Action Examples

This part of the documentation describes how the various actions can be used.

Restoring Previous Call Attributes

You may need to restore the attributes of a call that were removed as the result of some type of event. This may occur for example when a call is assigned the "Returned Not Dialed" or "Returned Dialer Expired" extended status where calls are returned from a predictive dialer call queue. A situation may arise where you need to re-use these call attributes, so the CATI Supervisor module provides the means to restore them.

Use the "Restore previous call attributes" action in the appropriate scheduling script, and a similar function in a custom script, to achieve this.

When a scheduling or custom script action that contains the "Restore previous call attributes" function is used, all attributes of the calls which match the criteria specified in the script (by applying filters and adding the required action to the desired sub-rule) will be restored. The main difference between the two actions is that custom script allows you to create more complex and precise filters.

To restore call attributes using a scheduling script action:

Create a new or edit an existing scheduling script related to the survey that contains the calls for which you wish to restore the attributes.

Locate the desired rule or sub-rule you would like to add the "Restore..." action to.

Note the sequence in which rules, sub-rules and sub-rule actions are executed; restoring of attributes should be performed only for the calls which require this action.

1. Add the "Restore previous call attributes" action to the desired scheduling script sub-rule.

You can create a filter for the action you add. In this way you can specify the condition which the call must match for its attributes to be restored (this can be a particular extended status or any other parameter value which triggers the "Restore..." action).

An example of the scheduling script using the "Restore previous call attributes" action is shown below.



Figure 1 - Example of scheduling script containing the "Restore previous call attributes" action

Note sub-rules 1.5, 1.6 and 1.7. These sub-rules use the "Restore previous call attributes" action to restore attributes of calls after they were assigned different extended statuses. The action is applied to calls with the "Returned Not Dialed", "Returned Dialer Expired" and "Terminated" statuses. In this particular case, other actions will be applied to these calls after their attributes are restored as the restored call attributes need to be edited to suit a new interviewing round.

The "Restore previous call attributes" action has no configurable parameters so this will not need to be adjusted.

2. Save the scheduling script.

Restoring Call Attributes Using a Custom Script Function

1. Insert the following code snippet at any location in the custom script you are editing, and save the script. The custom script may consist of this function alone.

function MyFunction()
{
ExecuteAction(Actions.RestorePreviousCallState);
}

In the example the function specified in the script is called "MyFunction".

2. Specify all the required conditions (appropriate variable names, other parameter values which will trigger the function execution etc.) by adding them to the script.
3. Save the custom script.
4. Add the Run Custom Script action to the scheduling script and specify the name of the function (MyFunction in the example above) as a parameter of the Run Custom Script action.

Figure 2 - Example of the scheduling script containing a reference to the custom script

Note that sub-rule 1.5 uses the action which calls the custom script with the name "MyFunction". Take into account the execution sequence of rule, sub-rule and action - the Custom Script action which calls the appropriate custom script and executes the RestorePreviousCallState function should be specified for the appropriate sub-rule (all other existing rules/subrules/actions should be taken into account).