Monitoring and reporting on autodialer projects

When using the Interviewer Monitoring activity to monitor interviews for projects that use a dialer, supervisors hear the audio component of the interview as well as seeing the visual part of their screens.

The Dialer Administration activity provides a summary of dialer usage. For each dialer, it shows the dialer name and status, the number of current interviews, and the number of errors. Then, for each project using that dialer, it shows the project name and version, and the number of interviews currently running.

Activity reports are available to provide detailed information about interviewer activity on a project:

▪The Answer Time Distribution report shows how long (in seconds) participants are taking to answer calls. Each cell of the report shows a count, a percentage, and a cumulative percentage. Only answered calls are included in the report. This report might help you decide to reduce or increase the value of the NoAnswerTimeout property. Note that some countries have regulations that specify a minimum ring time for autodialed calls.

▪The Busy, Wait, and Idle Time report shows the busy, wait, and idle times for each interviewer who has worked on the project. Busy time occurs when the interviewer is interacting with the participant. Wait time occurs when the interviewer has clicked the Start Dialing button and is waiting to be connected to a participant. Idle time occurs when the interviewer can click the Start Dialing button, but has not done so. Each cell of the report shows a sum, a mean, a minimum, and a maximum time.

▪The Silent Call Statistics report compares the number of silent calls with the number of calls that were answered and the total number of calls. Silent calls can occur when an autodialer generates more calls than there are interviewers available to handle the calls.

These reports are generated from records in the sample history table. Records associated with calls that are automatically returned to sample management have a user ID of __AutoDial.

When the dialer obtains a connection, a Call_Connect record is written to the history table. This record is used in the Answer Time Distribution report.

When the connected call is passed to the interviewer, an Interviewer_Wait record is written to the history table for that interviewer. This record is used in the Busy, Wait, and Idle Time report. In addition, the activity start time on the connected sample record is reset to the current time so that the busy time for the record does not include the connect time.

Once the Interviewer_Wait record has been written, the ActivityStartTime sample field is updated with the current time. The ActivityStartTime sample field is used to calculate the duration the call was connected to the Interviewer when the sample record is returned.

The following diagram illustrates how history records are written for a dialing and interviewing sequence.