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Getting started

Set up your account, buy a number and make your first calls.
By Swades Admin
• 3 articles

What PowerDialer does

PowerDialer is an outbound calling system for sales teams. You load a list of contacts, start a dialing session, and the system places the calls for you — up to five at once — and connects you only to the ones a human answers. You record what happened, and the outcome flows back into your lists, your CRM and your reports. The parts you will use | Where | What it is for | | --- | --- | | Dialer | Pick a list, set your dialing options, run a session. This is where you spend your day. | | Contact list | Every list you have uploaded or imported, and the contacts inside them. | | Logs | Every call, with recordings, notes, dispositions and filters. | | Voicemail | The pre-recorded messages the dialer can drop on an answering machine. | | Analytics | Connect rates, dispositions, heatmaps, list performance and coaching. | | Scheduled calls | Callbacks you or the system booked for later. | | Phone health | How carriers are treating each of your numbers. | | Compliance centre (Registrations) | Business profile, SHAKEN/STIR, CNAM and Voice Integrity. | | Custom dispositions | Your own outcome names, mapped onto the built-in ones. | | Sales floor | Live view of everyone on a call right now, for managers. | | Subscription | Plan, seats, team members, credits and payment methods. | How a session actually works 1. You choose a contact list and the numbers you dial from. 2. You press start. The dialer places up to your parallel dial count of calls at the same time. 3. Answering machines are detected. Depending on your settings, the system either drops a voicemail, hangs up, or skips the contact entirely. 4. The moment a human answers, you are connected and — if you asked for it — the other simultaneous calls are hung up. 5. You talk, take notes, and disposition the call. 6. Automation rules act on that disposition: move the contact to another list, remove them, or add them to your Do Not Call list. Everything after step 1 is configurable. Dialer settings, every option explained is the reference for the whole list. What you need before you can call - A phone number to dial from. Your first one is free. See Buy and manage phone numbers. - A contact list. See Upload contacts from a CSV or Connect your CRM. - A headset and a stable connection. See What you need to run a good session. If you are brand new, follow Your first dialing session in order and you will be on calls in about fifteen minutes.

Last updated on Sep 29, 2026

Your first dialing session

This takes about fifteen minutes. Do the steps in order — each one unlocks the next. 1. Sign in Go to app.powerdialer.ai and sign in. If your company already has an account, ask your admin to add you to a seat first; without a seat the dialer will not open. See Plans, seats and team members. 2. Get a phone number Open Dialer and use Buy a new one next to the source number selector, or go to the purchase dialog from the dialer settings. - Search by area code or zip code and pick a local number. - Your first phone number is free on eligible accounts. - Numbers outside the US, UK, Germany, France and Australia, and some national numbers inside them, need a regulatory bundle first — the dialog walks you through it. One number is enough to start. It is not enough to dial hard all day; see Keep your numbers connectable before you scale up. 3. Load contacts The fastest route is a CSV. 1. Go to Contact list → Create new list, or use Import Contacts on the dialer. 2. Upload your file. Only two columns are required: First Name and Phone Number. 3. Check the column mapping. PowerDialer guesses from your headers; fix anything it got wrong. Full detail, including every column you can map and how to handle a contact with three phone numbers, is in Upload contacts from a CSV. If your contacts live in a CRM, connect it instead — Connect your CRM covers Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, GoHighLevel, Close, Follow Up Boss, Zoho, Bitrix24, Odoo, Outreach and Apollo. 4. Set up the session On Dialer, open the settings panel (Power dialing configs) and set four things. Leave everything else alone for now. | Setting | Start with | | --- | --- | | Source phone number | The number you just bought. | | Parallel dials per call | 1. Turn this up once you are comfortable. | | Call timeout | 30 seconds. | | Voicemail | Leave off for your first session, or pick a recording if you already made one. | A warning appears if voicemail is off and Skip machine calls is off. That combination makes the system play 45 seconds of silence into every answering machine it reaches, because carriers require the call to be answered by something. It is legal but it wastes your time and annoys people — record a voicemail or tick Skip machine calls. 5. Dial Select your list, select the contacts (or all of them), and start the session. - The contact card shows who you are talking to and their history. - Use the notes field while you talk. - When the call ends, pick a disposition. This is the single most important thing you do — every report, every automation rule and every CRM write-back reads it. See What each disposition means. 6. Check the result Go to Logs. Every call is there with its recording, duration, disposition and notes. Filter by date, direction, disposition, list or whether a recording exists, and export what you need. What to do next - Choose which number you call from — this is what separates a 20% connect rate from a 60% one. - Create a voicemail drop so unanswered calls still do work. - Automation rules so you stop moving contacts between lists by hand.

Last updated on Sep 29, 2026

What you need to run a good session

PowerDialer places calls from your browser. That makes setup easy and makes your local environment part of the call path. Browser Use a current Chrome or another Chromium browser (Edge, Brave, Arc). The Chrome extension, which lets you dial from any web page, is Chrome-only. Do not run two dialing sessions in two tabs. The dialer holds one audio device and one session; a second tab fights it for both. Microphone permission The browser will ask for microphone access the first time you dial. If you refuse it, calls connect but the other side hears nothing. Re-enable it from the padlock icon in the address bar, then reload the page. Headset Use a wired USB headset. Laptop speakers plus a laptop microphone cause echo that the other side hears, and echo makes people hang up. Bluetooth adds latency and drops under load. Network The dialer watches your connection and shows a Slow Internet warning when it degrades: "Your internet is slow, which may cause jitter, lagging in calls, slow loading time, etc." If you see it: - Move to wired Ethernet, or closer to the access point. - Stop other uploads — backups, video calls, large syncs. - Avoid VPNs during a session. They add a hop to every audio packet. Parallel dialing multiplies this. Five simultaneous calls is five audio streams; a connection that is fine at one dial can fall apart at five. Seat and permission Dialing is gated on your organisation's plan and on your seat. If the dialer is greyed out or you see a no-seat message, an admin needs to assign you one from Subscription → Seats. See Plans, seats and team members.

Last updated on Sep 29, 2026