When group dialing, interviewers are allocated to groups and the dialer dials numbers for the group as a whole. The dialer will typically make several calls for a group in anticipation of an interviewer being available when a call is connected. In most cases, the interviewer who has been waiting the longest is connected.

Group dialing can lead to shorter average wait times for all interviewers since the current dialing performance can be used to calculate the number of calls to dial. Group dialing can also lead to silent (abandoned) calls where a respondent is connected but an interviewer is not available to connect to that respondent. There are many regulations to prevent silent or nuisance calls and how they are handled if they occur. UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer implements many features that support compliance to these regulations. Compliance to one particular policy is documented in UNICOM Systems, Inc. Statement of Compliance: Response to MRS regulations for use of predictive dialers.

If you want to support both extension and group dialing, you must register two dialing providers during installation. The sample code includes both extension and group dialing providers where the extension dialing code is mostly a subset of the group dialing.