We’ve been busy upgrading. Look for our official v1.0 release soon. Hello Hunter is now the only hosted dialer solution with an integrated softphone that bypasses network NAT issues. No more SIP softphone troubleshooting for Hello Hunter customers. The phone is integrated directly into our application. Current customers can enable the feature under the Settings tab. To use the webphone, users need a microphone and headset.

As we move towards a production ready product (of which, we are very, very close) it makes sense to schedule a maintenance window to provide some predictability for our customers. The Hello Hunter Auto & Predictive Dialing functions will be unavailable Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 11pm-1am PST. We will be conducting upgrades to our software during their period, and some calling functions and the flash-based app might not work.

It has been a hectic week with bug fixes. Slowly tho, we’re getting to a production-ready auto dialer. A big thank you goes out to all of our beta testers.

Speaking of which, we grew out of our original VoIP and call routing system and have successfully migrated over to a newer and faster FreeSWITCH setup. For a brief time on Thursday, some predictive calls might have failed. All API access is now served from our server in NYC. Wheeh!

Next week be on the lookout for a new and improved corporate homepage, it’s coming, and it’s looking good.

As we conduct our beta testing, we are always excited to learn about the new feature enhancements our customers want, and how it can better improve our product. To provide some transparency to our beta testers (and potential clients) with our development efforts I’ll be using this space to provide a quick roadmap on features and their expected implementations. We push updates out about every other day, so expect this information to change often.

  • Call Statistics (Added 28 Feb)
  • Disposition bar (added 28 Feb)
  • VoIP connection Support (early-March 2009)
  • Improved Navigation Features (early-March 2009)
  • Live Call Transfer (mid-March 2009)
  • Recorded Message Leaving (mid-March 2009)
  • The Que Dialing (early April 2009)
  • Salesforce Integration (April 2009)
  • Email integration (April 2009)

A common question I have been getting is how does TeleDialer  work with my existing phone. Here’s how it works. Our dialer software has access to several hundred phone lines throughout the country. When you initiate a predictive call from a web browser, our telephones call your phone. Your phone receives a normal phone call.

When you pick-up you hear a Hello Hunter welcome message followed by a doorbell sound. The doorbell sound indicates our dialing algorithm is attempting to connect to one of your contacts. When a contact is found we conference the two calls together. When the contact hangs-up, you or your calling agent can stay on the phone and initiate a new call via the web interface.

There are no telco related charges to your phone.

If you are a geek like me, we also support VoIP via SIP/IAX connections.

We’re off…

Hello Hunter is proud to announce that our TeleDialer is now available for general beta testing. Our TeleDialer is a 100% hosted, SaaS, requiring no hardware or software purchases, and integrates with your existing phone line.

The beta is a fully working and operational version of our Auto / Predictive Dialer. There are no limitations to the software. The TeleDialer is being offered for free to the public. We only ask that you report bugs and share your feedback we us.

If you are interested, please contact us, using the links around this blog. Thanks, your participation is much appreciated.