Contact Expert v7.0 for Skype for Business Server
Administrative Tasks
Regular Administrative Tasks
Contact Expert requires regular operational maintenance and health check in order for the system to perform in an optimal manner on a continuous basis. This is an important task to perform due to the complex nature of the system and its environmental prerequisites. These chapters describe the key requirements an operational maintenance team need to build into their regular administrative processes.
Backup
The backup policy is controlled by the business continuity strategy of the customer organization. There are 3 items described in detail below that will need to fit into the overall strategy of the organization:
- Backup of the application
- Backup of the database
- Backup of the recorded calls
Application Backup
Application denotes to the server side components of Contact Expert as of our current purposes. From a business continuity perspective a backup of the agent side components is not necessary, as there are no SPOF (single point of failure) or business critical components stored on the agent side. Furthermore, the outage of individual CE agent components will not threaten business continuity.
The application (so: server side components) is located on the CE Core Host server. The directory path is C:\Geomant unless you specified a different path during the installation. All files and sub-directories in this directory should be backed up.
Geomant does not provide recommendations for application backup frequency, this depends entirely on the customers' organizational business continuity strategies.
Database Backup
Contact Expert stores the complete data of configuration and statistics – including Business related data (CRDS, Contact Related Data Set) – in two Microsoft SQL Server database files. It is recommended to create a back-up of these files to a safe storage daily in order to prevent data loss in case of hardware failure. These files are physically located on the CE Database Host server.
Files recommended for daily backup:
| File name | Description |
|---|---|
| acesystem.mdf | Database file containing Contact Expert configuration and CRDS database and functionality stored procedures. |
| acesystem.ldf | Transaction log file for the ACESystem database. |
| acereport.mdf | Database file containing Contact Expert reporting tables and stored procedures. |
| acereport.ldf | Transaction log file for the ACEReport database. |
Backup of the recorded calls
Recorded calls are stored in various locations, dependent on customer settings, with each location corresponding to a recording rule. Please refer to the Recordingchapters to determine the full set of storage locations.
Health Check
The objective of a health check is to verify the major application components as to whether they are functioning according to the intended business rules. Before starting the health check of Contact Expert, please make sure that the underlying architecture (operating system, telephony architecture, Microsoft SfB, etc.) are in working order.
Additional health check routines
In addition to the generic, high level checks defined in this page Geomant is continuously expanding its library of "HowTo" articles drilling deep into particular operational maintenance scenarios and best practices.
The How to perform the Contact Expert for Skype for Business preventive maintenance routine are separated to give you the most important checkpoints – make sure you also import these guidelines into your periodic health check system.
- Determine whether the CE Core Host servers are accessible and functioning properly.
- Determine whether the CE Database Host is accessible and functioning properly.
If the CE Recorder Host is not collocated with the CE Core Host, then make sure it is accessible and functions properly.
In case you do not have adequate permissions to check the servers yourself, any of the above steps might require assistance from your administration teams responsible for the day-to-day, effective operation of Contact Expert.
Check the CE services, follow the How to verify the operation of Contact Expert services guideline.
- Check the campaign / queue statuses by logging in to the Administration interface. Make sure all needed campaigns / queues are in Running state.
- Use the main menu on the left to go through each necessary media channel you employ: voice, email and chat campaigns.
- The real-time agent reports determine whether the intended number of agents are logged in to the various campaigns.
Preventive Maintenance
Database Maintenance
In order to keep the Contact Expert database healthy it is recommended to set up and maintain regular database maintenance jobs – Geomant provides How to deploy the default Contact Expert database scheduled maintenance jobs you can custom tail for your own needs and business rules.
Geomant is not liable for damages originated out of using the default maintenance jobs "as is"! These are provided as a guideline only.
Customers are expected to review and approve their conformity to their own corporate database maintenance policies before putting them into production use.
Troubleshooting
The primary goal of troubleshooting is to determine the root cause of any unexpected, erroneous behavior of the system revealed either through the health check procedures or reported by any user, and to enable the continuation of production activities as soon as possible.
Incident Investigation Process
The following HowTo article describes the best methodology to investigate Contact Expert incidents: How to Initiate a Contact Expert (for SfB) Incident Investigation.
Please note that this article focuses on Contact Expert instances with Microsoft SfB telephony background, however the high level sequence of steps are exactly the same for all editions of the software.
Additionally, Geomant maintains an ever growing library of troubleshooting articles aimed at fixing typical incidents with detailed step by step guides. Make sure you or your corporate technical administration team uses this collection of know-how, it could drastically reduce down-times of certain incidents.