Liquid Uploader V3.0 User Guide

Title page



Liquid Uploader V3.0

User Guide

Contents

Introduction
The Liquid Uploader tool serves two purposes. It enables users to insert leads into the Liquid system for dialling and it allows users to move batches between contact methods.

The process involves the following steps.



Figure 1 Top Level Upload Steps

These steps are explained in detail in this manual.

For moving batches between contact methods (see Batch Management)

For all activities you must be logged into the Uploader (see Logging into Liquid), have sufficient rights assigned to you to upload data, and be connected to the internet.

Logging into Liquid


Figure 2 Liquid Application (not logged in)

Click the Logon Button on the Toolbar.



Figure 3 Login Dialog

Provide your username, password and Liquid Centre ID.

Click Logon to login to liquid.

Changing Your Password
You can change your password from the Login Dialog. Click Change password.



Figure 4 Change Password

Clicking Change will change the password and logon to liquid.

Logged in.
After you are logged in the application will automatically start polling the server to update the upload progress screen. You will see a list of files which have been uploaded recently (see Upload progress).

The title bar of the Uploader displayed the logged in user, the call centre and the address of the server to which you are connected.



Figure 5 Liquid Application (logged in)

Open Data File
The Uploader supports the following file formats:


 * Delimited text file (for example comma, tab separated.)
 * Microsoft Excel Document.

In both cases the first row of the data must contain the column headings.

Drag the desired file onto the Liquid upload tool, or from the main menu select File - > Open Customer Upload File.

You will be presented with options relating to the chosen format. In the case of an Excel file, you must choose the sheet from which the data should be taken. In the case of a character delimited file, the user will be presented with a simple import wizard:

Import Wizard Screen 1 – Excel File Options


Figure 6 Excel Import Options

Choose the sheet containing the data.

Import wizard screen 1 - Text File Options


Figure 7 Text File Import Options 1



Figure 8 Text File Import Options 2

The uploader will attempt to guess the format of your data and set the options accordingly.

Campaign Details Page


Specify the Campaign, Contact method and Batch from the drop down menus.

You can add a new batch by clicking new batch.



Figure 9 Adding a new Batch

Lead Expiry Page


Figure 10 Lead Expiry Page

Select the expiry date for the leads.

De-duplication Options Page
By selecting a de-duplication scope other than None, the Liquid Servers will reject duplicated leads. You can download the row numbers which were rejected and a reason, you can then correct these leads and choose to upload them again (see Upload progress). The leads which are not duplicated will have been inserted into the Liquid system.



Figure 11 De-duplication Options Page

Scope
None – no de-duplication will occur.

File – the server will reject duplicated records in the file.

Batch – the server will reject duplicated records in the file and the selected batches

Campaign – the server will reject duplicated records in the file and all batches in the campaign.

Batches to de-duplicate against.
Tick the batches you want the server to de-duplicated against when the scope is batch



Figure 12 De-duplication Options Page (showing batches)

Schema Fields to De-duplicate against.
Select the fields to de-duplicate against; the available fields will depend on the schema defined for the Campaign. These fields are concatenated during the de-duplication operation.

For example: if telephone and Customer_Name are picked then Liquid will concatenate the phone number and the Customer_Name during the de-duplication operation. This will allow duplicates in the telephone field so long as the corresponding Customer_Name field is different.

Finishing the Import Wizard
Click finish to complete the import wizard

Blank Lines


Figure 13 Blank Lines In Upload File

The uploader will reject data with blank lines. If you encounter this message then edit the original file to remove the blank lines.

Map Columns to Campaign Schema
Having imported a file, the next step is to match the fields within the file to those within the campaign.



Figure 14 Column Mappings Screen

On the left hand side of this screen, the data from the imported file can be seen. Those columns coloured green have been matched to the fields within the campaign. Any remaining columns have not been matched.

The columns are mapped by using the drop down boxes on the right hand side of the screen. These fields are colour coded:


 * Green fields denote fields which have been mapped.
 * Blue fields are yet to be mapped.
 * Red fields have yet to be mapped and are mandatory.

Once all of the mandatory fields have been mapped, the ’ upload file ’ button (bottom right hand side) will become active. Clicking on this will start the upload process.

Mapping Schema Fields
The list on the right hand side of the application contains all of the schema fields which can be mapped.

You can satisfy a mapping by selecting one of the following options from the drop down box.



Figure 15 Mapping Fields

In this case the schema field will contain no data. Note you cannot specify ignore for fields marked as compulsory.

The data for this field will be derived from the data in another column. See Derived Data for more information.

File Column Name
The data is taken from the column with the heading name you have picked in the list.

Validation
Each field in the schema for the Campaign can have an optional validation string associated with it. The validation string is a regular expression which the data must match before the uploader will allow the data to be uploaded.

The validation for each field is specific to the Campaign brief and is contained in the schema for the campaign, for example you might specify that a date format be dd/mm/yy.

See Correcting Invalid Data for more details about validation.

Derived Data
Any schema field can be satisfied by deriving the data from a specified column in the data file via a transformation.

When you select from the drop down in the column mapping you get some new options in the top right hand side of the application to configure the derived data.

Generic Derived Data
In the generic case for deriving data you will see the following options:



Figure 16 Generic Derived Data options

The transformation options consists of an extraction string, an output format string, and a derived from column.

The extraction string is a regular expression for extracting string(s) from the specified "Derived From" column.

The uploader substitutes occurrences of { n }, where n is a number, in the output format with the corresponding (nth) extracted string.

The uploader appends a column on the end of the data to store the derived column.

For example, say you always got your date data in the form dd/mm/yy but you need to upload the data in the form mm-dd-yy.

You could use the following extraction string to extract the dd, mm and yy parts from the date column:

^ ( [ 0-9 ][ 0-9 ] ) [ / ] ( [ 0-9 ][ 0-9 ] ) [ / ] ( [ 0-9 ][ 0-9 ][ 0-9 ][ 0-9 ] )$

This would extract three strings from in the form of 3 groups of 2 digits separated by / characters.

You could then specify an output format like follows:

{ 2 } - { 1 } - { 3 }

The uploader will substitute the first match with the { 1 } the second with { 2 } and so on.



Figure 17 Example Derived Date Column

You can see the result. In the pink column, the forward slash character has been replaced with a hyphen and the month and day extracted strings have been swapped.

Note the column is pink because derived columns still have to pass the validation for the field, in this case the Date_of_Birth field enforces a dd/mm/yy format which the derived column fails.

Changing the output format to

{ 1 } - { 2 } - { 3 }

Causes errors to disappear and the column to go green.



Figure 18 Example Derived Column Valid Data

Timezone Derived Data
The Liquid system supports marking a lead with a timezone. This timezone information affects call backs, and allowed times for dialling. The timezone must be specified in the olson zoneinfo format (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo )

If you select the derived option for a timezone schema field, a more specialised derived data options page is available.

These options allow you to specify a column containing an ISO code to derive the tz location from.



Figure 19 Derived Timezone Column

Correcting Invalid Data
All validation errors are listed in the error list at the bottom of the application. Double clicking on the error in the list will automatically highlight the cell with the invalid data. The screenshot below shows a date which has two forward slashes instead of one:



Figure 20 Example Validation Error



Figure 21 Validation Error Magnified

Clicking in a cell in the data grid places the grid into edit mode, and you can change the data.



Figure 22 Grid In Edit Mode

One the data has been changed the Uploader will re-validate the data.

The error goes away and the grid turns green.



Figure 23 Corrected Validation Error

Uploading Data
Once all the fields are mapped and any validation errors dealt with the data can be uploaded. Clicking on the upload button brings up the upload screen.



Figure 24 Upload Screen

The upload screen shows the progress of the file upload. First of all the data is processed, compressed and then local copies of the files to be uploaded are stored in the users temporary folder.

Once the local files are created the file is marked as resumable – this means that you can restart the upload if a failure occurs.

The Uploader then transfers the file in chunks to the server. You can see the progress on the dialog until it completes.

At any point the upload can be cancelled.

Once the data has been uploaded to the Aeriandi servers various server side processes are scheduled. You can monitor the server side processes, in the Upload Progress screen (see Upload progress.)

Resuming Uploads
If an upload is cancelled you can resume the upload by right clicking in the Upload Progress screen on the upload (it will be orange.)

When the Uploader Application is started it will detect any resumable uploads and prompt you.



Figure 25 Partial Upload Found

Upload progress
The upload progress screen is automatically displayed when you start the Liquid Uploader Tool. If you close the window you can reopen it from the View menu.

The annotated screen shot (see Figure 26 Upload Progress Screen) shows the upload progress screen and explains all of the columns.



Figure 26 Upload Progress Screen

1.1 Upload Progress Context Menu

Right clicking on a row in the Upload Progress grid provides the following options:



Figure 27 Upload Progress Context Menu

View More Detail
This provides more detail about the file, including who uploaded the file and it details every step undertook at the server.



Figure 28 Upload File Details

View Upload File Metadata


Figure 29 Upload file metadata

Using this dialog box you can add notes to the file. The fields which can be edited for each file are specified in the Campaign.

Download Generic Dial File
This allows a generic dial file (which can be uploaded into 3rd party diallers) to be downloaded.

For specific dial files a report must be run and downloaded from the reporting site.

Reset Upload
This is for resetting the Upload in the case there is a server side failure. This is an advanced feature to be used with advice from Support only.

Resume Upload
Clicking on resume upload will resume a partial upload.

Download Rejected Record List
If the number of rejected records > 0 then you can download a list of the rejected URNs. This list includes the affected URN and the reason for the rejection. Usually this will be because of a de-duplication failure on the server. However any step, such as TPS, or an incorrectly formatted phone number could cause a record to be rejected.

Batch Management
It is possible to move batches between contact methods using the batch management functions within the Liquid Uploader.



Figure 30 Batch Management

Select the row you want to change. Use the combo box on the right hand side to change the contact method. You will be asked to confirm the change.

Prerequisites
Microsoft Windows .net 2.0.

Installation Procedure
You can find the latest version of the Uploader here:

Uploader V3/ https://liquid.aeriandi.com/downloads/Aeriandi%20Uploader%20V3/

Download and unzip the installation media for example:

Aeriandi Liquid Uploader V3 Setup 3.0.7.zip

Run Setup.exe to install the application.



Figure 31 Installation Security Warning

Click Run



Figure 32 Installation Wizard Page 1

Click Next.



Figure 33 Installation Wizard Page 2

Specify the location for the Uploader to be installed.



Figure 34 Installation Wizard Page 3

Click Next, the application will install when complete you will see the following page.



Figure 35 Installation Wizard Last Page (Installation Complete)

After installation a short cut will be placed under the start bar - > All Programs - > Aeriandi - > Aeriandi Uploader V3

Configure the Aeriandi Site Address Setting
The installation will install the default settings for the Uploader.

You should ensure that the AeriandiSiteAddress is set correctly for your organisation – this setting can be found in the Advanced Tab of the Options Dialog (see section "12.2.3 AeriandiSiteAddress").

To get the correct setting please contact the support department.

Settings
The Options Dial is available from the main menu, Tools - > Options. After making any changes to the settings you must restart the application.



Figure 36 Options Dialog

Upload Progress List Tab
This tab contains one setting:

Number of Months Back
This adjusts the range of files visible in the Upload Progress screen within the Uploader. If you selected 6 months then you would see all the uploads for the last 6 months.

Advanced Tab


Figure 37 Options Dialog - Advanced Tab

AcceptOwnCaX509CertificatesForHttps
If set to true (default) then the application accepts https sessions to a server which has self signed certificates. If it is set to false then the application will only establish a connection to an https server with a certificate signed by a certification authority which has been granted root level trust in Windows.

AeriandiLiquidConnectionTimeout_ms
The time in ms the application spends trying to establish a connection to the server.

AeriandiSiteAddress
The address of the server which the Uploader connects to.

AeriandiUploadWebServiceTimeOut_ms
The time in ms the application spends trying to establish a connection when the application is uploading chunks of data to the server.

AllowChangingExpiryDate
If set to false (default) then the users cannot change the expiry date on a file. If set to true then the users can right click the file in the Upload Progress screen and change it ’ s Expiry Date. It is false by default because the Expiry Date does not currently get updated in integrated Telephony Providers, and hence can cause problems in some scenarios.

CallUpgrade
Used internally to allow settings to be migrated if a newer version of the application is installed. Do not change this setting.

CheckForPartialUploadFiles
By default this setting is true – when the application is started it checks the users temporary folder and sees if there are any upload files there, if so it checks the upload list and establishes if that file has been abandoned part way through the upload. If it is then the Uploader automatically asks the user if they wish to resume the upload. If false then the Uploader does not check.

ColumnMappingMappedColour
Defines the colour used by the Uploader to show that a column of data has been mapped to a data field in the campaign Schema.

ColumnMappingNotRequiredNotMapped
Defines the colour used by the Uploader to show that a column of data has not been mapped but is not compulsory for the Upload of the file.

ColumnMappingRequiredButNotMappedColour
Defines the colour used by the Uploader to show that a column of data has not been mapped and this column is compulsory; it must be mapped before the upload can continue.

ConnectionCheckCommand
The command used during the automated connection check test. Do not change this setting.

DialFileDelimiter
The delimiter used to separate columns in the generic dial file.

DialFileIncludeHeadings
If true (the default) then the generated generic dial file has column headings.

DialFileMaxRetries
The number of tries the application makes to download the generic dial file.

DialFileRowsPerWebServiceCall
The number of rows the application downloads at once from the server.

DockUploadProgressInMainForm
By default this setting is true. If you set this to false then progress box during the file transfer stage of the Upload is presented in it ’ s own window.

DontShowNewVersionDialog
If this is false (the default) then the application checks the central server if the current version of the Uploader is the latest version and warns the user if it is not. If true then this notification is not presented.

HookUpDerivedDataEngine
True by default, setting to false prevents the system generating derived data. Do not change this setting.

HookUpValidationEngine
True by default, setting to false prevents the system from validating any data. Do not change this setting.

InternetConnectionTestSite
Defaults to www.google.com, if you can ’ t ping this site from your client machine then change this to a reliable site which you can. It is only used for diagnostic purposes, and is not important for normal Uploader use.

LastCheckedBuildNumber
Used internally do not change.

LastCheckedMajorVersion
Used internally do not change.

LastCheckedMinorVersion
Used internally do not change.

LastCustomerUploadDirectory
Used internally do not change.

LastLiquidCallCenterID
Used internally do not change.

LastLiquidUserName
Used internally do not change.

LastUserdefinedDataUploadDirectory
Used internally do not change.

NumberPreviewLinesWhenImportingData
When a file is first opened in the Uploader it shows a wizard. This wizard has a preview of the first n lines of the data. This setting adjusts how many lines are previewed.

OriginalFileImportRate
Do not change this setting.

PreviousCallCenters
This is a comma separated list of the call centre ids which you have successfully logged on to.

ProxyDomain
This is deprecated. Do not use.

ProxyPassword
This is deprecated. Do not use.

ProxyServer
This is deprecated. Do not use.

ProxyUseDefaultsFromIE
When set to true

ProxyUserName
This is deprecated. Do not use.

TelephonyProviderUrlOverride
Deprecated – do not use this setting.

UpdateUIAfterXRows
Do not change this setting.

UploadFileDetailHasRejectedRecordsColour
The colour of the ID column background in the Upload Progress window

UploadFileDetailNumberMonthsBack
This is the same setting as described in section "12.1.1 Number of Months Back"

UploadFileDetailStatusBulkInserting
Used internally. Do not change.

UploadFileDetailStatusCanResume
The background colour of row in the Upload Progress window when the file has been partially uploaded and can be resumed.

UploadFileDetailStatusCompleteColour
The background colour of row in the Upload Progress window when the upload is complete.

UploadFileDetailStatusServerSideFailure
The background colour of row in the Upload Progress window when there has been a problem processing the upload file on the server.

UploadFileProgressPollPeriod_ms
The rate at which the Uploader Polls the server for status changes to the Upload Progress.

UploadFileTransferChunkSizeKB
The default size of the chunks the uploader sends to the data to the server in. A lower number means a more reliable upload (for slower connections) but there is a fixed overhead per chunk so the higher this number the more efficient and hence quicker the transfer of data from the Uploader to the Server will be.

UploadFileTransitRetries
The number of times the uploader will retry to send a chunk of data during the file transfer.

UploadFileTransitTargetWebMethodDurationMs
Currently not used.

UploadFileTransitTrackToTargetWebMethodDuration
Currently not used.

UseHttps
If true (default) then all communication between the application and the server is encrypted. Do not change this setting.

ValidationErrorCellColour
The colour of the cell in the Uploader when the data in the cell field fails the validation rules for that column.

ValidationWarningCellColour
No used.

ZipFilesBeforeSending
If true (the default) then the client compresses the upload files before transmission to the server.