***** Record Chaining?? *****

[fred.s]

Hello All,

We are looking to apply record chaining as a default is there away of applying this straight to a Campaign/List in config manager??

Thanks in advance.

[Steve]

I think I must be missing something here. How would config manager know how many records make up each of your contacts?

The chaining (chain_id and chain_n) is configured in the list before you import it into OCM or into your database.

[fred.s]

thanks

Im not expecting the config manager to be aware of the number of records or the records per chain, I just wanted to know if there was a way to "instruct" OCM to chain the record by default.... Perhaps if I explain, I might make the question clearer

We have a calling list that is dynamically populated through-out the day (and emptied out every night), this list can potentially include the same contact_info value for some of its records, I want to be able to chain (and re-chain) the contents of the calling list without having to keep going into OCM to do so...

Is this possible?

[ecki]

Hi,

For chaining you have in your calling list two default fields chain_id and chain_n. You have to provide this information to each record which have to be chained together with another records before you load data in to calling list.

Cheers.

e.

[Steve]

Yes I suppose it is possible.

You could create an "after  insert" trigger in your database to update the chain_id and chain_n values. For this you would need some value that uniquely identified each customer (a reference number) so that the procedure could work out if that customer is already in the list, needing another chain_n or was new needing a chain_id and chain_n. That could be done.

You say that you could have the same contact_info twice, why would you want to call the same number twice? A procedure could find these and not import them.

But would it work?
If the campaign was still running, it is probable that some rows in the database would be locked by OCM, stopping the update procedure.
What would cause OCM to re-read the updated table?
If it did somehow pickup the new records, how would it react to new records in a chain that it had already processed?

I guess the only way to find out for sure is to model it and test it.

[ecki]

Oh I see, I was too slow to post my answer and now I am too late. Sorry for double posting here.

[ecki]

[quote author=Steve link=topic=5746.msg25040#msg25040 date=1279874182]

You could create an "after  insert" trigger in your database to update the chain_id and chain_n values. For this you would need some value that uniquely identified each customer (a reference number) so that the procedure could work out if that customer is already in the list, needing another chain_n or was new needing a chain_id and chain_n. That could be done.

[/quote]


Trigger on calling list table is strongly not recommended. It can cause table lock down issues which could then lead to stop processing records by OCS.

[Steve]

Ecki - I agree it could cause issues, record locking was my first concern after I considered "would it work".
I would not expect a trigger to lock the record for as long as OCS will, but yes it could be an issue.

PS  It is never too late to post, every comment is valid