Creating a Campaign

Go to Dashboard > Campaigns and click New Campaign to get started.

Campaign Setup

Name & Type

Give your campaign a name and choose the type:

Name — A descriptive name (e.g., “January Follow-ups”, “Spring Promotion”)
Description — Optional notes about the campaign’s purpose
Type — Choose Inbound Call or Outbound Call

Assignment

Choose which business, agent, and phone number(s) to use:

Business — Select which business this campaign is for
Agent — Pick the AI agent that will handle calls
Phone Number(s) — Assign one or more phone numbers to the campaign

A phone number can only be assigned to one campaign at a time.

Tools Configuration

Choose which tools your AI agent can use during campaign calls:

Schedule appointments
Send SMS messages
Look up customer information
Create CRM contacts
And more

You can enable or disable individual tools depending on the campaign’s purpose. For example, a survey campaign might not need appointment scheduling.

Schedule & Settings (Outbound Only)

For outbound campaigns, configure when and how calls are made:

Schedule:

Start date and End date — When the campaign runs
Timezone — The timezone for scheduling (default: America/New_York)
Active days — Which days of the week to make calls (e.g., Monday through Friday)
Start time and End time — Calling hours (e.g., 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM)

Call limits:

Max calls per day — Maximum number of calls to make each day (1–10,000, default: 100)
Max concurrent calls — How many calls can run at the same time (1–100, default: 5)

Retry settings:

Retry attempts — How many times to retry if a contact doesn’t answer (0–10, default: 2)
Retry delay — How long to wait between retries in minutes (1–1,440, default: 60)

Custom prompt — Optional instructions to customize how your agent handles calls in this campaign. This overrides the agent’s default behavior for these calls.

Add Contacts

Add the people your campaign will call. See Campaign Contacts for details on adding contacts manually or importing from CSV.

After Creation

Your campaign starts in Draft status. When you’re ready:

Review your settings and contacts
Click Start Campaign
Your AI agent begins making calls according to the schedule

Make sure your contacts list and schedule are correct before starting. While you can pause a running campaign, contacts already called cannot be un-called.

Voicemail Detection (AMD)

For outbound campaigns, Akol automatically detects whether a human or a voicemail picks up. This is called AMD — Answering Machine Detection.

How It Works

When your agent calls a contact, AMD listens to the first few seconds and determines what answered:

Detection	What Happens
Human answers	Your AI agent starts the conversation normally
Voicemail / machine	Leaves a message or hangs up, depending on your settings
Fax machine	Hangs up automatically
Not sure	Treats it as a human and continues the call

Voicemail Settings

Configure voicemail behavior in your Agent Settings under voice settings:

Setting	Description	Default
Leave Voicemail	Whether to leave a message when a machine answers	On
Voicemail Message	Custom text your agent will speak as a voicemail	Auto-generated with your business name and number
Voicemail Audio URL	A pre-recorded audio file to play instead of TTS	None

Voicemail Message Options

You have two choices for the voicemail your agent leaves:

Custom text message — Write what you want your agent to say. It will be spoken using the same voice as your agent.
Pre-recorded audio — Upload or link to an audio file (MP3, WAV) for a fully custom voicemail.

If you don’t set either, Akol generates a default message using your business name and phone number.

AMD works automatically on all outbound campaign calls. You don’t need to enable it — just configure what happens when a voicemail is detected.