Power Dialer & Voicemail Drop

Power Dialer & Voicemail Drop

The Nova power dialer works through a list of leads and connects the calls that are answered to your agents. It can leave a pre-recorded voicemail when a machine picks up. Agents spend their time talking instead of dialing and waiting through rings.

Not on for every account yet

The power dialer is off until SIPSTACK turns it on. When it’s off, the Power Dialer pages don’t appear in Switchboard. To use it, contact support.

You’re responsible for your calling

The dialer has controls that help you call responsibly (listed under Compliance controls). Using them doesn’t make a campaign compliant with the TCPA, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, CRTC rules, CASL or any other law. You’re responsible for having the consent your calls need, for scrubbing your lists, and for following the rules that apply where you and your callees are. Get legal advice if you’re unsure.

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Where to find it

Page	Who uses it	What it’s for
Nova PBX → Power Dialer (/nova/dialer)	Admins (needs the Manage queues permission)	Create and edit campaigns, import leads, start and pause, watch stats.
Nova PBX → Power Dialer → Do-not-call list (/nova/dialer/do-not-call)	Admins	Your organization’s own do-not-call list, plus the Halt switch that stops all outbound dialing at once.
My Workspace → Power dialer (/my/dialer)	Agents	Join a campaign, set yourself Ready, take calls, record a disposition.
My Workspace → Voicemail drops (/my/dialer/voicemail-drops)	Agents	Upload and manage your recorded voicemail messages.

Agents need a Nova extension on the account to use the dialer.

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Dialing modes

Mode	How it dials
Preview	The agent sees the next lead and chooses when to dial it. One call at a time.
Progressive (default)	One call for each agent who is Ready. The dialer never places more calls than there are free agents.
Predictive	The dialer may place more calls than there are free agents, expecting some not to answer. It’s capped by the campaign’s maximum dial ratio (up to 5 lines per agent) and slows down automatically as the abandoned-call rate approaches the campaign’s limit.

Other campaign settings: ring timeout (10–60 seconds), wrap-up time after each call, maximum attempts per lead (default 3) and the delay before a retry (default 2 hours).

Caller ID

Choose a fixed caller ID (one of your numbers), or local presence. Local presence shows one of your own numbers with the same area code as the person you’re calling, and falls back to the fixed number when you have none there. The dialer only ever shows numbers your organization owns.

Leads

Import leads into a campaign as a list of phone numbers (up to 5,000 per import). Numbers are normalized and duplicates are removed. Rows that can’t be used are returned with the row number and the reason.

Importing new leads clears the campaign’s do-not-call scrub confirmation and pauses the campaign if it’s running. You’ll be asked to confirm the scrub again before it restarts (see below).

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Voicemail drop

A voicemail drop is a message you record once and leave on answering machines without reading it out each time.

• Upload drops on My Workspace → Voicemail drops. Drops must be WAV recordings.
• An agent on a live dialer call can drop a voicemail to leave the message and move on to the next call.
• When answering-machine detection is on for a campaign and the campaign has a default voicemail drop, calls answered by a machine get that message automatically.

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Compliance controls

Every dialer call goes through an outbound check before it’s placed. The first check that fails stops the call.

1. Kill switches. SIPSTACK can turn the dialer off platform-wide, and your admins can Halt all outbound dialing for your organization from the Do-not-call list page. Either one stops new calls on the next dialing cycle. Calls already connected aren’t cut off.

2. Dialable number. Only geographic US and Canadian numbers whose area code maps to a known time zone are called. If the dialer can’t tell what time it is for the callee, it doesn’t call.

3. Your do-not-call list. Numbers on your organization’s list are never dialed. When an agent records the Do not call disposition, the number is added automatically.

4. National do-not-call registries. Before a campaign starts, you confirm that its leads were checked against the US National Do Not Call Registry and Canada’s National DNCL, or that an exemption applies. The confirmation is recorded on the campaign with who gave it and when.

5. Calling hours in the callee’s time zone. Calls are placed only inside your campaign’s calling window (default Monday–Saturday, 9:00–20:00) and inside the legal floor, both in the callee’s local time:

   • US: 8:00–21:00, every day
   • Canada: weekdays 9:00–21:30, weekends 10:00–18:00

   An area code that spans more than one time zone is only called when the window is open in all of them. State rules that are stricter than these federal limits aren’t applied automatically. If they apply to you, set your campaign window to match.

Abandoned-call limit

A call is abandoned when a person answers and isn’t connected to an agent within 2 seconds of finishing their greeting. Each campaign has a maximum abandoned-call rate. Predictive dialing slows down as the rate gets close to it, and drops to one line per agent when it’s reached. You can set a recorded message to play to a person whose call can’t be connected to an agent.

The maximum you can set depends on your account’s country:

Account country	Highest allowed limit
United States (or no country on file)	3%
Canada	5%

The default is 3%. A campaign above your limit can’t be saved or started.

Consent

The dialer doesn’t check consent for calls an agent places. Your agents are live on every connected call, and you’re responsible for having the consent your campaign needs. Automated calls from an Aura voice agent work differently: they need express written consent on record for each number before they can be placed. A call without it is refused with OUTBOUND_AI_CONSENT_REQUIRED.

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Error codes

Code	What it means	What to do
DIALER_CAMPAIGN_NOT_STARTABLE	The campaign can’t start. It may be archived or completed, have no leads waiting, need the do-not-call scrub confirmation, or have an abandoned-call limit above your country’s maximum.	Fix the item named in the message, then start again.
DIALER_AGENT_NOT_SEATED	You haven’t joined the campaign, or you aren’t set to Ready.	Join the campaign and set yourself Ready.
DIALER_LEAD_BLOCKED	The outbound check refused this number right now (do-not-call, outside calling hours, not a dialable number, or outbound dialing is halted).	Skip the lead, or try again inside the callee’s calling hours.
DIALER_NO_ACTIVE_CALL	The call already ended.	Nothing to do.
DIALER_CALL_NOT_PLACED	The phone system couldn’t place or change the call just now.	Try again in a moment. If it keeps happening, contact support.

See also: Error Codes, Queues, Blocked Numbers.