Solved: Suggestions needed - moving from Nortel to Cisco with no ACD

hectorr2009 · ‎04-05-2010

Customer is moving from Nortel which included contact center software.

In Nortel, customer had many business units who are "agents" on Nortel contact center. In new solution, we do not have contact center to work with (ONLY UCM 7.1 and Unity Connection 7.1). No additional equipment (i.e. uccx) is possible in short term.

We need to achieve as close to possible what they are doing today. Example below. Please provide any detailed suggestions on how to emulate this as close as possible this functionality with ONLY UCM 7.1 and Unity Connection 7.1

Nortel example:

Call comes in to 4450 > hits Nortel Script.

Script looks to see if any agents are logged in. If no agents logged in send call to 4451 (on-call personal).

If agent logged in, play welcome message and send to agent(or queue if no agents available). Play music on hold while caller in queue.

After 30 seconds if caller still in queue play a message (please continue to hold)

If after 60 seconds caller still in queue, route caller to 4451 (on-call personal)

Any suggestions to get as close to possible the same functionality?

thank you

William Bell · ‎04-05-2010

Well, the only way you could mirror the current behavior 1:1 is with UCCX. Since that is not possible you have two options.

Option 1: Standard Hunt Lists

With this option you would put the agents in a "line group" and assign the line group to a "hunt list". The hunt list can contain multiple line groups and you have a lot of control on how calls hunt through a line group and from one line group to another in the same list. You also have the ability to redirect the call to another directory number in the event all line group members are busy or do not answer the call.

You can configure the solution to allow agents to "log on"/"log off" of a line group. This is enabled using a config parameter on the device and adding the "HLog" softkey to the phone softkey profile. Note that this action applies to all line groups a device is associated with. You can't selectively logon/logoff of a particular line group/hunt list.

You could use Unity to front end a call with a greeting message. You wouldn't be able to play this message based on whether an agent is available or not. Meaning, you would need to play the message for all calls. Then you can do a consultative transfer to the Hunt Pilot (associated to one or more line groups) and if you have MoH configured the caller will hear music until the call is answered by one of the line group members. The problem here is that I am not sure how the consultative transfer will behave when the Hunt List is configured to roll over to another DN. Hmmmm. Would have to test that out before commenting further.

Anyway, with this option you give the users the ability to logon/logoff. You can play a greeting, though it isn't 100% aligned with current operation. You can play music, but isn't quite like a "wait in queue" approach. For the 30 second and 60 second treatment you would have to fake this a little. You could create a customized MoH file which plays a certain prompt every 30 seconds in the wav file. For the 60 second transfer, that is where the Hunt List CFNA/CFB would come into play but, again, that would need to be tested.

"Option 2: AC Hunt Lists"

Attendant console is an app on CUCM that has been there for years. It does provide a very basic queue option and has similar (though not as robust) hunting algorithms as standard hunt lists. I wrote a blog on this here:

http://www.netcraftsmen.net/resources/blogs/basic-queuing-in-cucm-callmanager-without-using-uccx.html

You wouldn't be using the AC client anywhere in your solution. You would just rely on the backend service. You could use Unity to front end a greeting. Though, agents can't logon/logoff of AC Hunt Lists as far as I know. You would also have to use the same trickery (i.e. messages embedded in MoH wav file) to accommodate the 30s message. Dealing with the 60s behavior may get tricky and will require testing on whether the queue max limit and/or the cfna/cfb setting on the AC hunt pilot can be leveraged to meet your expectations.

So, there isn't a solution that provides 100% parity (outside of using UCCX) but you can mimic the high level call flow. What you lose is the micro-level call handling procedures they have in place today.

HTH.

Regards,

Bill

Please remember to rate helpful posts.

HTH -Bill (b) http://ucguerrilla.com (t) @ucguerrilla

Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify

View solution in original post

William Bell · ‎04-05-2010

Well, the only way you could mirror the current behavior 1:1 is with UCCX. Since that is not possible you have two options.

Option 1: Standard Hunt Lists

With this option you would put the agents in a "line group" and assign the line group to a "hunt list". The hunt list can contain multiple line groups and you have a lot of control on how calls hunt through a line group and from one line group to another in the same list. You also have the ability to redirect the call to another directory number in the event all line group members are busy or do not answer the call.

You can configure the solution to allow agents to "log on"/"log off" of a line group. This is enabled using a config parameter on the device and adding the "HLog" softkey to the phone softkey profile. Note that this action applies to all line groups a device is associated with. You can't selectively logon/logoff of a particular line group/hunt list.

You could use Unity to front end a call with a greeting message. You wouldn't be able to play this message based on whether an agent is available or not. Meaning, you would need to play the message for all calls. Then you can do a consultative transfer to the Hunt Pilot (associated to one or more line groups) and if you have MoH configured the caller will hear music until the call is answered by one of the line group members. The problem here is that I am not sure how the consultative transfer will behave when the Hunt List is configured to roll over to another DN. Hmmmm. Would have to test that out before commenting further.

Anyway, with this option you give the users the ability to logon/logoff. You can play a greeting, though it isn't 100% aligned with current operation. You can play music, but isn't quite like a "wait in queue" approach. For the 30 second and 60 second treatment you would have to fake this a little. You could create a customized MoH file which plays a certain prompt every 30 seconds in the wav file. For the 60 second transfer, that is where the Hunt List CFNA/CFB would come into play but, again, that would need to be tested.

"Option 2: AC Hunt Lists"

Attendant console is an app on CUCM that has been there for years. It does provide a very basic queue option and has similar (though not as robust) hunting algorithms as standard hunt lists. I wrote a blog on this here:

http://www.netcraftsmen.net/resources/blogs/basic-queuing-in-cucm-callmanager-without-using-uccx.html

You wouldn't be using the AC client anywhere in your solution. You would just rely on the backend service. You could use Unity to front end a greeting. Though, agents can't logon/logoff of AC Hunt Lists as far as I know. You would also have to use the same trickery (i.e. messages embedded in MoH wav file) to accommodate the 30s message. Dealing with the 60s behavior may get tricky and will require testing on whether the queue max limit and/or the cfna/cfb setting on the AC hunt pilot can be leveraged to meet your expectations.

So, there isn't a solution that provides 100% parity (outside of using UCCX) but you can mimic the high level call flow. What you lose is the micro-level call handling procedures they have in place today.

HTH.

Regards,

Bill

Please remember to rate helpful posts.

HTH -Bill (b) http://ucguerrilla.com (t) @ucguerrilla

Please remember to rate helpful responses and identify

hectorr2009 · ‎04-05-2010

thanks for the very thourough and helpfull post.

Really appreciate you taking your time to be so detailed (which is exactly what I needed).

Best Regards,