Outbound campaigns

Upload a contact list and let an agent work through it — with calling windows, retries, and live progress.

Campaigns dial a list of contacts on your behalf: pick an agent, upload a CSV, set when calling is allowed, and ThunderPhone works through the list — retrying no-answers and voicemails on the schedule you choose. Find them under Engagement → Campaigns (/dashboard/campaigns).

For one-off programmatic calls, use the outbound calls API instead.

Prerequisites#

• A deployed voice agent.
• An outbound-enabled phone number. Customer VoIP numbers continue to support campaigns. ThunderPhone numbers start inbound-only; an organization admin can request outbound calling from the Phone Numbers page. ThunderPhone reviews each request manually, and approved numbers can run campaigns. See Connect a VoIP provider.
• Contacts as a CSV file (or pasted JSON) with a phone or phone_number column. Up to 5,000 rows per upload, UTF-8 encoded. New JSON uploads must be flat: extra values may be strings, numbers, booleans, or null. Rows containing arrays or nested objects are rejected individually with a validation message; valid rows still import. CSV cells are strings. Accepted extra columns are kept as per-contact variables on the campaign's contact records and automatically supplied to each dial. ThunderPhone also classifies the saved agent prompt before each outbound call to decide whether the agent should navigate a phone menu. Headers such as name and account_id match {{name}} and {{account_id}} in the saved agent's prompt. Name mapping can also combine columns into name. See per-call variables for defaults, naming rules, the 32 KB object limit, and values returned in completion webhooks.

Older contact records may contain nested metadata from earlier JSON uploads. That metadata stays on the stored contact. Each dial omits non-scalar values from its variables payload and logs the ignored key names for that attempt, without logging values. Retries use the same filtering.

Create a campaign#

1. Click New campaign

   Name it, pick the voice agent, and choose the from number (one of your outbound-enabled numbers).

2. Upload the contacts CSV

   Rows with an invalid phone number or invalid variables are rejected individually and reported back with their row numbers — the rest import fine.

3. Set the calling window

   Choose a timezone and a daily start/end window; the campaign only dials inside it. The timezone starts on your from number's zone (its area code in the US and Canada, its country elsewhere) or, for numbers that span several zones such as toll-free ones, your browser's. The hint under the field says which. The window defaults to 9am–5pm. A window that starts before 8am or ends after 9pm shows a warning: calls outside those hours may break calling-hours rules such as the TCPA's. An end earlier than the start crosses midnight: 22:00 → 02:00 dials from 10pm until 2am the next day, with a warning. The window runs in the campaign's timezone, not each contact's, so split contacts by timezone when they are spread out. Optionally set a start at to schedule the launch and an end at after which the campaign completes automatically.

4. Tune pacing and retries
   • Concurrent calls — how many calls this campaign runs at once (1–10, default 3). Campaigns start no new call while your organization has 10 outbound calls in progress, so parallel campaigns share that budget. Every call also counts toward your organization's concurrent-call limit (20 by default, across inbound, outbound, web and test calls). When that limit is reached, or the same number was called in the last 10 seconds, the contact simply waits for a later pass; its attempts are not used up.
   • Maximum attempts — how many times each contact may be dialed (1–10, default 2).
   • Retry backoff (minutes) — the wait before a retry (at least 30, default 60).
   • Retry on — which outcomes trigger a retry: no answer, voicemail, failed (all on by default).

   Need more attempts or shorter spacing? Contact support: staff can raise both limits for your organization.

5. Create draft, then start

   Campaigns are created as drafts — contacts can only be added while a campaign is a draft. Starting a campaign requires an explicit consent to the call charges. With a future start at it becomes scheduled; otherwise it starts running immediately.

How outcomes and retries work#

After each call, the contact gets an outcome — successful calls are marked completed; a call graded as no-answer, detected as voicemail, or failed is retried if that outcome is in your retry on list and the contact has attempts left. Contacts that run out of attempts are marked exhausted; non-retryable failures are marked failed.

Monitor and control#

Each campaign card shows its status and progress (e.g. "173 of 248 finished"). Open a campaign for the status breakdown, per-contact results, and recent calls — each links to the full transcript and recording in call history.

• Pause / resume — pausing stops new dials; calls already in progress finish naturally. Paused campaigns can be edited and resumed.
• Cancel — permanently stops the campaign.
• A campaign completes on its own when every contact reaches a final state or the end at time passes.

Campaign statuses: draft, scheduled, running, paused, completed, cancelled. Contact statuses: pending, scheduled, calling, completed, failed, exhausted.

Next steps#