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Time Zone Mapping

Ensures that contacts are only called at appropriate times, by mapping telephone numbers to time zones in real-time, based on initial digits in the contact telephone number (for example area code and exchange in North America), instead of using the zone column of each contact record to identify the contact's time zone. To determine the zone, the initial digits of the contact number are looked up in a time zone map data source.
This feature is targeted at North American time zones, but support is available for NANP mapping tables purchased from third-party vendors.
Number mapping tables can be loaded for use in other international countries or regions as needed. Several vendor-provided data sets are supported. A generic ININ open format can be used to load other datasets, such as in-house tables, or datasets from additional vendors.
Mapping is done automatically if turned on and only if a time zone is not already defined for the phone number. This feature is enabled on a per-campaign basis.
Time zone mapping associates a zone with each contact number. The zone of each contact number is stored in the Phone Number Detail (PND) table, apart from the contact list. PND tables are automatically created and managed by Interaction Dialer.

Feature Overview

Dialer can be configured to automatically map individual phone numbers in a contact list to a time zone so that calls to those numbers will be conducted at an appropriate time.

To implement this feature, you first configure a data source that translates a phone number's area code and exchange into a time zone. These data sets are called "time zone map data sets". Once a time zone map data set has been defined, time zone mapping can be enabled on a campaign-by-campaign basis. When enabled, automatic mapping is performed for contact numbers that do not have an associated time zone.

Each contact list record can have multiple Contact Columns. For example, a contact list might have PhoneNumber, CellPhone, and WorkPhone columns. Dialer supports automatic mapping of each telephone number per contact, against custom or commercial time zone mapping data sets, to set the zone entry for each number in the Phone Number Detail (PND) table. Phone Number Detail tables track the do-not-call status of multiple telephone numbers associated with a contact. However, each PND table tracks time zone, contact attempts, and rescheduling attempts for each phone number associated with a contact record. PND tables are automatically created and managed by Interaction Dialer.

Automatic time zone mapping allows discrete time zone information to be used for each contact number. As before, customers can populate zone columns in the contact list table. When data sets for time zone mapping are configured, Dialer provides per-campaign options that control how broadly automatic mapping is applied. For each campaign, you can choose to:

map phone numbers that have no zone information. This will cause only those phone numbers not associated with a zone to be mapped.
map phone numbers that have no zone information and numbers that had previously been automatically mapped. If the time zone map data set has been updated, the latest zone from the data set will be used in place of the zone entry that was previously written to the campaign's PND table. The PND table will be updated with the latest zone for this telephone number.
map all phone numbers, regardless of their current zone settings