Campaign Management and Database

Timezone Data Import

Softdial Campaign Manager™ makes use of two files:

  1. legislatures.xml
  2. statecodes.xml

to define valid calling times for specific records based on their local timezone and legislation.

Softdial Campaign Manager™ uses the information in these files during pre-processing to create upperbound and lowerbound field data. (For more details, see Time Zone Pre-Processing)

legislatures.xml resides in the same directory as the Softdial Campaign Manager™ server executable. A version of this file (for example purposes only) is provided with Softdial Campaign Manager™. Users should configure this file, adding records as required.

<Legislatures>
    <default lowerbound="0.333333" upperbound="0.875" /> <!-- Everything not listed below : 8am to 9pm-->
    <legislature code="CA" lowerbound="0.458333" upperbound="0.833333" /> <!-- California : 11am to 8pm-->
    <legislature code="TX" lowerbound="0.625" upperbound="0.708333" /> <!-- Texas : 3pm to 5pm-->
</Legislatures>

This file is in standard XML format. Typically, the <Legislatures> tag surrounds an optional series of <legislature> tags, and an optional <default> tag.

A <legislature> tag has the following properties:

Property Present in <default>? Meaning
code No, because it covers every location that is not specified by a <legislature> tag. The geographic location (e.g. state code) for which the rest of the properties of the tag pertain. This code is cross referenced in the statecodes.xml file. See below.
lowerbound Yes The time beyond which a call to the location can be made on a given day. The number is in fractions of 1 day, where 0 represents midnight in local time. For example, midday is represented by 0.5.
upperbound Yes The time beyond which a call to the location cannot be made on a given day.

statecodes.xml is also found in the same directory as the Softdial Campaign Manager™ server executable and the file above. A version of this file (for example purposes only) is provided with the Softdial Campaign Manager™. A much cut down version is shown here for reference:

<Postcodes>
    <postcode code="92274" areacode="760" legislature="CA" timezone="-8" DST="Y" /> <!-- 100 Palms, Riverside -->
    <postcode code="92276" areacode="760" legislature="CA" timezone="-8" DST="Y" /> <!-- 1000 Palms, Riverside -->
</Postcodes>

This file is in standard XML format. Typically, the <Postcodes> tag surrounds a series of <postcode> tags.

A <postcode> tag has the following properties:

Property Meaning
code The postcode of the area.
areacode The telephone area code of the area.
legislature The legislature code of the area, and corresponds to the code properties of the <legislature> tags in legislatures.xml.
timezone The timezone offset for the area being defined.
DST Whether or not daylight savings time is employed in the area (Y= yes, N = no)

See also When Customer Data Conflicts - the 'Least Risk' Window