Project and interview properties are used to store various parameters that control the way calls and recordings are made. You can specify values for these properties in DPM and some can also be changed on a per-project basis using the Project Editor or Interviewing Options activities.

Caller identification tells you who is calling before you pick up the phone. When using the dialer, your company can choose whether or not to send caller identification by setting the CallerID property for each project. This affects all interviews in the project.

The AutoDialTimeout property specifies the number of seconds that auto-dialing continues trying to dial numbers for an Interviewer. The default is 600 seconds (10 minutes). If this property is not defined, the dialer tries until it achieves a connection.

The dialer normally allows the phone to ring for 15 seconds before deciding that the call will not be answered. You can set this value on a project basis using the NoAnswerTimeout property in DPM, and you can change it for individual interviews in the sample management script. For example, you might want to increase the time-out for records in the RECALL queue.

For countries that require it, the MinimumRingTime project property specifies the minimum amount of time the phone must ring before the call is disconnected. The default is 0.

The dialer normally records entire calls right from the moment a call is answered. The RecordInterviewOnly project property lets you restrict recording to just the interview portion of each call.

The PercentCallsRecorded project property lets you specify what percentage of calls/interviews should be recorded for a project.

Each interview has a RecordingProhibited property that is set whenever a participant declines to be recorded. If recording has already started, it then stops immediately.

It is more efficient to return a large number of records at one time than to call Get multiple times. When group dialing, the predictive algorithm will set the SMRecordsRequired property based on the number of additional records required to dial. However, by default MaxRecordsRequired should be set to 1 and it should be left to the predictive algorithm to control the SMRecordsRequired property. The SMRecordsRequired property is set as the batch size if its value is greater than NumSampleRecsInBatch with a maximum value as defined by the MaxRecordsInBatch property value (the maximum value defaults to 25 when MaxRecordsInBatch is not defined).

Multiple calls to Get might be required in order to retrieve records that meet different sets of interviewer qualifications. Records are retrieved from sample management, as follows, when an Interviewer retrieves the next contact:

The RecordCall interview property is set automatically whenever a call is selected for recording to indicate that a recording exists for that call/interview. This property is not reset if the respondent declines to be recorded. Instead, RecordingProhibited is set to 1, which overrides the RecordCall setting.

Interviewers might have qualifications that identify the types of calls they can receive. Interviewers are grouped according to their qualifications so that, for example, anyone who can speak French is in one group and anyone who can speak French and Spanish is in another group. The InterviewerQualGroup interviewer property names the qualifications group to which an interviewer belongs. When a connection is made, the dialing component checks which qualifications are required for that call and allocates it to an appropriately qualified interviewer. Calls with no qualifications requirements are allocated to the interviewer who has been waiting the longest regardless of his/her qualifications.

When dialing predictively, it is possible that connections are made when there is no interviewer free to take the call. When this happens, the dialer can play a sound recording to the respondent explaining what has happened. The SilentCallAudioFile project property names the file that is to be played for the current project.

All dialers on a project must use the same message file. Message files must be stored in the appropriate location. This location is configurable, and can be on the dialer's disk or on a disk that is available to the dialer. Users who set up interviewing projects will need to know where message files are stored.