How Difficult is It to Host Your Own SIP Based Dialer?

[ksigmtsu]

So, I was wondering how hard it would be to host my own dialer.

I see people all the time popping up with new companies with dialers, they all seem to be based around a couple pieces of software, with the exception of Mojo, which is a physical dialer, not a soft pbx (more in a minute on that) and if like any dick paul and harry can pop up in a day with a dialer company, I figured how hard can it be right.

I did some research. Found that there are several open source solutions, available online, you can just go download and install yourself. They're not very demanding on hardware. I figure I can get by for myself and my downlines forever with a max of 8 lines, so I bought hardware that was able to do that and I'm starting the install.

So, heres how these things work:

First a couple terms.
A PBX, and I may be totally wrong about what it does EXACTLY, but a PBX appears to be the part of a phone system that transfers and handles the phone lines, in laymens terms.

Asterisk: A software based, linux, PBX.

Linux: an operating system-- like windows but free and way harder to use.

SIP: the language used to communicate between telephone devices.

Softphone: a phone on your computer.

X-lite: a software based SIP phone.

SugarCRM: The CRM Al talks about all the time. It's cool, you can customize it to death, and its rock solid. I had a solid install of it set up over the weekend in spare time and I had no idea where to even get started. It's linux based, so I wouldn't say its necessarily "user friendly" but this would also work with a windows install of Sugar. Sadly, the PBX software is linux only, so you do have to use it at some point.

Now, I've settled on an installed open source dialer called Vicidial. The reason being, I paid for a hosted version of this software before, and its solid. It works through any softphone, x-lite being the most popular. It has capability to detect voices, answering machine detection, predictive dial function, can support 20-40 users depending on hardware.

I'm planning on myself and people directly downline of me using this thing, and I really like ringcentral already, but good news there, ringcentral does provision SIP phones, so it should work to dial with no hiccups. I can just add lines to my ringcentral acct.

If I want a 3 line dialer, I need 3 digital lines, so it'll cost me about 60 bucks a month extra on my ringcentral acct.

It's built in perl, so I'm planning to have to customize it some, but at least its in a language that isn't terribly hard to negotiate with a manual.

I drove around town till I found a old dell off lease optiplex today, its a p4 or celeron 2.6ghz with a gig of ram. First thing I did was pull the harddrive and replace with a 10,000rpm raptor. Apparently the harddrive speed has a profound effect on MySQL, and people said not to skimp in that department. I still got out for 150 bucks buying the computer local and I had the harddrive laying around. Total cost would have been 200$ if I did it online.

Got a Brand New network cable. It's not 100% necessary, but I'm a stickler for doing this, I've had horrid issues in the past with network speed and it always ended up being related to the stupid cable.

Stopping here for a second, for all those keeping score at home, I'm up to spending a total of 200$. How much is a monthly dialer subscription?

So burned the ISO I downloaded from VICIbox, popped in the disk, then followed the instructions on http://download.vicidial.com/iso/vicibox/server/ViciBox_Redux_v3-Install.pdf. There are some things that are slightly off, but it mostly makes sense if you have some computer knowledge.

This is basically as far as I've gotten for now. But I'll give updates when I get this thing working about how hard it actually was.

To me, I anticipate the hardest part will be integrating the sugarCRM software back with the dialer, because they're going to have to post to each other via http gets, and curls, which means I'm going to be doing some scripting.

Always fun.

That's where I am now, I'll post a follow up when I get farther along, so people can have a better idea what we're paying for and how to do it themselves.
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Shockingly the entire dialer install went without a hitch.

I can already make outbound calls (single line), import csv files, etc. The setup went exactly like the tutorial said.

This is mind boggling. Usually windows application installs don't run this smooth.
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Got a different softphone today, the x-lite was nice for testing, but after some research I found one called Blink.

Here's the cool thing with it. It syncs with google contacts, and since I'm syncing my crm with google contacts also, ALL my contacts are caller ID enabled and can be searched and dialed.

Initially I wanted to use zoiper, because they make a version of it that doesn't require that the asterisk system call you, its a javascript based phone that basically hides in the webpage itself and you never see it, but when I looked into it it turns out it costs 750 british pounds to license, and I'll take free over 1000$ every day of the week, on top of that zoiper doesn't sync with contacts, so it was a no brainer.

 

[ksigmtsu]

Now I'm running into my first snag. Trunking is proving to be a tad more difficult than I expected, for the record I have no pbx experience at all.

I'm trying to trunk via ringcentral, and they don't exactly support it, I'm going to try talking with one of their integration specialists today and see if we can figure out a way to pull it off.

Linux server runs like a champ though. I almost wish I had made a box for my web hosting now that I see how easy that is.

The sugarcrm install is beautiful too. There are addon modules for it that will let you add some crazy features. My 2 favorites are process manager, which let's you set up completely dynamic custom triggered events, so that when you change a lead status it can trigger email being sent or a new follow up time or more, and a beta integration tool that makes google calendar and contacts sync both directions with sugar.

If I was starting an office from scratch, I would 100% take this approach now that I've played with it some. Once I get this dialer up and running I'm going to have a 3 line predictive dialer that costs me 60 bucks a month more than my single phone line did for unlimited use and logs inbound and outbound calls, and can record all calls. Similar services with other carriers cost a ton more and can't even do the same things.

 

[ksigmtsu]

Well, as of yesterday I have a working multiline dialer sitting in my floor.

Total setup cost of 300 dollars and a lot of time.

Now comes the tricky part of making it interface with the crm software.

Basically it involves a lot of php code to hook the posting of leads into the crm then into the dialer.

Call quality is superb on a pbx hosted inside your own network. Since your connect speed to the box is lightning fast, the call quality is right there with ringcentral.

Im pretty stunned that it is this easy.

Should have listened to al about sugarcrm a year ago.

 

[djs]

Vicidial is a great tool. I've got a similar box on my floor, total investment, about $75 for the used Dell Optiplex and some extra memory.

The downside to vicidial for many is it is designed for call centers, and as such, is a BEAR to get up and running correctly. You can simplify this a lot by getting one of the (free) complete installs, such as the one at | GoAutoDial Open Source Dialer Yes, they offer a hosted (paid) version, but they have a download version that is free, installs linux, vicidial, vtigercrm and a variety of other tools. You basically have to setup the phone lines, build the dial campaigns, and go.

It is a huge timesync, and when you are done, you might realize it cost more than renting a seat somewhere else. Here's why.

Most VOIP service providers don't allow dialers like vicidial to run on their service. Ringcentral for instance, prohibits trunking, though they won't know it unless you start dialing like mad, i.e., using vicidial.

You'll eventually need to migrate to a service that allows dialer dialing, and there are many of these (gafachi, teliax, etc) that wholesale out minutes. When you do the math, some of the dedicated dialers are less money, or at least, about the same. Why bother with the hassles of setting up your own if you are going to end up paying out the same monthly rate? Of course, it depends how much you really dial and how many seats you need. The more seats, the more practical it is.

Good luck with your venture!!!

Dan

 

[pghman]

Man I am impressed! It sounds like you will have the best system out there with a full CRM, a dialer, and the ability to log calls to records as well as dial them from records. You definitely have something here that isn't just available to buy. Way to go, please keep us updated.

 

[ksigmtsu]

I have the system up and running now mostly. Tomorrow will be first full day test run.

Dialer functions, crm functions, leads are passing via php into dialer and crm. crm has scheduled drip marketing and call back times. Lead popup works. Next thing I'm moving on to is integrating in the quote engines into the crm for single click quoting. Then moving on to inbound popups.

Total monthly fee of my system is 0$ plus my time.

All appears to be working in testing. Now time to see what it does in practice.

I found trunking, with no monthly fee, for under .02 per minute on connected time only. Thats 5000 minutes of talk time per month for under $100. You can get cheaper with bulk, and the call quality is as good as ringcentral, AND I have access to 23 lines. I'm not going to be using 23 lines, but if I wanted to I could.

I timed it today. From time I hit submit on my lead form, it took a total of almost 2 seconds before my cellphone started ringing.

The phone rang before quotit could load the quote.

 

[pmontanez]

I have a few vicidial boxes setup in my private network, great tool .. be cautious if you going to record all calls, it will take a big load on your server, and call quality will significantly being reduce. Check your crontab and change the file format, also you could change how often the system does the change to .wav of .mp3. That being said enjoy your telemarketing machine !!!!
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Who ever interested in set this kind of system at please pm.. I can help you.. also if you want hosted service check my site at callthem4you.com

 

[ksigmtsu]

I'm working on the inbound calling ability now too, vicidial is cool in that you can set it up to process incoming calls, then have it pop leads on those also.

I did run into a snag today getting sugar to process script files on triggers, worked on it for 4 hours then gave up and got a developer to look at it because something is going on in the SugarAPI that I don't understand yet.
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Goal right now is get this proof of concept box running, then try to reproduce it in a usable state in ISO format.

Goautodial is like the competitor to the vicibox install, which is the one I'm using. They try to basically make you buy their trunking service with their ISO. Vicibox you can just plug into any trunk you want.

 

[Pangaea]

I got goautodial myself and I'm going to play with it next week while I wait for licensing to get set up.

Who did you use for your .02 a minute?

I've used Sugar for about 3-4 years now and I had my own distro made for the seo biz. I might do the same for insurance and share it when I launch the new biz.

 

[ksigmtsu]

Right now I'm using vicibox redux on a celeron piece of crap box I got for 150 bucks trunked thru vitelity at 1.44 a minute for 21 lines max (I'm not positive my box can run all 21, not tested). It handles 8 just fine though.

I already have the fields and process worked through logic hooks and addons and php scripts to push the leads and drip marketing down the tube.

I'm in like a usable alpha state now. I have 1 script left to fix that does some mySQL selects and updates to change statuses using the process manager addon to call external scripts (its not the best solution, but this is just a proof of concept box).

After this is done I'm gonna beta this out a couple months and then redo the hooks using a custom module instead of process manager.

The dialing is the fun part, I'm actually dynamically scaling the lines up and down. Completely flies in the face of the normal call center philosophy, but I'm doing this from a individual agent working a book perspective, not a call center model.

Do you have to license goautodial? Vicibox is a free iso done in GPL v3 public domain license.

I haven't used goautodial, but I think best I understand they're both working on same asterisk variant, seems like goautodial runs with ubuntu instead of opensuse tho, not sure if there is anything else different.

Vicibox comes with a vtiger install that it is already integrated with, but I didn't even try looking at it, basically because I wanted to start with a newer code base and I do not care if it says my dialer is vicidial and my CRM is sugarCRM on the pages, I actually like having the credit to the developers that came before me on there.

Like I said, the reason I'm doing this is just because I couldn't find anything out there that did what I was looking for so I just started making it in my spare time expecting it to take a LOT longer. Now I have a working alternative that is going to save me 250 bucks a month over what I was paying for CRM/dialer, and it has a better dialer.