Contact Expert for Skype for Business Deployment Guide
Contact Expert v6.1 for Skype for Business Server
A detailed walkthrough of the installation of Contact Expert for Skype for Business 2015.
Purpose
This document describes how to deploy Contact Expert (CE) contact centre solution for Microsoft Skype for Business telephony platform. It walks you through the minimum set of configuration required to launch a working system and helps testing the inbound voice media.
We assume that the environment is already equipped with a Microsoft Skype for Business Server environment deployed withfully functioningaudio/video, IM, presence and conferencing services. The Microsoft Skype for Business implementation tasks are described in the official Microsoft documentation and web articles in full detail.
Audience
This document provides a detailed guide for IT Administration personnel responsible for deploying and configuring Contact Expert.
Please note that this document assumes strong administrative skills for both Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft Skype for Business Server environment.
Navigating the Documentation
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Typical Hardware Infrastructure Implementation Scenarios
The following sections describe the high level hardware requirements in terms of the number of CE server hosts versus the number of human agents (operators) and the expected load on the CE server hosts. Detailed hardware specifications are presented in subsequent chapters of this documentation.
Lightweight Implementation Scenario
Depending on the number of human agents and the hardware specifications of the servers, a lightweight scenario is capable of serving all human agents in a contact centre.This is the simpler way to deploy CE in a Microsoft Skype for Business environment.The following hardware components are required to deploy CE through the lightweight scenario:
| Host | Purpose |
|---|---|
| CE Database Host | Microsoft SQL Server and CE databases |
| CE Core Host | CE server roles: core, recording, admin and reporting, webchat |
| CE Administrator PC | CE designer tools |
| CE Agent (Operator) PC | CE agent application and Microsoft Skype for Business client |
The below table contains a couple of example cases when the lightweight scenario can be applied, and another ones when this is not recommended:
| Lightweight scenario can be applied | Lightweight scenario is not recommended |
|---|---|
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CE Database Host must not be co-located with CE Core Host!
Scaled Implementation Scenarios
Having more agents requires deploying CE core and recording roles on separate servers. As a rule of thumb, an additional dedicated CE recording server is required for every additional 80 human agents.
Having many more agents and/or extreme call loads or call flow complexities might require setting up multiple instances of core and recording servers in a load-balanced manner.As a rule of thumb, an additional CE core server instance is required for every additional 150 human agents due to the limited conferencing capabilities of Microsoft Skype for Business Server.
Installing CE in such a distributed way and setting up redundant services (e.g. High Availability feature of CE or disaster recovery sites) are out of scope of the current document. Please turn to the Contact Expert for Skype for Business Administrator's Guide for further details on these topics.
CE Database Host must not be co-located with either CE Core Host or CE Recording Host!
Typical Installation Scenarios
The following sections describe the typical cases of CE installation.