Contact Expert v7.1 for Skype for Business Server

Configuring Agents

Agents

Human Agents

It is possible to configure the entries for human agents or operators per tenant, so they will specifically belong to a particular unit within the organization.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Human Agents in order to manage the list of human operators. You can create a new agent or edit or remove an existing ones.
Use the _New agent button to create a new agent entry.
Specify the details described in the below sections.
Click Submit to save changes to the database.

Specify the following general properties:


Name	Operator (Agent) name to display in reports.
Gateway	Specify the gateway on which the agent is signed in to the voice platform.
Login Name	The login credentials used by the agent to sign in. In an SfB environment this should be either a valid AD principal user name (for Windows domain credentials) or an SfB ID (for local Windows credentials).
Password	Not used, enter a dummy value.
UC identity	The user name used by system in the background to sign in the agent. For SfB this should be set to SfB user ID.
UC password	Not used, enter a dummy value.
Huntgroup	Select which hunt group the agent should login to. For SfB this property is irrelevant.
Recording rule	Specify which rule to apply for call recording purposes.

Importing an Agent Entry

An alternative is to use the Skype Import button to open the search window and enter a valid username or SIP URI. Choose one of the retrieved contacts so the Name, Login Name and UC Identity fields will be filled automatically.

You must be logged in to Skype for Business to use the import feature.

Note

Please note that this import feature is only available if Active Directory authentication is enabled and the user had successfully logged in to both the CE portal and the Skype for Business web client built into the portal.

Organizational Details

Specify the following properties:


Tenant	Choose the tenant associated with the agent.
Team	Specify the team associated with the agent. This determines where the agent belongs.
Organization Unit	Specify the name of the organization unit associated with the agent.
Photo URL	HTTP URL of the user's picture that is publicly accessible.
Disabled	Checkbox for temporarily disabling the agent.

This is used for reporting purposes only.

The Organization field has no relation to the organizational hierarchy functionalities. Read the Organizational Hierarchy And Access Control chapters for more details on the hierarchy.

Skill Assignment

Specify the skill-set that is related to a particular agent by using the checkbox menu structure to determine whether the agent has the particular skill or not.

When assigning a skill to an agent, an associated skill level can also be specified using the drop-down list.

Select the tenant associated with the agent in order to choose from the related skills for assignment.

Skill Assignment Change

Supervisors have the ability to modify the skill-set of an agent anytime.

Skill activation is performed automatically in which case the agent would receive a message about him/her skill being updated and that a logon procedure is required to finish the activation.

However, it is also possible to modify and activate the skill-set change without having the agents logout and login from the agent application. This requires the following to be set on the agent's tenant level. You can read more about automatic skill activation at the Workflow Settings section.

Tip

After modifying the skill-set of an agent, perform a Batch Update to execute the changes.

Agent Application Reference

Description about skill change from the agent's perspective: Skill Modification by Supervisor

Agent Allocation Rules

When initiating a new outbound request or trying to distribute an inbound one, the system will route to the highest skilled agent unless the queue is set-up with Prefer last agent selected. This is configurable on a queue by queue basis. If enabled, the system will check the history of the associated contact. If the given contact was already routed to an operator in the past, then the system attempts to allocate the same operator for the request.

If the operator is not available or the contact was never routed to any operators previously, then the system tries to allocate an available operator having the highest level within the required skill. If multiple operators are available with the highest skill level, then the system allocates the longest idle one. If no operator having the required skill is available, then the request is placed into a waiting queue and waits for a suitable operator to be available.

Agents are loaded based on their skill sets and skill levels. Even the ones having the same skill set might be loaded quite differently. Those who have more skills or have higher skill levels might receive many more tasks. The difference in operators' load might be quite significant, especially in blended environments where the system generates outbound requests in addition to routing inbound ones.

Notes and Restrictions on Skill Assignment

Use skill levels only in pure inbound environments.

Use the same skill level for outbound and blended environments.

There are no guarantees that agents are evenly loaded.

Note

When using Predictive dialing, it is best practice to only associate a single skill to the participating agents, so that the predictive algorithm is able to calculate call statistics correctly.

However, the system won't block associating more skills to the agents! Please be aware of the risks and consequences, such as overdialing/nuisance calls in case of increased traffic on inbound skills.

Permissions

The following permissions can be provided to agents:


Search for Contact Records	Browse contact database. This is relevant for the agent to be able to use the Address Book service from the agent application.
Modify Contact Properties	Modify properties of existing contacts.
Add New Contact Records	Append new contacts to the database.
Change Contact Phone Number State	Change the state of contact phone numbers. When not granted, agents won't be able to change the state of the contacts' phone numbers explicitly.

Email Signature

Set up e-mail templates for the agents that they could use as a corporate signature, company logo, predefined welcomes, literal phrases, etc.

Skill Management

Contact Expert system administrators can assign multiple agents to a skill.

The Skill Management option is only visible if there is at least one resource available in the particular tenant.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Human Agents → More Actions → Skill Management in order to specify such skills.
Select a Skill and a Media type in the Select A Skill section at the upper portion of the form. The Assigned list will show the name of the agents who already possess the selected values. Agents not assigned to the selected values will show up in the Not Assigned list.
Using left-click, control_Left click or shift_left click select one or multiple agents from the Not Assigned list.
Specify the proficiency Level the selected agents should gain on the designated skill.
Click the >> icon to perform the assignment. The selected agent names disappear from the Not Assigned list and show up in the Assigned list.
Removing skill association is performed the same way except you select agents from the Assigned list and use the << icon.

Clicking an agent name in either the Not Assigned or Assigned lists will display a short summary of the particular agent at the bottom section of the form.

Note

Skill changes might need explicit activation.

In case the relevant Workflow Setting to automatically activate agent skill changes is not enabled, any change in skill association will not be activated immediately, the batch update process needs to be performed.

When the automatic skill change activation is nto enabled, the agents will also need to perform a log out - log in procedure for the skill assignment changes to take effect.

Virtual Agents

Virtual Agents can be used to handle outbound SMS and email media tasks via Skills. It is possible to configure the entries for virtual agents per tenant, so they will specifically belong to a particular unit within the organization.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Virtual Agents in order to manage the virtual agent entries. You can create a new virtual agent or edit or remove existing ones.
Use the _New virtual agent button to create a new virtual agent entry.
Specify a display name of the Virtual Agent.
Choose the associated Tenant.
Assign skills to it, bearing in mind the details described in the Skill Assignment chapter above.
Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

Behaviour of Virtual Agents

When assigned an outbound task, Virtual Agents take the Message Template from the corresponding Campaign, fill out the template parameters from the campaign's Contact Record fields, send the interaction via email, and close the task.

IVR Channels

IVR channels are used to handle voice media without human agent intervention. It is possible to configure the entries for IVR channels per tenant.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → IVR Channels.
Use the _New channel button to specify IVR channels.
Specify the properties described below.
Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

An IVR channel has the following properties:


Tenant	Choose the tenant associated with the IVR channel.
Name	Specify unique display name.
Extension	Specify the user ID associated with the channel in the underlying unified communications platform. This should be set to the SIP URI of an IVR application endpoint plus the Channel ID (e.g. `ivr@geomant.com;ce-chanid=1`).
Gateway	Choose the associated voice gateway.
IVR	Choose the associated IVR.
Channel ID	Numeric channel ID. This should be unique for a given IVR instance and be the same as ce-chanid in the extension property.
Recording Rule	Channel specific recording rule. Leave it empty if no recording is required.
Skill Assignment	Assign the related skills to the IVR channel.

Media Properties


Codec	Specify the IP codec that is used to transmit media. This is irrelevant in case of SfB environment.
Password	Specify the password associated with the extension. This is irrelevant in case of SfB environment. Specify a dummy value.
Media IP	The IP address used to transmit media streams. This is irrelevant in case of SfB environment.
Media Port	Local transport port used to transmit media streams. This is irrelevant in case of SfB environment.

Skills

Contact Expert uses skills based routing to route calls to the highest skilled agent. It is possible to configure the entries for skills per tenant, so they will specifically belong to a particular unit within the organization.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Skills in order to manage the skills to be assigned to agents. You can create a new skill or edit or remove existing ones.
Use the _New skill button to specify a new skill.
Specify the properties described below.
Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

General Properties

Property	Notes
Name	The display name of the skill.
Number of Agents Retained for Inbound Calls	Specifies the number of agents that are retained for inbound call handling when used with an outbound dialing strategy. The system decides which agents will be retained based on random measures – there is no option to name these persons. These agents will never receive outbound calls from campaigns having this skill assigned – the dialing mechanism simply removes this amount of agents during the outbound call process.
Service Level Target (sec)	Specify the service level value in seconds. The next interaction request is retrieved from the queue where the longest waiting time exceeds this target value the most. Find more information about priorities in the CE Priorities article.
Tenant	Specify the tenant the skill is associated to.
Emergency Queue	If checked, CE will deliver work items from this queue to the agents as soon as possible.
ACD Policy	Choose which `ACD policy` should be active when external interaction routing is enabled for the skill.

Predictive Parameters

Property	Notes
Maximum Nuisance Rate [%]	Specifies the maximum rate of outbound calls dropped /redirected due to no agent availability at the time the called party answered the call when used with a campaign set to predictive dialing strategy. If this value is reached, Contact Expert switches back to progressive dialing mode automatically until the nuisance rate drops below this threshold again. The Maximum Nuisance Rate is measured on a daily basis. Switching back to progressive mode occasionally will make sure this threshold is not violated for the day.
Maximum Number of Calls Per Agent	Specifies the maximum number of calls initiated per agent when used with a campaign set to predictive dialing strategy.
Minimum Agent Count	Specify the minimum number of agents required for the predictive dialing to start. If you provide a low number of agents, it can lead to insufficient functioning of the predictive dialing and may cause unexpected effects on the statistical data.
Agent On Call Backoff [%]	Specify the percentage of calls to be initiated for agents already being occupied with interactions.

Emergency Queue

Emergency skills have their target service level properties set to 0 (zero) and this is not modifiable. So any campaign /queue elected to be an emergency queue would always have the highest effective priority. This also means that it is best practice to keep only a single skill in Emergency. If more than one skill is elevated to Emergency state, those will compete as they will be 'equal'.

Note

The Emergency skill feature is only available when the Priority Queues option is enabled.

Skills for Predictive Dialing Mode

Predictive dialing algorithm calculates historical call statistics and target rates for a given skill. When administering a new skill to a campaign with predictive dialing strategy, the following parameters must be set, otherwise the predictive algorithm will not start:

Maximum Number of Calls Per Agent
Maximum Nuisance Rate [%]
Number of Agents Retained for Inbound Calls

These parameters affect the predictive dialing mechanism as explained in the following formula:

Maximum # of predictive calls initiated = # of agents suitable for outbound predictive calls x max # of calls per agent _ # of agents on call x max # of calls that can be initiated for agent on call - # of ongoing calls

As with any other skill, the ones that have the predictive parameters set can be assigned to multiple campaigns. However, skills tailored for predictive this way can only be assigned to these type of campaigns:

Inbound Voice
Outbound Progressive
Outbound Preview
Outbound Predictive

The predictive algorithm will not start unless the retainment mode is set to Fixed.

Notes and Limitations of the Predictive Dialing Strategy

The predictive algorithm works best if the agent who is part of the predictive campaign has only one skill - the one that is assigned to the predictive campaign. However, there is an option to reserve some agents in order to respond to inbound interactions in a timely manner even in a massively over-dialed campaign. The limitation of this blended configuration is that only a subset of agents working with outbound interactions can receive inbound tasks and they cannot have multiple skills assigned, only the one that is used for the outbound dialling in predictive mode.

The current calculation of the dialing is based on average task processing times of both inbound and outbound interactions of the specific skill.

Note

When using Predictive dialing, it is best practice to only associate a single skill to the participating agents, so that the predictive algorithm is able to calculate call statistics correctly.

Warning

Overdialing can cause an increased number of nuisance calls. Contact Expert does not switch back from predictive mode to progressive mode if the predefined maximum nuisance rate is reached.

If you use predictive multi-skill mode, it is not guaranteed that you can control the nuisance rate.

Contact priority handling in predictive dialing mode

Please note that CE utilizes a caching mechanism in predictive dialing mode. This means that the system stores the top 50 contacts that need to be called. It takes the next contact in priority order when processing the cache and dials it if it suits the prediction. If it is not, the contact will be sent back to the pool.

This can create scenarios where contacts in the cache will not be dialled according to their level of priority, because there is no available agent or the prediction does not allow dialling them.

Multi-skill for Predictive Dialing Mode

This is the same predictive dialing strategy without the restrictions of the classic predictive mode. The calculation has been altered, so that the predictive dialing strategy would work even when affected agents are having more than one skill associated.

In this scenario, every agent can be assigned to a single skill associated to an outbound campaign and can have multiple skills associated to inbound queues. The predictive algorithm does not measure inbound traffic on these skills when calculating call statistics for the outbound campaign. Outbound dialing will initiate the proper number of calls as long as the traffic is relatively low on the affected inbound queues.

The following parameters are required for the Predictive dialing with multi-skill:

Minimum Agent Count
Agent On Call Backoff [%]
Maximum Number of Calls Per Agent
Maximum Nuisance Rate [%]
Number of Agents Retained for Inbound Calls

Follow the steps below in order to enable multi-skill predictive dialing:

Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Workflow Settings.
Click Edit of the specific tenant.
Tick the Predictive Inbound Multiskill checkbox in order to enable the function.
Click Submit to save the changes.

Note

When using Predictive dialing, it is best practice to only associate a single skill to the participating agents, so that the predictive algorithm is able to calculate call statistics correctly.

Warning

Overdialing can cause an increased number of nuisance calls. With multi-skilled agents Contact Expert does not switch back from predictive mode to progressive mode if the predefined maximum nuisance rate is reached.

If you use predictive with multi-skill enabled, it is not guaranteed that you can control the nuisance rate.

Work Codes

You can specify work codes for human operators to use for different agent states. This resource is tenant level.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Work Codes in order to specify the entries.You can create new entries or edit or remove existing ones.
Use the _New work code button to create a new work code entry.
Specify the properties described below.

Tenant Specify to which tenant the work code belongs.

Key Specify a unique numerical value to identify the work code.

Name Assign a unique display name to the work code.
Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.


Tenant	Specify to which tenant the work code belongs.
Key	Specify a unique numerical value to identify the work code.
Name	Assign a unique display name to the work code.

Operators can select from the defined codes when going to AUX (CE-Break) state. Supervisors can generate reports in order to check which codes were used and how long by operators. A maximum of 20 codes can be defined, with the first 3 of them (AUX, ACW, LOOKUP) reserved for internal usage.

Agent policies

Agent Policies are a set of guidelines (parameters) that applies to the agents using the CE application. Such parameters are forcing the agent to select a business tag after completing a call or the URL of the campaign's help page, for example.

Agent policies can be set and applied separately for different tenants.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Agent Policies.
Choose the tenant to be configured and click Edit.
Specify the parameters of the UC platform that affect all agents in the CE of a specific tenant.
Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

The Getting Starter With The Agent Application articles provide further details on the CE Agent Application details.

Please visit the Agent Policies article for more information.

Hunt Groups

Hunt groups or operator groups represent a set of operators or agents that are to be reported together. It is possible to configure the hunt groups per tenant, so it is specific to a particular unit within the organization.

Navigate to Operations → Agents → Hunt Groups to create and modify such groups. Operators and agents then can be assigned to these groups.
Use the _New hunt group button to specify such groups.

Specify the properties described below.


Name	Assign a unique name to the new hunt group
Extension	Specify the user group used to sign in agents to. In case of SfB this value is irrelevant.
Tenant	Specify the tenant the hunt group belongs to.

Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

Please note that for the Microsoft Skype for Business edition of Contact Expert the Hunt Groups feature is merely a reporting feature. However, you do have to have at least one Hunt Group for the reporting to work properly even for SfB.