Cases as 'call centre session'

[petednz]

Client has been throwing some challenges at us for using Civi as a more featured 'calling tool' - and this is partly me thinking aloud.

So far we have managed most of their ideas via Activities, Views and Webform-civicrm along with a module to handle the 'let the callers self-allocate another 3 calls from the set of unallocated calls'

We are now hitting some curly requests eg

- we want the caller to 'start a session' with a default time allotted of an hour (which they can change) that then ticks down
- they allocate themselves some calls
- they make the calls (webform-civicrm + Activities)
- the session ends at allotted time, or they can then stop the Session when they want
- any uncompleted calls get unassigned

and they want to get data on 'how many calls per session', 'how many sessions per month or campaign' etc and report in real time to the caller the number of calls they have made that session etc

Putting aside various other difficulties for a moment (though you are welcome to offer suggestions ) like
- the 'countdown aspect' of the Session
- the fact that each Activity is to have its 'length of call' automatically calculated (ie a start/pause/submit option on webform that gets pushed in to Activity Duration field I am guessing)

In terms of what is in the civi box' Cases is the obvious 'container' for their allocated calls so
- open session = open case (most likely via a webform)
- allocate calls = assign Activities to self and add to open case (we already have the self allocation tool sorted, just need to add them to an 'open case')
- close session = set case to Resolved and 'unassign' the calls that are still 'scheduled' and remove them from the Case

And presumably we need a way to ensure that a new Case can't be started if an existing one is unresolved.

[Coleman Watts]

the 'countdown aspect' of the Session

I would probably custom-code a drupal block for this. The "timer" could be stored in $_SESSION on the server (and a post-hook on your webform could start the timer). Every time the page is refreshed the drupal block would fetch the remaining session time and display it. Add a tiny bit of js to the block and you could also have it update the countdown in-between page refreshes.

The fact that each Activity is to have its 'length of call' automatically calculated (ie a start/pause/submit option on webform that gets pushed in to Activity Duration field I am guessing)

Again I think a tiny but of custom code would be simplest. Just add a little js to the webform that adds a start/stop button to the civicrm activity_duration field

And presumably we need a way to ensure that a new Case can't be started if an existing one is unresolved.

You could set the webform to update existing cases with a certain status, that would prevent a new one from being opened.

[petednz]

Thanks for helping me think aloud and not suggesting an entirely different approach that I might not have followed