PREDICTIVE Summary and Overview                                 2006-08-24

*** PREDICTIVE OUTBOUND CALLING FUNCTIONALITY WAS ADDED IN THE 2.0.1 RELEASE ***

This will outline the methods used to predictively dial outbound calling campaigns in VICIDIAL with the ADAPT dial methods. This is a description of the first versions of three different Predictive/Adaptive dialing algorithms used in VICIDIAL. As the need arises we will create more versions of different algorithms in the future.


The gathering of data to analyze:

In order to properly analyze calling trends and adapt to the current list that is being called we need to first gather a lot of data to analyze.

The first set of data we want to gather is the recent queue and agent statistics for each campaign. This information is gathered by the AST_VDauto_dial.pl script as it runs through each loop every 2.5-3.0 seconds. The data gathered in this script are all averages of the last 60 seconds of agent and queue activity:
1. The average number of agents that are logged into the campaign across one minute
2. The average number of calls waiting to be transferred to an agent across one minute
3. The average number of agents waiting for calls across one minute
4. The difference between the waiting calls and ready agents across one minute
	This number if positive means that on average more agents were waiting for calls than calls waiting for agents in the last minute for that campaign.

The second set of data to gather is dropped call information across several intervals. This information will be gathered by the actual AST_VDadapt.pl script that will also be the script actually changing the dial level when the predictive/adaptive dial method is activated. Once a minute this script will gather:
1. total drops and total calls for the campaign since midnight
2. Total drops and total calls for the campaign in the past hour
3. Total drops and total calls for the campaign in the past half hour hour
4. Total drops and total calls for the campaign in the past five minutes
5. Total drops and total calls for the campaign in the past one minute
Also, the drop percentage is calculated and stored in the vicidial_campaign_stats table.


To use adaptive dialing you must have the AST_VDadapt.pl script in your crontab running every minute.
