Life as I see it

Because it is New Year and one of my client asked me if I have updated the dev server to the svn version of VICIDIAL 2.2.0. I finally had time to do it. So off I go updating from VICIDIAL 2.0.5 to the new one. It is quite easy to update but I hit some horrifying bloopers.

So here’s what I did and the bloopers that came with it.

I checked out the svn version but first because vicidialNOW doesnt have subversion installed I installed it first.

yum install svn
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Parsing package install arguments
Nothing to do


It didn’t work

so I barely remembered that svn is called subversion so I tried it once again.

yum install subversion

Oh yes it worked! Now off I go downloading the SVN version of VICIDIAL 2.2.0

[root@vici ~]# svn checkout svn://svn.eflo.net:43690/agc_2-X/trunk
svn: Can't connect to host 'svn.eflo.net': Connection refused

[...]

Yep,

Demian released vicidialNOW 1.3 – The first headache free auto installer for astguiclient / VICIDIAL Open source Predictive Dialer / Call Center Suite.

What is VICIDIAL? VICIDIAL is an Open Source Predictive Dialer and Call Center Suite that is developed by Matt Florell. It is being used by hundreds of Call Centers for their outbound dialing needs. If you need a VICIDIAL Consultant, you can always contact me :)

Here are the changelog.

[...]

I found this video when someone asked me how to configure Linksys SPA941. I was about to join him on a teamviewer session when I found this video. I decided to share it with you guys.

Setting up a Linksys SPA-942 phone from Kerry Garrison on Vimeo.

I often get some inquiries about my quotes and stuff. Often they find that Im expensive and considering that it is an open source software and their budget is limited. I often tell them they are more than welcome to go find another consultant that can accommodate their budget. 90% of those who went to cheaper consultants find themselves talking to me again after their very expensive learning experience. Well they get what they pay for.

First and foremost, I don’t just accept clients. I don’t care about being promised that they will give me more business in the future or they are planning to expand and if I will just take 200 usd to make their system work and they will pay more in the future. Nope, you can go somewhere else. Please dont bother me again.

The basic requirement that I often accept is that the client is willing to pay what he wanted for. For sure as hell that Im also going to commit my time fixing what ever he paid me for. This kind of client I want and all my clients are like this. They know the value they are getting, they have no qualms of paying for it.

Secondly, my capabilities as a consultant. Im the only 2 person recommended VICIDIAL consultants here in the Philippines. The other one is Bobby Suson the owner of NextIX. Me and some friends founded VICIDIALNOW, which is now called vNOWinc. Im no longer connected with the company though. Im also a moderator of the official VICIDIAL forum . I think thats enough credential to establish myself that Im very well versed in VICIDIAL.

Thirdly. Take a look at this

This sums up my rant. I am winding down again.

Yep,

VICIDIAL is actually free. But you need to buy your own servers. As you can see, here’s a screenshot of a client of mine running VICIDIAL on 130 seats and counting (will post screen shot when they hit 180)

VICIDIAL running 130 seats.

Anyhow Im available for consulting :)

This was my post at vicidialnow. They have migrated and I lost my username anyhow here it is.

After reading this oh god its been 545 days since!

vicidialNOW

Added by Anonymous 545 days ago

Disclaimer: This post is by my personal views only not the whole vicidialNOW company.

I am thinking about the features you the users may want to include on vicidialNOW distro. After all you are the users of the wonderful open source and free astguiclient/VICIDIAL Call Center Suite.

The auto installation made possible by vicidialNOW made life easier to consultants and users everywhere. Yes we know some consultants are using the distro we made to their clients and that’s not a bad thing AS LONG AS THEY TOLD THE CLIENTS WHAT THEY ARE INSTALLING ARE OPEN SOURCE AND FREE TO DOWNLOAD. That’s what vicidialNOW is all about, educating users.

So ok back to the original intention of this post. I want to ask the users of the distro what features they want on the auto installer and contribute it. I mean you can’t just ask that this be included without doing something about it right? I mean you want something then help us make it happen. Be pro active! That’s the spirit of Open Source and GPL. Contributing back to the community.

So be proactive. Help us make this better. After all you are the one who are going to use it anyway.

We as the vicidialNOW company are also doing our best to give our clients and you the best possible experience in using VICIDIAL. We need your help, even Matt Florell is not god that we just have to wait until he fixes the bugs. We need to help each other out.

So we had a problem with the ftp site of vicidialNOW when you guys are trying to download the iso. I decided to host the iso here.

Here’s the link

enjoy!

Edit:

No one said thanks after downloading the file. Yes I know Im doing the open source public a service but all I see was leechers. And DUE TO 400GB DOWNLOAD im taking the file down.

Thanks for Layeronline The best webhost so far who unblocked my puny little blog from that limit hell.

I created this tip because I kept on forgetting what’s the URL of the VICIDIAL test output for the webform variables.

Here’s how,

$filedate = date("Ymd");
$filetime = date("H:i:s");
$IP = getenv ("REMOTE_ADDR");
$BR = getenv ("HTTP_USER_AGENT");

echo "lead_id:         $lead_id\n";

echo "vendor_id:       $vendor_id\n";

echo "list_id:         $list_id\n";

echo "phone_code:      $phone_code\n";

echo "phone_number:    $phone_number\n";

echo "title:           $title\n";

echo "first_name:      $first_name\n";

echo "middle_initial:  $middle_initial\n";

echo "last_name:       $last_name\n";

echo "address1:        $address1\n";

echo "address2:        $address2\n";

echo "address3:        $address3\n";

echo "city:            $city\n";

echo "state:           $state\n";

echo "province:        $province\n";

echo "postal_code:     $postal_code\n";

echo "country_code:    $country_code\n";

echo "gender:          $gender\n";

echo "date_of_birth:   $date_of_birth\n";

echo "alt_phone:       $alt_phone\n";

echo "email:           $email\n";

echo "security:        $security\n";

echo "comments:        $comments\n";

echo "user:            $user\n";

echo "pass:            $pass\n";

echo "fronter:         $fronter\n";

echo "closer:          $closer\n";

echo "campaign:        $campaign\n";

echo "group:           $group\n";

echo "SQLdate:         $SQLdate\n";

echo "epoch:           $epoch\n";

echo "uniqueid:        $uniqueid\n";

echo "cust_zap_chan:   $customer_zap_channel\n";

echo "server_ip:       $server_ip\n";

echo "SIPexten:        $SIPexten\n";

echo "session_id:      $session_id\n";

echo "dialed_number:   $dialed_number\n";

echo "dialed_label:    $dialed_label\n";

echo "rank:            $rank\n";

echo "owner:           $owner\n";

?>

This is really located at http://astguiclient.sourceforge.net/test_VICIDIAL_output.phps

Another point to consider. What to do if somebody wanted to gain access to your vicidial web admin? Well good thing about VICIDIAL Open Source Call Center Suite is that its almost documented. Matt is kinda a stickler for docs which I liked. Anyhow here’s what contain on the Base Install doc.

You may want to reduce the exposure of some of the elements of VICIDIAL. Here are some examples:

ln -s /dev/null /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/vicidial/project_auth_entries.txt
ln -s /dev/null /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/agc/vicidial_auth_entries.txt
ln -s /dev/null /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/agc/astguiclient_auth_entries.txt
ln -s /dev/null /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/vicidial/admin_changes_log.txt

- Change the WWW writable in the admin.php server settings to “0″
- Change the default admin user “6666″ or it’s password from the default
- Change the Default secret(password) for the default SIP and IAX accounts that are set up with astGUIclient
- Change the default password for the Asterisk manager connection in manager.conf then change it in the server modification screen
- Change the default password for the mysql cron user in mysql and change it to match in /etc/astguiclient.conf on each server
- Possibly use static IP addresses for the IAX/SIP conf account entries
- Change the default port for Apache in httpd.conf from 80 to something else
- Change the default port for IAX in iax.conf from 4569 to something else
- Change the default control port for SIP in sip.conf from 5060 to something else
- Use a firewall to route access using different port numbers or restricting connection by VPN or set IP addresses

for those people using vicidialNOW, the iptables entries are there. But you can also follow what was instructed above.

Easy isnt it? If you dont want to do it yourself, I am available as a consultant :D (gotta pay the bills!)

A lot of people doesn’t have any clue about predictive dialer. VICIDIAL is now a predictive dialer too. It has algorithms to do just that.

I took a liberty of lifting the wikipedia article on Predictive dialer.

Here’s The full article.

Predictive dialer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

A predictive dialer is a computerized system that automatically dials batches of telephone numbers for connection to agents assigned to sales or other campaigns. Predictive dialers are widely used in call centers.

[...]