Set Up Calling Lists

You can create and upload a calling list manually, or you can work with your NICE CXone account manager and Professional Services to enable Proactive XS. Proactive XS uses Studio scripts to automatically pull contact information from your CRM. After Personal Connection (PC) dials calls, send texts, or sends emails, the Studio scripts check the contacts back in to the CRM with the interactions and interaction attempts recorded.

While not a mandatory part of the setup process, you can set up automatic rules for deleting or expiring calling lists, which helps you meet storage requirements and prevents additional billing for extra storage. The CXone system can keep up to 1,000,000 total active records (both calling records and do not call records) at once. If your upload passes these thresholds, your upload will fail and return an error message.

You can use the same calling list to call and text contacts, but you can't use the same list to handle phone interactions and email interactions. As an alternative, you can upload the same calling list twice to use one for phone interactions and another for email interactions.

Complete each of these tasks in the order given.

Create a Calling List

Required permissions: Calling List Create

Calling list files can't exceed 256 MB in size or 500,000 records. Smaller calling lists result in faster upload and fresher records. Each individual record in a calling list cannot exceed a length of 512 Unicode characters. Calling list uploads support Unicode UTF-8 encoding, which includes Chinese characters and all other languages. If you're creating or editing calling lists in Microsoft Excel, take care to preserve the UTF-8 encoding format.

CXone strips the formatting from phone numbers in calling lists and stores the phone numbers in a universal format. This allows phone numbers to pass between calling lists and do not call (DNC) lists without conflict.

  1. Open a spreadsheet editor or a text editor.
  2. You can use the first row to label your columns. This helps with automatic field mapping when you upload the calling list. If you're using a text editor, decide whether to separate the values with commas or tabs.
  3. Create the columns for your list.

    For a Proactive Voice calling list, you must have a unique identifier column and a phone number column.

    For a Proactive SMS calling list, you must have a unique identifier column and an SMS phone number column.

    For a Proactive Email calling list, you must have at least an external identifier column and an email address column.

  4. Enter the data for each record in its own row.

  5. Save the file in one of the approved formats shown in the following images.

Create Custom Fields

Create custom fields to map columns from your calling list to fields that are not hard-coded in the system. System fields include address, agent, call request date/time, call request stale minutes, caller ID, city, compliance required, confirmation required, customer field 1 and 2, expiration date, external ID, first name, last name, notes, override final statuses, phone number, priority, score, state, time zone, and zip. See Filter Calling Lists for details about what each of these fields is for.

These instructions cover any custom field types besides phone numbers (voice or SMS) and email addresses. For instructions for creating those types of custom fields, see Create Custom Phone Number or Email Address Fields.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to ListsCustom Data Definitions.

  3. Click Create New.

  4. Enter a Field Name. Don't give a custom field the same name as a system field. If you plan to make the field visible to agents, make the name readable by adding spaces. If you're using this field as a script variable, you cannot use spaces. If you want the field to be both a script variable and visible to agents, you can use underscores to improve readability or create two mappings to the same field.

  5. Select a field Type.
  6. If you want to set a default field value and your selected Type supports it, enter the Default value. The value you entered applies to all records that don't specify a value for that field.

  7. If your selected Type supports it and you want to prevent the system from assigning a default value to contacts without an assigned value for the field, select Value Required.

  8. Click Add.

Create Custom Phone Number or Email Address Fields

The hard-coded system fields include 1 phone number field and no email address fields. If you're including an email address or more than one phone number for each record in the calling list, you must create custom fields for the email address and each additional phone number.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to ListsCustom Data Definitions.

  3. If you're creating a new phone or SMS field and want to have associated caller ID, compliance, attempts, description, start time, or end time fields, create those fields first. The associated fields have the following requirements:

    Field

    Requirements

    Caller ID Value StringType

    Compliance

    BooleanType

    Attempts IntegerType
    Description IntegerType
    Start Time IntegerType. This setting overrides the default value if you set one.
    End Time IntegerType. This setting overrides the default value if you set one.

  4. Click Create New.

  5. Enter a Field Name and select the Phone, SMSPhone, or Email Type.
  6. If you created an associated caller ID, compliance, attempts, description, start time, or end time field to apply to this field, select them in their respective fields.

  7. If you're creating a Phone or SMSPhone field and you want to set default allowable time ranges for calling or sending SMS messages to contacts, use the Contraints fields. You can create different windows for weekdays and weekends, and each can have multiple time ranges. Because these constraints set the default calling time ranges, the constraints you specify are overridden by values of Start Time and End Time, if you set up related fields.
  8. Click Add.

Upload Calling List

Required permissions: Calling List Create

If you want to use the same calling list for both Proactive Email and either Proactive SMS or Proactive Voice, you must upload the calling list twice and assign one instance to a phone skillClosed and the other to an email skill.

If you're re-uploading a calling list after making critical updates, stop the associated ACD skill. Restart the ACD skill when you're done uploading calling lists.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to ListsCalling.

  3. Click Select File.

  4. Read the compliance agreement and click Accept to continue.

  5. Enter a List Name. Select the Upload New radio button if you want to select a new list from your computer, or Select Existing if you want to modify a list you already uploaded.

    If uploading, click Choose File. If modifying, type the File Name or click Browse. Find and select the calling list you want to upload or use. Configure any optional fields as needed.

  6. Click Next.
  7. If you used the first row of your calling list to label the columns, select Use First Row as Column Names next to Header. Review the automatic mapping done by PC, map any unmapped fields, and configure time zone handling and an expiration date.
  8. If it's not already done for you, map your phone numbers and email addresses in Map Destinations. Add and remove destinations as needed.

    If you map a phone field to a specific ACD skill, it appears under the cadence options for that skill. If you don't want to include a specific phone number in the Maximum Attempts or cadence calling order, don't map those phone number to fields. Once you map the field, you can't remove it from the cadence settings.

  9.  When the file uploads, PC displays the progress and the number of records that loaded successfully and unsuccessfully. If the calling list contains invalid records, use the following steps to fix the errors.
    1. Click Download Link in the warning box that appears.

    2. Open the file to view the problems with the upload. In this example, the record in row 6 doesn't have a phone number:

    3. Fix the problem in the calling list and save it.
    4. Upload the updated file.

Filter Calling Lists

Required permissionsSkills Edit

Filters restrict records in your calling list so only records matching certain criteria are attempted. They apply to all calling lists associated with a skillClosed. Filters apply to uploaded lists that result from the Proactive XS Create Prospects v2 action in Studio.

Filtering, do not call (DNC) lists, and call suppression are similar tools that should be used for different situations. The following list highlights the unique differences between these 3 features:

  • Call Suppression — intended to suppress calls to entries of a calling list based on unique criteria in the calling list (not specifically a phone number). You can set a unique disposition for a call suppression record to indicate the purpose of the call being suppressed. This feature includes a start and end date for the call to be suppressed, and is intended to suppress calls for the duration of a campaign (or longer). For example, if an organization lost licensing for the state of New York, they could suppress calls to New York until re-establishing their licensure. Any suppressed call could be dispositioned with a unique "NYLicenseLapse" disposition.
  • Do Not Call (DNC) List — used to stop calls to a specific phone number. DNC lists are intended to be permanent solutions for contacts who request not to be contacted.
  • Filtering — intended to filter certain calling list entries within the scope of a campaign. For example, if an organization wanted to increase productivity to hit a monthly quota early in a campaign, they could temporarily filter out low-probability prospects to focus on high value prospects. The organization still intends to contact low-probability prospects, but not necessarily right now. Another common situation for filtering is for severe weather impacts, such as tornadoes or hurricanes.

You configure each filter statement individually based on one operand. You can configure multiple statements to create a more complex filter. Each filter statement builds upon the last with an unspecified 'and'. While the filtering tool doesn't support 'or' between statements, you can use the In operator to produce a similar result as explained in the following steps.

  1. If filtering isn't already enabled for your business unit, enable it.

    1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

    2. Go to ACD ConfigurationBusiness Units.

    3. Click your business unit to open it.

    1. Click Edit in the Details tab.

    2. In the Outbound Strategy section, select Enable Filtering.

    3. Click Done.

  2. Click the skill you're modifying to open it.

  3. Click the Parameters tab.

  4. Click Configure or Edit for the Filter section.

  5. Select the Active checkbox.

  6. Select or clear the Exclude Priority Records and Exclude Callback Records fields as needed and choose an Apply Option.

    When the dialing queue pauses or resets due to your selected Apply Option, agents receive a notification that says "Please Wait — The system is identifying the best records to call."

  7. If you want to use filters from another PC skill, click Copy From Another Skill. Select the skill you want to copy filters from and click OK.
  8. To add a new filter condition, click Add Condition.
    1. From the Column drop-down, select the mapped calling list field that you want to use to filter the calling list .

    2. Select the Operator you want to use to compare the selected Column to a value.

    3. Enter or select the Value you want to compare with the Column you chose.

      If you upload a calling list without specifying record values for a system field, the records receive the default values. When you filter by that system value, the filter considers that default value for those records.

  9. Click Preview. A pop-up displays the number of records that remain in the queue if you apply the filter.

  10. Repeat the process to add any other filters you want to apply to the dialing queue. Remember that filters have 'and' behavior, so all filters apply to the list at the same time.
  11. Remove filters you no longer want to apply by clicking the remove icon to the left of the filter.

  12. Click Apply.

Sort Calling Lists

Required permissions: Skills Edit

By default, PC sorts calling list records in the following order:

  1. CallbacksClosed
  2. PriorityClosed-flagged records
  3. Fresh records
  4. Non-fresh records, such as retries

You can sort the calling list based on custom criteria.

  1. Click the app selector and select ACD.

  2. Go to Contact SettingsACD Skills.

  3. Click the PC skillClosed you want to modify.

  4. Click the Parameters tab.
  5. If you are sorting the calling list for a Proactive Voice or Proactive SMS skill and want to add or remove fresh, non-fresh, or callback records from your calling list, select or clear the corresponding checkboxes in General Settings. To do so:
    1. Click Edit in the General Settings parameters.
    2. To add or remove callbacks, fresh records, or non-fresh records, select or clear Load Callbacks, Load Fresh, or Load Non-Fresh, respectively.
    3. Click Done.
  6. Click Edit in the List Management parameters.

  7. Add new sorting criteria by clicking Add under List Ordering Options. When the Add List Order Type form appears, select an Order Type from the drop-down. Specify whether you want the list to sort in ascending or descending order according to the order type with the Sort Order. Click OK.

  8. Remove any sort criteria you no longer want to use by selecting the corresponding checkbox and clicking Delete.

  9. Use the up and down arrows to prioritize the sort criteria.

  10. Click Done.