At the SIPfoundry CoLab 2013 users conference members of the team introduce the new Web and mobile contact center based on the open source project openACD. A new software based contact center (ACD) solution that runs in the cloud.
1. Web Contact Center
moderator: martin steinmann
participants: jan-vincent liwanag, kristine mina, danna aduna
March 11, 2013 / Bentley University / Boston MA
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3. WHY a New Contact Center Solution ?
It is time for a new solution that fits into an IT environment 3
1. Contact centers, like UC, move to IT and the Web
> Many of our customers asked for a basic but integrated call queuing capability
> Contact centers need to be connected to the browser for both callers and agents (WebRTC)
> A software application, fast and scalable yet simple to setup and use
2. Current solutions are too expensive
> Hardware centric proprietary solutions are too expensive
> Web standards replace proprietary CTI interfaces
> Multi-media w/ click-to-call and click-to-chat
3. Private cloud based product
> A product and not just a service
> Globally networked and scalable
4. Where are we with openACD?
Significant progress was made
>Introduced at CoLab 2012 as a concept
>Our initial goal is unchanged
> Call and voicemail queuing with email and chat to follow
> Up to 500 calls in queue per server, up to 200 agents per server
> Complete set of core ACD features
> Modern Web gadget based agent / supervisor portal
> Initial set of real-time and sliding window statistics
>Project status
> Beta release coming up in Q2
> First GA release scheduled for Q3
> Talk to us about participating in the beta phase
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5. Key Features of the Core openACD System
Complete set of core features
>Highly flexible queuing
> Skills based call distribution
> Configurable recipes for queue management
> Multiple clients can be served (multi-tenant)
> Designed for multiple media and multiple channels
> Individual agent skills, away or break codes, wrap-up time, call disposition
> Agent DTMF controls for operation without agent dashboard
> Implemented using Erlang, optimized for concurrency and distributed operation, MongoDB
>Standards based
> Standard SIP for calls
> Software only solution that can be clustered
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6. Agent and Supervisor Workstation
A Fully Integrated Gadget Based UI
>sipXecs integration
> Configuration via the sipXecs Web UI
> Unified account credentials
>Custom Agent and Supervisor UI
> Movable gadgets for agent and supervisor customization
> Tab separation for agent and supervisor gadgets
> Normal and widescreen layouts
> Supervisor management of active agents and calls in queue
>Other Features
> Real-time and sliding window statistics
> Configurable Client popups
> Mashup with other gadgets
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15. Powerful Distributed Architecture
Integrated with sipXecs
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External
Systems
sipXecs Stack
Proxy Server
Media Server
(FreeSwitch)
Configuration Server MongoDB
(agents, queues, skills,
clients, etc.)
OpenACD
Statistics and Reporting
Agent Dashboard
16. Web UI and APIs for Agent / Supervisor Dashboards
>Web UI is built on HTML/CSS/JS
>API built on JSON-RPC 2.0 and Events via WebSockets
>Gadget and Tab based UI for customizability and extensibility
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Browser JSON-RPC 2.0 API
Websocket
18. Next Steps - Roadmap
2013 and beyond
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>Start Beta phase for the first release
>We will add incremental capabilities through the rest of the year
>Extending openACD to become able to fully replace existing formal contact
center solutions
> Historic reporting package
> IM integration for agent / supervisor communication
> Redundancy and scale: Clustered operation
> IVR frontend
> Cloud hosted or private cloud deployment options
> Distributed agent population (global queues)
Queue overflow management – recipes can be created based on time in queue and agents available, possible actions include transferring to voicemail or transferring to an external SIP line
Multiple media – currently, only voice and voicemail are supported, however, the backend system allow for more channels including email and chat which could be served concurrently with the voice channel
A WebRTC based endpoint once developed with sipXecs can be integrated with OpenACD. An WebRTC based softphone in the dashboard is a possibility
--- Actual Demo ---
Start with Agent Experience
Going Available
Going Released
Going Available via Dialplan
Admin
Creating an Agent
View of Lines
View of Queues
Supervisor Management
Queue Manager
Agent Manager
Forcing an agent go available
Statistics
Explain statistics for Agent Manager
Explain statistics for Queue Manager
Queue Recipes
Ticks – 5 seconds -- add a skill
Ticks – 30 seconds -- transfer to external sip line
New image
The dashboard can be viewed from any standards based web browser such as Chrome, Firefox and Safari
It makes use of a JSON-RPC 2.0 API over websockets.
Websockets allows for a timely notification of server side events such as agent state changes and statistics updates.
A future WebRTC based phone also allows engagement of the OpenACD system fully within the browser without need of external/physical phones.
Gadgets built using standards sucha as OpenSocial and W3C widgets may later on be fully supported in the dashboard for a fully customizable experience
1 min
log out as supervisor (801) and try to log in as the agent that processed the call (820)
terminate previous session
3 mins
run through:
- toggle my profile (editable contact info)
- going available
- profile and skills assigned, availability timer, stats
- selecting a release reason
- my statistics
1 min
* place a call to 382 from 702 again
show wait time
answer the call
* customer history page / avatar to follow
note skill match
2 mins
run through:
- call timer, call end button
upon wrap up (not in picture)
- wrap up countdown timer
- call disposition