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If you're looking for a predictive dialler (something to keep your call
centre staff busy), then you'll really see the benefits of SmoothTorque™ over
other solutions in the way that it predicts the future.
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Testimony:My name is Jose G. Perez, CEO of Telephonica USA Corp. I met Matt in 2006
and I have been using SmoothTorque™ since the first version. |
Keep your outbound call centre busy
Imagine this scenario: you have a call centre of staff who need to call clients.
One by one they go through the numbers, listening to answer machines, dialing
busy and disconnected numbers etc. |
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Provide a hosted solution
Because of the way that SmoothTorque™ is designed (with a Linux back end and a web
based front end) you can provide a hosted solution to your customers or to other
call centres. |
Advanced Algorithms
First off, SmoothTorque™ uses incredibly advanced algorithms to predict what
is going to happen in the future. Other systems just look at past data (if
at all) and use this to say what will happen in the future. |
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Anti-Oscillation and BoostSmoothTorque™ is also able to counter effects of rapid movements by
preventing oscillation. In any system that reacts quickly to changes there
is the potential for this. SmoothTorque™ however avoids it by introducing
a concept of elasticity - this creates a situation where it is able to
react to a potentially oscillatory situation by smoothing out the response. |
Trying it out
While we prefer to get things set up for you so that we can be sure that
SmoothTorque™ meets your needs and is installed correctly, we realise the
need to get something now and try it out.
If you would like us to set up a demonstration for you, please
send us a note and we'll get
everything set up as soon as possible.
If you'd rather try it out for yourself, you'll need to go through the
installation steps in order to get your system
set up.
Screen Shots
Hardware Requirements
Minimum requirements: (2 Servers)
SmoothTorque™, Apache, MySQL: 1 server - 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 10Gb disk space
Asterisk: 1 server - 1.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 5Gb disk space
Recommended requirements for small-medium system: (3 Servers)
SmoothTorque™: 1 server - 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 2Gb disk space
Apache, Mysql: 1 server - 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 10Gb disk space
Asterisk: 1 server - 1.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 5Gb disk space
Recommended requirements for medium-large system: (4+ Servers)
SmoothTorque™: 1 server - 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 2Gb disk space
Apache: 1 server - 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 10Gb disk space
MySQL: 1 server - 2.0Ghz dual core, 2Gb RAM, 30Gb disk space in a RAID 1 configuration
Asterisk: multiple servers - 1.5Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 5Gb disk space
Recommended requirements for enterprise system: (3 + 8)+
SmoothTorque™: multiple servers - 2.0Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 2Gb disk space
Apache: multiple servers - 2.0Ghz quad core, 2Gb RAM, 10Gb disk space
MySQL: multiple servers - 2.0Ghz eight core, 2Gb RAM, 30Gb disk space in a RAID 1 configuration
Asterisk: multiple servers usually in blocks of 8 - 2.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 5Gb disk space
Note that for a large enterprise system it is recommended that for redundancy purposes the system
is split into blocks of 8-10 Asterisk servers, each with their own MySQL, SmoothTorque™ and Apache
servers.
How it works
It really depends on what kind of capabilities you want out of the system, but the
basic design is has four components:
- SmoothTorque™ Backend
- MySQL Database Server
- Apache Web Server
- Asterisk Machines
We recommend that Asterisk does not run on the same machine as anything else you
are running for performance reasons.
In a small call centre scenario, you would have one machine running SmoothTorque™,
MySQL and Apache, and another machine running Asterisk.
In a large message broadcasting scenario, you would have one machine for SmoothTorque™,
another for MySQL, another for Apache, and then a collection of Asterisk Machines
depending on the capacity you require.
Pushing the boundaries
Note that with SmoothTorque™ you can do a few extra things to increase capacity to
extreme levels. First you can split the CDR records and the SmoothTorque™ database
onto separate machines. If you're looking at hundreds of millions of numbers you
may even want to split input numbers from output numbers.
SmoothTorque™ has been designed so that you can run cronjobs to calculate status
images once and produce an output png file. This means that if you have many
people all watching the status of a campaign you do not need to calculate the
statistics for every viewer.
Extreme technical details of the inner workings of SmoothTorque™
SmoothTorque™ polls the MySQL database to check for entries in the queue table.
These entries are to pass requests from the front end to the back end. Entries can
be added to start/stop a campaign, change the number of servers or change the number
of agents.
Once SmoothTorque™ starts a campaign it will load in phone numbers into two arrays.
Once the first array of numbers has been dialed it swaps the two arrays over and
begins filling the second array. The reason for this is that we don't want to
have to wait for MySQL to return us the results.
MySQL Buffering
In fact, when it comes to MySQL, we don't rely on any type of response time. Any information that needs to be saved to the database is put into a queue, and SmoothTorque™ will send items from the queue at the fastest rate possible. The reasoning for this is that if you do something which causes MySQL to slow down for a while, you don't want it to be slowing down SmoothTorque™.
Asterisk Buffering
We actually do a similar thing with the Asterisk servers. When a campaign wants to
make a call, it doesn't actually send it to Asterisk, it sends it to a funnel. The
funnel is responsible for distributing the calls amongst Asterisk servers at the
rate you specify for the trunk. If an Asterisk server has a problem, the call is
sent to another machine instead, and SmoothTorque™ will try to resurrect the connection
to the lost Asterisk machine in another thread.
One of the benefits of this is that campaigns can run at whatever speed they like
including temporarily above the maximum rate that an Asterisk machine can accept.
If the funnel starts filling up, the campaigns which have the most calls in the
funnel are slowed down.
Peace of mind
These components result in a system whereby you can even restart the machines
that SmoothTorque™ is connected to without any problems in SmoothTorque™. If you
need to take a machine down for maintenance, just do it.
While this may all sound pretty complicated, it all happens in the background without
needing any user intervention. You don't have to worry about it because SmoothTorque™
will look after it for you.
