Call Generators

[Mike]

Does anyone use the "Hammer" or any other call generator for environment testing.  We're considering purchasing a call generator that provides load for our development environment and would love to hear anyone's experiences.

[merlin_abacus]

Hammer is biggest and most famous one of them. It offers the flexibility and technical support bar none.

Yet I do strongly feel that it is aggressively overpriced and is not robust enough. In my previous job we had a team using it for call-generation and at the end they ended up returning it because the man-hours required to properly set it up and run were not justifiable.

There are several free pacakages available at sourceforge.org that use Dialogic card. There are also several lesser-known and much cheaper companies that offer signalling packages.

What exactly do you need to generate? How many calls per minute?

[Mike]

Currently, our contact center averages about 40 calls per minute.  We have it fronted with a touch tone IVR that asks for line of business, account number and date of birth.  Ultimately, it would be beneficial to my team if we could simulate live callers and test CTI information.
Most of our testing, (which is lots!) is due to our CRM developers always needing to test screen pops.  At least once a week, I get stuck with opening the call center on a Sat and placing test calls so they verify their code changes.  Automating this would not only be easier, but it would give me my Sat mornings back! 

[victor]

I can think of a lot of simple ways of getting it to work:

1. CCASim - it is part of Genesys GSDK and it is not really stable but it allows you to create a sequence of events that you want softphone to issue.  The neat thing is that you can specify the range for softphones so you can have 40 phones dialing at the same time. So, you can create a sequence when you program your phones to call in (or callout and thus in  ) and then press a digit and then wait for 20 seconds and then hang up... or something like that.
2.  you can create a simple tool (or ask someone here with a spare time on their hands to do it for you) that uses ActiveX and issues the commands you need
3. you can use Asterix and dialogic to dial in

There are a lot of workflow engines out there that in combination with dialogic card will allow you to do pretty much anything you want. Have yo looked at sourceforge.org?

[Haldane]

We currently use Hammer in our test centre but it is robust enough that we use it to both test our IVR fuctionalilty and Desktop Development. We also use it to mointor performance implications with new apps. It is costly so only a runner if you have revenue generating IVR's or +100 seat call centre. It will probably also need a dedicated resource to keep updating the scripts through the development cycle. But as Vic states to can always write your own to use with a dialogic card !

[Wyn]

3. you can use Asterix and dialogic to dial in

I have a very basic call generator I built based on Asterisk that can create calls with user defined CLI\ANI, DNIS over POTS, SIP or any asterisk supported calling method. I had started to build a Java GUI to make it easy to use but it has slipped down the priorities. When it's done (I reckon a couple of full days dev is still required) I'll make it freely available. Don't hold your breath as it could be a couple or more months.

Wyn joined Avaya team

[victor]

Wyn joined Avaya team,

can I help?

I am pretty good with Asterisk and development, so maybe we could develop it together?
It will be faster plus since everyone (with your permission of course) can use it, I think it is worth a try!

Vic

[Wyn]

Hi Vic,

I asked a programmer I know well if he'd finish the application for me yesterday and I'm waiting for an answer - yes, I've had to bribe him. Thank you for your offer, I maybe coming back to you on it.

The screenshot below is of my basic GUI. Its just a taster though. The follow on version will allow the calls parameters to be set up in a DB first and then the call generator run. The 3rd generation has some really special functioanlity which will make everyone drool. But first I need to get the basic version working.

I will restate that I'll make the app available for free.

Wyn joined Avaya team

[tony]

Wyn joined Avaya team - I'm drooling already but that's nothing to do with this tool...

This "added functionality" - it wouldn't be anything to do with emulating Agents taking calls, would it?

Tony

[Wyn]

Tony, you're only allowed to drool if you wear a baby's bib! No, the extra functionality is better than doing the agent's job for them. I'm trying to keep the call genenerator independant of the system being tested.

I saw your question on Better Interactions about multiple agent simulators. I have a copy of a test softphone that controls 12 DNs at a time incl. all the agent actions. I've seen 5 instances running on a laptop at the same time.

Regards,

Wyn joined Avaya team

[victor]

Wyn joined Avaya team: if you need help with programming, just say the word and I am in!
Tony: Genesys has CCASim, which can simulate many agents. Pretty cool, but very buggy and very temperamental: stops working all the time! What is worse, it crashes too! Very annoying, if you ask me.

I can't wait to get my hands on this program! I, for one, would really benefit from using it...

Vic

[Wyn]

As Dr Frankenstein said, "it lives!"
A quick update on the BCG (Bulk Call Generator), as I call it. It looks as in the previous screenshot but the operation is pretty rough and ready. Yes, I ended up coding it in the end.

I will get it running smoother before I release it. The next bit of functionality I need to put into it is to allow remote usage ie from the user's desktop, as at the moment it runs only directly on the Asterisk box.

Wyn joined Avaya team

[victor]

As Dr Frankenstein said, "it lives!"
A quick update on the BCG (Bulk Call Generator), as I call it. It looks as in the previous screenshot but the operation is pretty rough and ready. Yes, I ended up coding it in the end.

I will get it running smoother before I release it. The next bit of functionality I need to put into it is to allow remote usage ie from the user's desktop, as at the moment it runs only directly on the Asterisk box.

Wyn joined Avaya team

Wyn joined Avaya team,

do please release it ASAP. We would love to use it
Will you be kind enough to open-source it?

[Wyn]

Hi Vic,

I am committed to making the application freely available, i.e. everyone can download an install package for free off the web. I'm not so sure about OSS to be honest.

Wyn joined Avaya team

[luben]

hi Wyn joined Avaya team

did you make that program release free for the community ?

btw i want to ask you about this wiki project - i cannot find a page or a single thing about genesys in there ...
what is the purpose of this thing ?

regards