web client code on the experimental downloads section of the project website:
LANG_admin_2005-11-22.zip
LANG_agc_2005-11-22.zip

There are a few minor fixes and optimizations to the code as well as updated Greek web-client code and a new Greek translation of the admin pages.

Many thanks to Marin Blu for his great work in translating the Greek vocabulary. If you would like to translate astguiclient and vicidial to your native language, or you just see some horrible translations in your native language that we have released already, just look at the most recent languages.txt and languages_admin.txt files on the experimental downloads folder and make the changes and email the file back to me. Please be sure that you are using a UTF-8 compliant text editor when you edit to save me some time in the processing when I receive the file from you.

The new web code will work on the latest 1.1.8 release package, just download to your web server, configure the dbconnect.php and test it to make sure it works.

The TODO.txt file is also on the website now and I will try to keep it updated to the code that is in the experimantal folder:
TODO.txt

astGUIclient 1.1.8 Full Release

2005-11-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

I wanted to get this release out there because it fixes several little and a few big bugs and offers some features that many people have been asking about for some time. This release has been fully tested on our production systems for the last two weeks with no issues. Here's a link to the project site where you can download it:
Download astguiclient_1.1.8

This release adds the ability to record every call in a campaign by campaign, and allows for different recording-filename naming schemes by campaign. Also, detailed agent time logging has been added allowing for much more accurate accounting of an agent's time logged into the system(I've also included a report that shows such things as average wait time, wrapup time, talk time and pause time).

Some of the smaller fixes and additions in this release are:
- Default first dial_status to NEW in newly created vicidial_campaigns
- allow a hopper_level choice of 1000 in vicidial_campaigns
- Make VICIDIAL web_form_address, park_ext and park_file_name editable in campaign Detail screen of admin.php
- Fix CustTime to correlate with time zone difference
- Disable the Enter and Return keys in the vicidial web-client to prevent accidental submission which clears out variables and customer fields
- add quotes to AST_CRONmix scripts to allow for recording filenames with spaces in them
- fix ploticus install instructions in SCRATCH_INSTALL
- fix non-standard http port compatibility in vicidial.php and astguiclient.php and path vars

Now that we have finished this release we will be able to spend some time on other things(listed as HIGH priorities in the TODO.txt file) like:
- better PHP5.0 compatibility and removal of requirement for register_globals = On
- adding an agent SCRIPT tab with a script for the agent to read when a call somes to them in VICIDIAL. The script will have the ability to fill in DB data like name, address, etc.
- multi-line comments box option in vicidial
- favorites list in astguiclient.php to show status of favorite local extensions
- and several other small things

Here are the instructions for upgrading from 1.1.7 to 1.1.8:
* if upgrading from 1.1.7 you need to:
- download the new version from the project website
- unzip the zip file into the /home/cron/astguiclient directory
- and either:
+ copy the web pages and all server apps to their proper locations manually
+ or run the install_server_files.pl script to put all items in their
default places
(make sure AST_SERVER_conf.pl and dbconnect.php files are config'd properly)
- multi-language versions of web-clients and admin pages are available in the
LANG_agc.zip and LANG_admin.zip files and can be unzipped into your webroot
directory. Make sure you check the dbconnect.php file in each directory.
* if upgrading from 1.1.7 run the upgrade_1.1.8.sql script in MySQL
(\. /home/cron/astguiclient/upgrade_1.1.8.sql)

Let me know what you think.

New Features and Other Stuff

2005-11-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

Last week we finished all of the TODO list HIGH priority items and we have put the changed files on the experimental downloads portion of the project site:
agc_update_0.0.46.zip

Included are campaign call recording features, the addition of detailed agent time logging and serveral other small fixes and changes.

We have had our main call center up and running with this code for the last 9 days and it's been going great.

Also, I tested Asterisk 1.2 beta 2 release with astguiclient and VICIDIAL and everything seemed to work just fine. I'm planning on putting one of our production servers on it tonight.

As for the next release, I want to make sure no one has any issues with the changes I mentioned above, and after I have a day or two to add some documentation I should be able to make it a release and move on to the next batch of features.

Things have been a bit crazy here lately due to our relocating our corporate office. Having to move T1s, data lines and servers all while trying to stay up as much as possible is not a very easy thing to do and has pretty much taken up all of our available time for the past two weeks. But things are starting to calm down a little bit. We are upgrading the server hardware at one of our call centers next week and after that we should be able to get back into development.

Astricon wrapup

2005-10-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Astricon 2005 in Los Angeles and had a great time. I met many new people that were interested in astGUIclient and VICIDIAL and met many people who I have emailed or talked with over the last 3 years. I also learned about many more large-scale VICIDIAL installations that I neve knew about. If my crude math is correct there are at least 60 production installations of VICIDIAL out there in the world with over 2000 seats in them and from what I was told last week that number is about to double very soon.

With the addition of our multi-lingual framework and the Spanish version of the clients and admin pages being available, the project is starting to get noticed in South America, both by customers and some of the legacy call-center vendors that approached me at Astricon. I'm also starting to get a lot more small code contributions and feature suggestions from all over the world. All wonderful things that mean that the project will be around for a long time to come.

I just posted my case-study presentation on the project website here. There is no audio available but it basically outlines how astGUIclient/VICIDIAL started and how the features and size grew over the last 3 years inside of our corporate call-center, the first VICIDIAL installation.

Now that I'm done with Astricon, I can get back to some more development and hopefully have a new release out in a few weeks with some new wonderful features.

astGUIclient 1.1.7 Full Release

2005-10-05T10:41:00.000-07:00

We've tested and bugfixed all of the new features and the multi-language support and are posting the newest release:
astguiclient_1.1.7

Spanish login screenshot:

Spanish VICIDIAL screenshot with hotkeys:

English VICIDIAL screenshot with hotkeys:

Here are some of the changes:
- Added HotKeys key binding for VICIDIAL web-client fast dispositioning
(agent must be level 5 or higher to use HotKeys, that is changable)
- Internationalization(multi-language) of web-clients and admin pages
- Added ability in manual VICIDIAL to call alternate lead phone numbers
- Added option of pull-down of active campaigns to VICIDIAL web login
- Fixed some issues with scripts interacting with Asterisk 1.2
- other small changes listed in the TODO.txt file
UPGRADE NOTES:
* if upgrading from 1.1.6 you need to:
- download the new version from the project website
- unzip the zip file into the /home/cron/astguiclient directory
- and either:
+ copy the web pages and all server apps to their proper locations manually
+ or run the install_server_files.pl script to put all items in their default places
(make sure AST_SERVER_conf.pl and dbconnect.php files are config'd properly)
- perl/TK clients have been slightly updated(will be unsupported soon)
- multi-language versions of web-clients and admin pages are available in the LANG_agc.zip and LANG_admin.zip files and can be unzipped into your webroot directory. Make sure you check the dbconnect.php file in each directory.
* if upgrading from 1.1.6 run the upgrade_1.1.7.sql script in MySQL
(\. /home/cron/astguiclient/upgrade_1.1.7.sql)

astGUIclient 1.1.7 beta 3

2005-09-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

We've thrown together all of the new features and the multi-language support and put a beta release for everyone to test while we do some testing on our side of some of the newer features. Please download it and let us know what you think and if you have any problems:
astguiclient_1.1.7b3

Note: we're on our third beta release, fixed a few more little bugs and have a better Spanish agc translation now.

Spanish login screenshot:

Spanish VICIDIAL screenshot:

Here are some of the changes:
- Added HotKeys key binding for VICIDIAL web-client fast dispositioning
(agent must be level 5 or higher to use HotKeys, that is changable)
- Internationalization(multi-language) of web-clients and admin pages
- Added ability in manual VICIDIAL to call alternate lead phone numbers
- Added option of pull-down of active campaigns to VICIDIAL web login
- Fixed some issues with scripts interacting with Asterisk 1.2
- other small changes listed in the TODO.txt file
UPGRADE NOTES:
* if upgrading from 1.1.6 you need to:
- download the new version from the project website
- unzip the zip file into the /home/cron/astguiclient directory
- and either:
+ copy the web pages and all server apps to their proper locations manually
+ or run the install_server_files.pl script to put all items in their default places
(make sure AST_SERVER_conf.pl and dbconnect.php files are config'd properly)
- perl/TK clients have been slightly updated(will be unsupported soon)
- multi-language versions of web-clients and admin pages are available in the LANG_agc.zip and LANG_admin.zip files and can be unzipped into your webroot directory. Make sure you check the dbconnect.php file in each directory.
* if upgrading from 1.1.6 run the upgrade_1.1.7.sql script in MySQL
(\. /home/cron/astguiclient/upgrade_1.1.7.sql)

Digium 405P v2 Review

2005-09-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago Digium announced their new firmware version for the TE4XXP series of T1 cards(TE405P/TE410P) as well as announcing the new dual port cards(TE205P/TE211P) and the echo-canceller cards(TE406P/TE411P). After several weeks of asking for a test TE406P card, I was able to get Digium to put an echo-canceller daughter card on to a TE405P, that I was sending in for a firmware upgrade anyway, so that I could test it for a couple weeks.

I received the card a couple weeks after sending it in, and it is just the same as a TE405P except that it has a daughter card with several little green LEDs on it connected to the expansion ports on the card. I was only able to run the card on CVS_HEAD or 1.2 beta 1 because the 1.0.X code tree didn't work properly with the echo-canceller portion of the card. After getting the card working I ran some tests and everything ran just fine so I placed the system in production. After one day of complaints about dropping audio I ran some more tests and upgraded to the current CVS_HEAD per suggestions from Digium for day 2. The second day started with a lot of complaints of audio drops again, so at mid-day I turned the server off, removed the echo-daughtercard from the TE405P and restarted with no config changes. After that there were no audio drop problems. I posted on the user list and found that many other people are using the TE406P with no audio drop problems and Digium logged into my machine and said everything looked right. It might just be that in our setup we do a lot of Zap -> meetme <- Zap calls and the echo canceller is having problems with that. It is now three weeks later and still no fix from Digium, I do get emails from them periodically saying that they are trying to figure out a good way of diagnosing the problem. So that is my excuse for why I do not have any good benchmarks for the Digium Echo-canceller card, maybe it'll be fixed by the time I have a test Sangoma echo-card to pit it against in a few weeks. Now onto the new firmware.

The first half-day of running the TE405Pv2 card I noticed right away that Digium had drastically improved the new firmware over version 1 because the load seemed to be about the same as on my Sangoma card systems. Now that it seemed that the new firmware was more of a match for the Sangoma a104u quad card it was time to compare them directly in a live production environment.

First a little about the test systems:
- Asus Motherboard with Intel P4(HT enabled) 3.4 GHz 1MB cache
- 2GB DDR2 RAM
- 2 x 160GB SATA hard drives
- 3 x RBS T1s and 1 x PRI T1
- Slackware Linux 10.1 with custom 2.4.29 SMP kernel
- Asterisk 1.2 beta 1
(Sangoma a104 card uses the wanpipe-beta13m-2.3.3 drivers)
(Digium TE405Pv2 card uses zaptel built-in drivers)
- astGUIclient suite 1.1.6 (for client apps and stats generation)
NOTES:
- We ran each of the cards in each system to ensure conclusive load results.
- The load numbers on the graph represent 200 = 100% load
- The stats generator in astGUIclient now also grabs CPU usage %(user/system/idle)

The results after one week(3 days of each card in each system) were very interesting. Under smaller loads, less than 30 conversations(60 channels) the Sangoma card has slightly better performance than the Digium card, about 2-5% on average. And under higher channel loads the Digium card has slightly better performance, about 2-8% on average. This is a dramatic change from the performance tests I did a few months ago and shows that Digium has really done a lot to improve their firmware. The Digium card does still consistently have a few random load spikes that are always higher than the random load spikes with the Sangoma card as well as higher and more consistent user CPU usage spikes than the Sangoma system, but these don't seem to have much effect on overall system load.

One side note to these tests, I do run a Sangoma card on a system with all PRIs and I did test the Digium card with this kind of setup as well and there was virtually no difference in performance between the two for the day I tested them. That shows that the difference between the two seems to be limited to how they handle RBS T1 spans. A call to Sangoma confirmed that they do handle RBS circuits differently than Digium does and that they are in the process of writing some optimizations into their drivers to make their RBS handling more efficient.

In conclusion, I congratulate Digium on their new firmware as a giant leap forward that slightly edges out Sangoma in our performance tests. It also should be mentioned that over the last few months Asterisk as a whole has become more stable and efficient reducing load on almost all Asterisk setups. As for Quad T1 cards, I would recommend both Digium and Sangoma cards for production environments with these notes:
- Digium cards have slightly better performance with RBS circuits under higher load than Sangoma cards
- Digium cards are easier to install and configure than Sangoma cards
- Sangoma cards have a 5 year warranty(while Digium only has a 2 year warranty)
- Sangoma quad T1/E1 cards can fit upright in a 2U case and are shipped with 4 x T1/E1 cables
- Sangoma cards work in both 5v and 3v PCI slots.
- Sangoma cards are guaranteed to work with all x86 Intel/AMD-based motherboards(Digium cards are not)
- Both manufacturer's cards are FCC certified, although Digium is not currently placing their FCCID[LINDDNANWCTE410P] on their cards but will start with their next production run.
Both companies are dedicated to Asterisk development and offer free hardware setup support with the purchase of a new card.

I should be receiving a Sangoma echo-canceller card to test in the next couple months and I hope to be able to compare it to the TE406P if its issues get resolved by then.

Internationalization and project update

2005-09-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

We're about 90% done with our Internationalization framework for the web-clients and web administration pages for astGUIclient and VICIDIAL and I wanted to go into a little more detail about how the availability of multiple languages will work for the project.

All server code and client code will continue to be written and maintained in English and there will be two languages translations files, in UTF-8 format. One will contain the text phrases for the web clients and the other the translations for the admin web pages. When we build a release we will generate a ready-to-use folder for each language that will be included in the release(vicidial_es for the spanish VICIDIAL admin pages and so on).

The first release with multiple languages we hope to release at the end of next week with English and Spanish admin pages and English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Greek web-client apps. Keep in mind that these translations are mostly gathered from babelfish and may not be perfect, but it's a start. For the web-clients there will only be button images for English and Spanish since they take so much time to create, the clients will work without them, but not be as pretty.

After this first multi-language release we will accept modified and new language translation files for these and other languages that would be included in future releases.

In other news I will post a review of the new v2 Digium quad T1 card firmware this week with a comparison to the Sangoma quad card(a104) and a summary of the development going on in T1/E1 cards.

Also, in response to my post from a while ago about recording skipping, changing to high-performance SCSI drives and two Sangoma quad cards has fixed the problem. We no longer get any skipping on the system with this setup.

That's all for now.

VICIDIAL web-client beta 0.0.35

2005-09-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

We've made several bug fixes and a few new features for the VICIDIAL web-client and we thought we'd release them before the weekend.

The new features available in this release are:
- lead preview for manual dial which lets the agent decide if they want to dial the lead or skip to the next.
- manual dial ring-time-hangup, allows you to hangup the call before pickup or if it is busy before the timeout
- auto-dial agent hotkeys, allows agents to press a single numerical key on their keyboard to hangup the call and dispo it allowing them to go through calls at a much faster pace(their mouse needs to stay on the HOTKEYS bottom at the bottom for the feature to be available). Hot keys are definable per campaign in the new vicidial admin.php page.

To use the new beta you need:
- you must be running astGUIclient version 1.1.6
- first go to the experimental downloads section of the project site:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/experimental_code/
and download the following file:
- vdc_beta_0.0.35.zip - (unzip on your web server and replace existing files)
- run the upgrade_1.1.7.sql script in MySQL
(\. /home/cron/astguiclient/upgrade_1.1.7.sql)

There are also these files included in the release that allow for better Asterisk 1.2 beta1 compatibility, simply place them in your /home/cron directory on your Asterisk server replacing the older versions:
- AST_manager_listen.pl
- AST_send_action_child.pl
- AST_manager_send.pl

Let me know what you think.

Project update and direction

2005-09-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

Time for me to do another project update now that the web-based client apps are released and we have started thinking about what new features we want to start working on now.

The client web apps(especially the VICIDIAL web-client) have generated a lot of interest in the project and I have received many phone calls from people and companies that are looking at implementing VICIDIAL at their companies. Some of the places I've heard from are:
- A company in India looking to potentially set up 500 agent seats across their several locations all with VICIDIAL after they do a test setup.
- A small company in Los Angeles that hand-sews traditional Indian clothing, using astGUIclient internally as well as using VICIDIAL to contact clients and resellers.
- A large financial services company in the USA that has been testing VICIDIAL for the last two months and is looking to convert all 200 seats at their company to VICIDIAL in the next two months. They are very excited about the web-client and have accelerated their implementation schedule. We have received a lot of good feedback and bug catches from them and we thank them very much for their input.

As for what we are working on for the next several releases.
- We have fixed several bugs releated to changes in Asterisk 1.2 and we even have one of our production servers up and running on it and everything works very well. A little while after 1.2 is released we will add a few little features that are now capable due to new features in Asterisk 1.2.
- We have fixed several bugs in the VICIDIAL web-client and plan on releasing at least a code update for those scripts in the next week. we need to do some more testing but we have added a way to hangup calls in manual dial mode before pickup(or if they are busy,disconnected, etc..). we have also added a lead preview option that allows an agent to see the lead information and choose to either dial the lead or skip it and go on to the next one.
- We are working on Internationalization, meaning offering the client apps and admin apps in multiple languages. This requires some changing of the code and creation of more graphics and a language conversion script that are still in the development stages. All code and comments would still be in English but duing the installation process versions in other languages would be created from translation files and placed in subdirectories from the originals allowing multiple language options for users. This is still in the development stages but we do hope to at least have our first translation(Spanish) finished before Astricon in mid October.
- We are working on Localization, meaning adjusting some of the scripts to better work with country codes for users in places other than North America. This will require less work than Internationalization and we hope to have it completed before Astricon as well.
- We have started thinking more about optimization of VICIDIAL in multiple server environments. This is a very difficult one to deal with and have work well, but since our main office is moving in a few months and we are consolidating another office in with us we will have more agents and servers in one place and more incentive and ability to test ways of making the dialing even more efficient across multiple servers. No release date because this one could take quite a while to get working right, but small elements may be folded into releases in the future.
- I will be at the Astricon conference in Los Angeles October 12-14, 2005. The project will have it's own booth where we hope to have astGUIclient and VICIDIAL up and running on laptops for people to try as well as some basic photocopied handouts to give people that come by.

That's it for now, the development items are certainly not the extent of what we are working on, but they are the ones that stick in my mind at this moment. Good bye for now.

astGUIclient release 1.1.6

2005-08-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

We've been developing and testing a lot lately and it's time again for another release. In this release we have finished the VICIDIAL-web-client and are releasing it as beta in this release just because we know that there will be a lot of little bugs found over the next few weeks. We have had it in production for a week now and the agents and managers all really like it.

New Screenshots:
Agent Login screen
Agent Paused
3-Way Call and Recording

Also, in this release we've modified the system performance stat logging somewhat to include user,system and idle cup percentages and we've added them to the server performance web page and graph.

Another change is the streamlining of a lot of the server scripted code, adding new code to be compliant with the new Asterisk 1.2 release coming out soon and the addition of debug output options on most of them to aid troubleshooting of systems.

Here's the changelog:
1.1.6 - Nineteenth public release - 2005-08-29
- streamlined many of the server apps and added command-line debug capability
- finished the vicidial web-client and tested in prduction
- modified server-side scripts to function with Asterisk CVS_HEAD(soon to be 1.2)
- modified server performance logging and graphing, added user/system proc %
UPGRADE NOTES:
* if upgrading from 1.1.5 you need to:
- download the new version from the project website
- unzip the zip file into the /home/cron/astguiclient directory
- and either:
+ copy the web pages and all server apps to their proper locations manually
+ or run the install_server_files.pl script to put all items in their
default places
(make sure AST_SERVER_conf.pl and dbconnect.php files are config'd properly)
- perl/TK clients are unchanged from 1.1.5
- make sure you check the astguiclient admin.php server parameters
- make the agi-VDADtransfer.agi changes in extensions.conf (mentioned in SCRATCH_INSTALL doc)
* if upgrading from 1.1.5 run the upgrade_1.1.6.sql script in MySQL
(\. /home/cron/astguiclient/upgrade_1.1.6.sql)

Asterisk 1.2 compatibility and the vicidial web beta

2005-08-25T19:13:00.000-07:00

Due to the changes that have been coming fast and loose to the Asterisk CVS_HEAD(soon to be Release 1.2) We've been working to make astGUIclient and VICIDIAL compatible with the Command and Manager API changes that they've been making. Aside from annoying formatting changes, there are some good changes being made that will allow for a few little features to be added to the suite including call durations on astGUIclient live calls. We're still working on compatibility testing with the new test versions of the server scripts(which you can find in the experimental downloads folder), but we do plan on a new release for next week if we get time to test all of the changes we've been making.

On the VICIDIAL-web-client side of things, we've now put it in production on a few live stations taking calls and the agents like the new version a lot. We've already made several little changes thanks to their feedback and even though they are running on lower memory linux workstations, the memory usage stays around 22MB for Firefox consistently across a whole 6-hour shift of usage and the processor load is significantly reduced compared to the Perl/Tk client. Also, they seem to like the pretty colors and buttons of the new web GUI. I guess they were tired of the old grey Perl/Tk client.

Another little small addition we will add to the VICIDIAL-web-client for the next release is the ability to configure phone logins(in the astguiclient admin.php section) that will call external numbers for the agents. This means much easier setup for agents that work from home because the server can call their home number and put them in the meetme room right when they log in to the web-client.

We still welcome more testers of the VICIDIAL-web client. Installation instructions here.

Local channel resolution delay fix

2005-08-25T19:00:00.000-07:00

Recently I was testing an experimental version of the Sangoma Quad T1 card drivers and I ran into a delay in the Local/ channel name resolution that several SIP trunk users had described to me in the past few weeks that I had been unable to duplicate until now.

It seems that under certain circumstances a call placed through a Local/ channel, like VICIDIAL does for auto-dial calls, the channel can have it's Answer signal register before the Masquerading of the channel is complete resulting in the connected live line appearing to be a Local/ channel instead of the proper SIP, IAX or Zap channel that it actually is.

The easy workaround for this in all cases is just to give the channel more time to resolve. I found that simply putting another priority step entry for the agi transfer script in the exten of the extentions.conf file the Local channel was able to resolve itself in the few milliseconds between priority 2 and 3. Then I threw in another step just to pick up the very few that had not resolved by the 3rd priority and added a 1 second sleep to those and I now had better than 99.9% resolution of Local channel calls placed through VICIDIAL.

Here's what you have to change in your extensions.conf file:

BEFORE:
; VICIDIAL_auto_dialer transfer scripts:
exten => 8365,1,AGI(call_log.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8365,2,AGI(agi-VDADtransfer.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8365,3,Hangup
exten => 8366,1,AGI(call_log.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8366,2,AGI(agi-VDADtransferSURVEY.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8366,3,Hangup

AFTER:
; VICIDIAL_auto_dialer transfer scripts:
exten => 8365,1,AGI(call_log.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8365,2,AGI(agi-VDADtransfer.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8365,3,AGI(agi-VDADtransfer.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8365,4,AGI(agi-VDADtransfer.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8365,5,Hangup
exten => 8366,1,AGI(call_log.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8366,2,AGI(agi-VDADtransferSURVEY.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8366,3,AGI(agi-VDADtransferSURVEY.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8366,4,AGI(agi-VDADtransferSURVEY.agi,${EXTEN})
exten => 8366,5,Hangup

And you can download the altered AGI scripts from the project site:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/experimental_code/agi-VDADtransfer.agi
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/experimental_code/agi-VDADtransferSURVEY.agi

and put them in your /var/lib/asterisk/agi-bin directory.

Then you must do 'extensions reload' from Asterisk CLI or just restart.

Let me know if you have any success or failure with this fix.

VICIDIAL web-client fully functional beta 0.0.28 release

2005-08-18T19:05:00.000-07:00

Well we think we've finished it, at least good enough for a beta. VICIDIAL web-client is now fully functional with inbound and auto-predictive dialing and has almost all of the functions of the Perl/Tk client(only prettier and much easier to set up), and it does some functions better than the Tk app.

We've tested it a little bit in production and it worked great. Now we need to have others out there test it and find those bugs that we couldn't.

The vicidial web-app(beta 0.0.28) [vicidial.php] just needs to have it's folder installed on a web server with PHP and MySQL access to your astguiclient database.

We use a combination of PHP scripts, Javascript and XMLHTTPRequest(also referred to as AJAX). This allows for the main page to only be loaded once while data is still being updated at a regular interval through the use of other PHP pages being loaded in the background. Another good thing about how XMLHTTPRequest works is that it is non-blocking, meaning that if one process fails or is hung up it won't usually cause a failure or lockup of the whole application which is essential for this kind of application.

We tried this technology about a year ago but found browser support lacking, but after Firefox 1.0 came out and we did some stress tests, it passed with flying colors. We have been able to have both the vicidial and astguiclient web apps up and running on Firefox for over week without crashing. Sadly the same can not be said of any Internet Explorer browser because of Microsoft's choice to use ActiveX to do it's implememtation of XMLHTTPRequest. Because of ActiveX's horrible garbage collection, the memory will leak until either the iexplore.exe process is ended or about 3 hours of running and then it will just crash on it's own. This is a known bug in IE and Microsoft has no plans to fix it. So keep in mind that while our client apps do work with IE 5.0+ they will crash after a few hours.

The screenshot hasn't changed from the previous release:
http://astguiclient.sf.net/screenshots/vdc-web_alpha_0.0.22.gif

Installation instructions:
- you must be running astGUIclient version 1.1.5
- first go to the experimental downloads section of the project site:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/experimental_code/
and download the following file:
- agc_update_0.1.5-2.zip - (unzip on your web server and edit config the dbconnect.php)

vicidial web-version alpha 0.0.22 release

2005-08-15T18:22:00.000-07:00

We've fixed a couple bugs in the VICIDIAL web-client alpha and have
added some more features.

The vicidial web-app(alpha 0.0.22) only allows manual dialing(campaign
dial_level of 0) but has all other functions available now. We have
just added all of the 3-way calling functions and the buttons to go
with the transfer functions.

Inbound call receiving and predictive dialing still are not programmed yet.

Here's a screenshot:
http://astguiclient.sf.net/screenshots/vdc-web_alpha_0.0.22.gif

Installation instructions:
- you must be running astGUIclient version 1.1.5
- first go to the experimental downloads section of the project site:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/experimental_code/
and download the following file:
- agc_update_0.1.5-1.zip - (unzip on your web server and edit config
the dbconnect.php)

astGUIclient release 1.1.5

2005-08-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

Time for another release of astGUIclient. This release has a lot of agc web-client bug fixes and enhancements as well as the most recent vicidial-web alpha. Another feature of this release is the ability to change server parameters from the web admin pages and the ability to limit the number of outgoing VICIDIAL auto-dialer calls per server.

Download from the project website:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/

Here is the expanded changelog:
1.1.5 - Eighteenth public release - 2005-08-12
- fixed new Local channel bugs caused by changes in Asterisk 1.0.8 and 1.0.9:
-There is now a patch available to fix the Local channel issues on 8/9 it is in
the experimental code section of the project code updates
- moved many server variables to the database, editable through astguiclient admin.php:
- requires less effort to change variables
- VDauto_dial now reloads vars every 25 seconds
- added ability to limit number of outbound trunks used by VICIDIAL auto dialer:
- allows for better lead usage as a safeguard for overzealous room managers
- many small changes and bug fixes to the astguiclient web client:
- removed HTTP authentication
- added vicidial.php to same folder, unified some functions
- fixed several bugs
- added alpha vicidial web-client (click-to-dial only):
- full click-to-dial functionality except for 3-way-calling
- channel validation and display
UPGRADE NOTES:
* if upgrading from 1.1.4 you need to:
- download the new version from the project website
- unzip the zip file into the /home/cron/astguiclient directory
- and either:
+ copy the web pages and all server apps to their proper locations manually
+ or run the install_server_files.pl script to put all items in their
default places
- VICIDIAL perl/TK client is unchanged from 1.1.4
- make sure you check the astguiclient admin.php server parameters
* if upgrading from 1.1.4 run the upgrade_1.1.5.sql script in MySQL
(\. /home/cron/astguiclient/upgrade_1.1.5.sql)

agc web client update 0.1.3 and vdc alpha 0.0.20 released

2005-08-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

We've fixed several bugs in the astGUIclient web-client and have added some more features to the alpha vicidial-web-client.

The vicidial web-app(alpha 0.0.20) only allows manual dialing(campaign dial_level of 0) but has recording, parking, time synchronization, web form, conference channels viewing, closer/blind transferring, DTMF sending, live call indication, channel live validation and some pretty new buttons that also go grey when functions are unavailable.

Three-way-calling and predictive dialing still are not programmed yet.

Here's a screenshot

Our plans for the VICIDIAL web client are to have it finished by the end of the month. We will be tackling the 3-way-calling functions next, then we will implement predictive dialing and finally inbound calls. At that point it should be ready for production level tests(even though we have actually done some limited production level test with the current code so make sure it would function properly on RedHat Linux 9.0 with Mozilla and it worked just fine)

We hope to have others out there currently using VICIDIAL to try out the new web-client and give us feedback. That will help us to make the final release something that won't need a patch 2 days after initital release.

Installation instructions:
- you must be running astGUIclient version 1.1.4
- first go to the experimental downloads section of the project site:
http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/experimental_code/
and download the following files:
- agc_update_0.1.3.zip - (unzip on your web server and edit config the dbconnect.php)
- upgrade_1.1.5.sql - run this query on your asterisk database
- /astguiclient_web/admin.phps - copy as the astguiclient admin.php page on your web server
- go to the admin.php asterisk web page and view your asterisk server details, modify the asterisk version field for the version of Asterisk you are running and click submit.

Recording skipping woes

2005-08-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

For the last several months we have been dealing with small skips in audio recordings on our big recording Asterisk server. This is a P4 3.2GHz server with 2GB of Ram and has had several refittings with different drives/processors/motherboards over the last 6 months trying to fix the ast_channel_walk_locked WARNINGS that signify that a recording skip has taken place. This server has 7 T1s going into it and has two Digium TE405P cards and has on average 20 recordings concurrently with peaks no higher than 50. We have done recording like this in the past with no problems but when we added the second quad T1 card the recording skips started happening.

We have tried IDE, SCSI, SATA drives with no change over time and we have tried 3 different motherboards that didn't help either. I resolved to fix this without resorting to buying one of those lovely-but-obscenely-expensive solid-state hard drives($6000 for 8GB) so I did some research and talked to several people who have systems with many T1s and do a lot of recording. I ended up putting together a system with a SCSI 320 RAID card and two 15K drives along with two Sangoma a104 Quad T1 cards (because they use interrupts more efficiently than Digium cards). I did a lot of stress testing and haven't seen any skips so far in it's first day of operating, but only time will tell. I'll post again in another couple weeks to let you know if the skips have come back.

Welcome to our Blog!

2005-08-03T14:01:00.000-07:00

We've pondered starting a blog for some time to give a little more insight into what we the main developers of the astGUIclient/VICIDIAL suite go through on a weekly basis in terms of operating, developing, testing and breaking our systems, so here it is.

We hope to post at least once a week to give you updates on our experiences and to let you know what we are working on.