About Call Centers

A call center in the CATI Supervisor module is a specific organizational unit which helps to divide supervisors into groups based on their tasks and to facilitate management of their work. Call centers are created within a company, and a company can hold any number of call centers. A call center is defined by the following properties:

• The call center name.
• A description.
• A link to a time zone.
• The ID of the dialer which is assigned to the call center.

A call center is a form of virtual container which holds a range of objects, and it is used to organize work in CATI Supervisor by creating a separate logical unit including supervisors, surveys and related interviewers. A call center will need the following information:

• A list of supervisors who are assigned to work in this call center.
• A list of surveys activated in this call center.
• A list of interviewers created for this call center.

A call center is configured by adding surveys to it and assigning supervisors to work with those surveys. Supervisors then add interviewers who in turn conduct interviews for each survey. When a call center is configured, the following rules apply:

• Each supervisor can be assigned to one call center.
• Any number of supervisors can be assigned to work in a single call center.
• A survey can be activated in any number of call centers.
• An interviewer can be created in one call center, and an interviewer's name must be unique across the CATI Supervisor system.

Call centers are managed by supervisors who are granted extended management rights by the company. Such supervisors are called "administrator" supervisors: they are entitled to manage the work of subordinate ("normal") supervisors. A "Normal" supervisor's task is to organize the work of the interviewers and manage the surveys they are given permission to work with. The "administrator" supervisor prepares the basis for this work: they create call centers, and assign surveys and supervisors to the call centers. An "administrator" supervisor can carry out a "normal" supervisor's duties when required.

"Normal" and "administrator" supervisors have different access rights to objects which are used in the CATI Supervisor module. An "administrator" supervisor can monitor and access each object existing in the system; a "normal" supervisor has access only to objects which are related to surveys and interviewers he/she currently works with. Other objects are hidden from them. Some objects are accessible to all supervisors regardless of which call center they currently belong to and what access permissions they have.

To simplify a "normal" supervisor's work, certain object lists are either filtered by call center ID, or these lists present only data relevant to the currently logged in supervisor. This means a "normal" supervisor can see and access only objects relevant to the call center they are currently working for.

Objects available to a "normal" supervisor are listed below with their filtering option (whether each object is filtered by call center ID):

• Surveys - filtered by call center ID.
• Interviewers - filtered by call center ID.
• Interviewer groups - not filtered by call center ID (all interviewer groups existing in the company are visible, but those created for other call centers appear empty).
• Call management lists (different views available in the Call Management dialogue window (go to Call Management Overview for more information) - not filtered by call center ID (all interviews/calls in all states are available. Creating a special filter to separate certain call center related items may be useful).
• Reports - these are generated based on data filtered by call center ID, so they are relevant to the current call center only.
• Recorded interviews - are NOT filtered. All recorded interviews are available. The list can be filtered manually by applying a filter in the corresponding column in the table (go to Live Call Monitoring, Recordings and Playback for more information).
• Scheduling scripts - not filtered. All scheduling scripts created for the current company are available to all supervisors working for that company.
• Filters (survey specific) - filtering is not required because only the assigned surveys are available, and the filters displayed for each survey are the filters that are used exclusively with this survey.
• Filters (site specific) - filtered by call center ID. Only those available for surveys activated in a specific call center can be accessed.
• Activity views - filtered by call center ID.

Note that some surveys along with related properties and attributes may be unavailable when the appropriate permission is not granted to the supervisor. These surveys will then be hidden although they belong to the same call center as the supervisor. Data relevant to such "hidden" surveys will not be used for generating reports and activity views.