---
title: How to Create a Call Campaign
description: Learn how to create and manage outbound call campaigns in Maqsam, including IVR setup, dialing strategies, auto-scale concurrency, retry settings, scheduling, and audience imports.
---
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# How to Create a Call Campaign
## This guide walks you through creating an outbound call campaign in Maqsam, naming it, choosing how aggressively it dials, scheduling the hours it may call in, importing an audience, and running it.
### **๐ Overview**
A **campaign** places automated outbound calls to a list of contacts, routes every answer to an **IVR** that connects them to your agents, and retries contacts who don't pick up. It is the right tool whenever you need to reach many people with the same call: a sales push, a renewal reminder, a survey, a collections run, without agents dialing by hand.
Creating one takes a three-step wizard: **1/3 Campaign Details**, **2/3 Dialing Strategy,** and **3/3 Scheduling**, followed by a review screen where you can jump back into any step before committing.
A campaign is created empty and **Paused**: it holds no contacts and places no calls until you import an audience and start it. Plan on returning to the campaign's own page to finish the job.
---
### **โ
Before You Start**
- An **IVR** (call flow) that already exists, the campaign hands every answered call to it, so build the IVR before the campaign.
- To use **Auto-Scale Concurrency**, that IVR must forward to a **Group**. An IVR with no group behind it cannot auto-scale.
- An outbound-calling configuration in your account settings, if you want Maqsam to choose the caller ID rather than fixing one number.
- A list of contacts to import as the campaign's audience once it has been created.
---
### **โ๏ธ Step-by-Step**
#### **Step 1: Open the Campaigns page**
In the top navigation bar, click the **โฆ** overflow menu on the right and choose **Campaigns**.
*Campaigns live under the โฆ overflow menu in the top navigation.*
#### **Step 2: Start a new campaign**
The **Campaigns** page lists every campaign in the account with its **Identifier**, **Name**, **IVR**, **Status**, **Auto Start At**, **Audience Count,** and **Response Rate**.ย
Click **+ Create Campaign** at the top right. The **Create Call Campaign** dialog opens on step **1/3 | CAMPAIGN DETAILS**.
- **Filter**, beside it, narrows a long list.
*The Campaigns list, with + Create Campaign at the top right.*
#### **Step 3: Name the campaign and pick the number it calls from**
Enter a **Campaign name**. This is how the campaign appears in the list, so make it recognizable (*e.g., Q3 Sales Outreach*).
Then decide which number the outbound calls come from:
- Pick a number under **Campaign Phone Number**, and every call this campaign places dials out from that one number.
- Or tick **Enable auto-selection for numbers**, and Maqsam picks the number per call, following the outbound-call rules already configured in your account settings.
**๐ Note:** Ticking **Enable auto-selection for numbers** greys out the **Campaign Phone Number** list. The two are mutually exclusive; choose one or the other.
*Step 1/3 collects the campaign name, its outbound number, and its IVR.*
#### **Step 4: Assign the IVR that handles answered calls**
Open **Assign IVR** and choose the call flow this campaign should use. The moment a contact answers, the campaign hands the call to this IVR, which routes it on to your agents.
- The field is searchable; start typing to filter a long list of flows.
- IVRs that forward to a group show the group's name beside them (*omar\_test\_80, Omar Test*). That badge is how you spot the flows that support Auto-Scale.
**Example:** *Choosing an IVR that forwards to the group Omar Test lets the next step scale call volume to however many agents in that group are online.*
**๐ Note:** The in-product **TIP** on this screen says it plainly: to unlock **Auto-Scale Concurrency** in the next step, select an IVR that is set to forward to a **Group**. Pick an IVR without a group, and you will have to cap concurrency by hand instead.
*Assign IVR is searchable; flows that forward to a group carry the group's name.*
#### **Step 5: Choose whether to hang up on answering machines**
**Detecting answering machine responses** is on by default. Left on, the system drops the call as soon as it recognizes voicemail or a robotic greeting instead of playing your IVR to a machine.
Click **Next** to move on to the dialing strategy.
**Example:** *A call answered by a machine still consumes minutes, so leaving detection on keeps your spend on calls a person actually took.*
*Step 1/3 completed: auto-selection enabled, IVR assigned, answering-machine detection on.*
#### **Step 6: Set the dialing strategy with Auto-Scale Concurrency**
Step **2/3 | DIALING STRATEGY** opens with **Auto-Scale Concurrency (Recommended)** enabled, which ties the number of simultaneous calls to how many agents are actually available.
- **Potential group**: the group whose online agents the calculation runs against. This is the group attached to the IVR you chose, so it is usually the only option offered.
- **Call Volume per Agent**: how many concurrent calls to place for each available agent.
**Example:** *At a Call Volume per Agent of 1.0, ten online agents means ten concurrent calls. Set it to 0.5, and those same ten agents get five, useful when calls run long and you want a gentler pace.*
**
*With Auto-Scale on, call volume follows the online headcount of the chosen group.*
#### **Step 7: Set how often the campaign retries**
**Retry Attempts**: how many times to call a contact that didn't connect. A contact counts as unserviced whether nobody picked up or the call broke before it reached an agent.
**Retry Interval (hh:mm)**: how long to wait between attempts. The picker offers hours and minutes only.
Click **Next** to move on to scheduling.
**Example:** *Retry Attempts of 3 with a Retry Interval of 00:15 calls an unreachable contact up to three times, a quarter of an hour apart.*
**
*Retry Interval is set in hours and minutes.*
#### **Step 8: Or cap the concurrency yourself instead**
Turn **Auto-Scale Concurrency** off, and the group fields are replaced with a single **Maximum** **Concurrent Calls value:** *the maximum simultaneous outbound calls the system can place.*
That figure is fixed. The campaign places that many concurrent calls regardless of how many agents happen to be online.
**๐ Note:** A fixed cap ignores agent availability completely. Set it to 3, and the system keeps three calls running even when only one agent is free, which is how answered calls end up waiting for somebody to take them. Size it against the capacity your team actually has.
*With Auto-Scale off, you set a fixed Maximum Concurrent Calls instead.*
#### **Step 9: Choose when the campaign starts**
On step **3/3 | SCHEDULING**, set the **Start Date**. The campaign goes active at the very beginning of that day , 00:00 in the campaign's own time zone , and dials from then on, but only inside the operating hours you set below.
**Campaign ends automatically when all calls are completed** is ticked by default. If left ticked, the campaign closes once every contact has been reached, and every retry has been used.
*A start date of 2026-10-28 makes the campaign active from midnight that day.*
#### **Step 10: Set an explicit end date (optional)**
Untick **Campaign ends automatically when all calls are completed,** and the field becomes a **Start Date / End Date** range, letting you name a day the campaign must stop on.
As with the start, the end lands at 00:00 on the date you pick.
**Example:** *An end date of 10 November stops the campaign at 00:00 on 10 November, whether or not every contact has been called.*
**
*Unticking the automatic end turns the field into a start/end range.*
#### **Step 11: Set the time zone and the daily operating hours**
Choose the **Campaign Time Zone**. Every scheduled date and all operating hours are read in this zone.
Under **Daily Operating Hours**, tick the days the campaign may call on and set each day's window. Unticked days are skipped entirely.
- The copy icon at the end of a row (**Copy to all**) applies that day's hours to every other day.
- Because a campaign goes active at midnight, these hours are the thing that actually keeps calls inside working time.
*Daily Operating Hours decides which days the campaign calls on, and between which times.*
#### **Step 12: Split a day into shifts**
Click the **+** on a day to add a second window to it. Two windows with a gap between them is how you express a mid-day break.
Set the first to *10:00 โ 13:00* and the second to *14:00 โ 17:00*, and the campaign stops calling for the hour in between.
*Two windows on the same day leave a break between 13:00 and 14:00.*
#### **Step 13: Resolve overlapping shifts**
If two windows on the same day cover any of the same time, both are outlined in red and flagged: **This shift overlaps with another shift**.
Edit one of the windows so they no longer intersect, and the warning clears.
**๐ Note:** A freshly added window arrives with default hours that usually overlap the window above it, so this warning tends to appear the instant you click **+**. Adjust the times rather than assuming something has gone wrong.
*Overlapping windows on the same day are rejected until you separate them.*
#### **Step 14: Review the campaign before creating it**
**Next**, the scheduling step opens a summary. *Review all details before creating the campaign.* , laying out all three sections together.
Check the IVR, the number behavior, the dates and the operating hours, and the shifts included.
- Each section header carries an **EDIT** link that drops you straight back into that step.
*The review screen, with an EDIT link on every section.*
#### **Step 15: Create the campaign**
Scroll to the bottom of the review and click **Create Campaign**.
Maqsam confirms with *Campaign created successfully* and opens the new campaign's own page.
*Create Campaign sits at the foot of the review, after the scheduling summary.*
#### **Step 16: Import your audience**
The campaign's page opens with **Audience Count**, **Serviced Calls**, **Unserviced Calls,** and **Response Rate** all at zero, and an empty **Audience** table.
Click **Import Audience** to upload the contacts this campaign should call. **Edit Campaign** reopens the wizard if something needs changing.
- Once contacts are loaded, the table lists each one with its **Status**, **Number of Tries,** and **Result**, and **Export** pulls the list back out.
**๐ Note:** A campaign with no audience has nothing to dial. Importing contacts is a separate step after creation; the wizard never asks for them.
*A new campaign starts empty: import the audience from its own page.*
#### **Step 17: Run and manage the campaign**
Back on the **Campaigns** list, the new campaign sits at the top, **Paused**, showing its **Auto Start At** date and an **Audience Count** of 0.
Open the row's **โฎ** menu to **Run** it now, **Edit** its settings, or **Duplicate** it as the starting point for a similar campaign.
- **Run** is also available as a button on the campaign's own page.
*Each row's โฎ menu offers Run, Edit and Duplicate.*
---
### **๐ Notes**
- A campaign is created **Paused**. It will not dial until it has an audience and has been started, either by you with **Run**, or by reaching its **Auto Start At** date.
- **Auto Start At** in the campaigns list is rendered in your own local time, not in the campaign's time zone. In this example, a start date of *2026-10-28* on a campaign set to *+00:00 UTC* shows as *Oct 28, 2026 ยท 03:00 AM*.
- **Auto-Scale Concurrency** is only offered when the IVR you chose forwards to a group. Otherwise, step 2/3 shows **Maximum Concurrent Calls** in its place, and the group fields never appear.
---
### **๐ก Tips**
- Build the IVR first and point it at a **Group**. It is the one decision that determines whether the campaign can scale with agent availability at all.
- Get one day's operating hours right, hit **Copy to all**, then adjust only the days that differ.
- Set **Call Volume per Agent** below 1.0 to dial more conservatively than your headcount, worthwhile when calls run long.
- **Duplicati**ng an existing campaign saves rebuilding a near-identical one from scratch.
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