Campaign Management and Database

Do Not Call (DNC) Data Import

Do Not Call (DNC) processing is enabled for every campaign. Every campaign has its own do not call list. This is managed by Softdial Campaign Manager™ Server. DNC lists are now placed in a directory named DNC_Lists under the main Softdial Campaign Manager™ directory for the tenant (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 - DNC_Lists Directory

This may not be evident from the Softdial Campaign Manager™ client interface as the system generated DNC lists are not listed in the Do Not Call Lists window.

Undoing DNC assignment

The effect of processing a DNC list is to populate the switch_result column of the campaign table with 100. The following procedures do not reset these records:

resetting the campaign tables using the Softdial Campaign Manager™ Client Campaign menu command
deselecting the DNC list and restarting the campaign

The only way to undo DNC assignment is to run an SQL query on the table to reset the value to null.

For this reason, the DNC lists should not be used to exclude records from a campaign temporarily. Instead Data Selection (Filters) should be used for this purpose.

System Generated DNC Lists

Fig. 1 shows some system generated DNC lists:

TenantDNC.sdc is a text file with numbers that this tenant should not call.
DNC_0001.sdc is the campaign DNC list for the campaign with id 0001.

These may be edited with a text editor if the Softdial Campaign Manager™ server instance is not running. However, their primary purpose is to ensure that calls classified in the call center as please do not call or customer demands not to be called again are dealt with correctly.

These files are created / updated when an agent selects an agent outcome that maps to one of two preconfigured dialing cycle outcomes;

98 - Tenant scope 'Do Not Call'
99 - Campaign scope 'Do Not Call'

By default Softdial Campaign Manager™ picks up dialing cycle outcome 98 and 99 and interprets these as Do Not Call on all campaigns for this tenant and Do Not Call on this campaign respectively. Upon receipt of one of these outcomes, Softdial Campaign Manager™ will update the relevant DNC file and also update the DNC list in memory*, so that the block takes place immediately.

For information on setting up agent outcomes (or agent results) and mapping them to dialing cycle outcomes, see Softdial Repository™ Agent Outcomes.

*The new DNC data collected from dialing cycle outcomes 98 and 99 are held in memory until the Softdial Campaign Manager™ service for the tenant is restarted. This means that even if you delete the DNC file and clear the Campaign table Switch_Result column, the records that were previously marked as DNC as a result of dialing cycle outcomes 98 and 99 will be re-marked as DNC when the campaign is restarted or the Pre-process button is clicked.

Default behaviour on a campaign with multiple numbers:
If one of the numbers is dispositioned as 'Do Not Call', all numbers in the record will be blocked.

User-generated DNC lists

Softdial Campaign Manager™ makes use of one or more files to facilitate DNC pre-processing. DNC lists may include the following list types:

national
state-specific
organisation-specific
campaign-specific

All user DNC lists are defined as either

XML (with a .xml extension), or
return-delimited text files (with any other extension)

They must reside in the same directory as the system generated DNC files, as in Fig. 1.

New lists which are added to the DNC_Lists directory on the server do not require the server to be restarted in any way. As soon as the list has been added, it is available to Softdial Campaign Manager™ users.

Example DNC lists

Return-delimited

An example return-delimited file, called ourDNC.dnc, with two numbers (a real list could contain millions of numbers):

01234567890
01234987654

XML

Here is the same data but represented as XML, in a file which must be called ourDNC.xml:

For operational details, see Do Not Call (DNC) Pre-Processing.