The Autodialer settings enable you to define settings that relate to the use of an autodialer. The autodialer settings are valid only when SPSS Dialer (Extension) - Power dial for the interviewer screen or SPSS Dialer (Group) - Dial for the interview in a group (with optional predictive dialing) is selected as a Dialing option in the Interviewer settings (see Interviewing: Interviewer).

These options are available only when a dialer is installed on the server.

Displays the caller's telephone number to the called party when the autodialer makes a call.

Enter a phone number. It must contain only the digits 0 to 9, * and #. It can be preceded by + (plus sign) to present the international access code. It can contain space ( ) . and -. Visual separators are not allowed before the first digit.

When selected, the Phone Participants activity will not open on a station with an unrecognized position and an error message appears instead.

When not selected, stations with unrecognized positions can be used to conduct interviews (the Phone Participants activity will still open), and manual dialing must be used on those stations.

Enter the minimum length of time (in seconds) that an unanswered phone call must ring before the autodialer terminates the call. Use a value that gives participants plenty of time to pick up the phone. In addition, local laws might specify the minimum value that you must use. The default value is 15 seconds.

Enter the name of a wave-sound (.wav) file that contains a message that will be played to the participant when a silent call occurs (for example, SilentCall.wav). Silent calls can occur when an autodialer generates more calls than there are interviewers available to handle the calls.

The .wav file must be in the autodialer’s “audio” folder, which is defined in the autodialer’s dialer.ini file. To specify a .wav file that is in a subfolder of the audio folder, include a relative path (for example, Projects\MyProject\SilentCall.wav).

Enter the numbers of minutes that interviewers must wait to be connected to a participant before the autodialer cancels the connection attempt, allowing interviewers to leave their stations if they need to. The default value is 10 minutes.

Enter the percentage of calls that the autodialer will record. Both individual questions and entire calls are recorded, and the recordings are saved as sound files in the autodialer's file system. To record calls, enter a whole number from 0 to 100. To record no calls or all calls, enter 0 or 100 respectively. The default value is 0.

If you enter any other value, that percentage of calls will be selected at random for recording, with the following exceptions:

When you change this setting, there might be a delay of up to a minute before the new value takes effect.

For more information, see Recording calls and interviews.