Contact Expert v7.1 for Skype for Business Server

Getting Started With The Agent Application

Introduction

When to use Microsoft Skype for Business client and when to use Contact Expert Agent Application? Once signed into Contact Expert, an agent does not need to use the Skype for Business client to fulfill any functions in the contact centre. Contact Expert is tightly integrated with Skype for Business, whilst Contact Expert Agent Application provides a unified user interface for all agent operations. In this case, the agent should use the Contact Expert client.

On the other hand, when not operating as a contact centre agent, the Skype for Business client should be used to make calls and collaborations not related to the contact centre, since the communication initiated from the Skype for Business client is not captured as part of the Contact Expert reporting statistics.

Contact Expert Agent Application consists of three major parts:

AgentApplication.Net: a Windows desktop application (thick client) to provide a framework to the agents to manage their workflow (e.g. login/logout, status change, task handling, customer interaction handling, issue reporting, etc.) and to show statistical and diagnostic information (e.g. agent statistics, system diagnostics etc.)
CEAgent: various web pages embedded into or popped out from the desktop application to provide customer management related features (e.g. customer, task and callback history, customer lookup and master data editing, viewing or writing emails, etc.) and a dashboard to show relevant real-time contact centre statistics to the agents, served by the CE server components
Chat conversation area: the place to exchange chat messages with the customers, served by Geomant's cloud services
Script area: an embedded scripting engine to provide agent scripting features, served by Geomant's cloud services

Application Language

The language of the CE Agent Application depends on the default regional settings of the Windows OS version you use. The web pages will also be displayed at the same language as the client application's.

Supported languages are

en-US
en-GB
hu-HU

If the language you use is not supported, then the web pages will be displayed in en-US.

Prerequisites

Before starting to work with Contact Expert, you need to make sure that the underlying telephony, network, database and any custom integrated infrastructure is working properly.

The Microsoft telephony edition of CE relies heavily on the properly configured and functioning Microsoft Skype for Business Server system and the audio devices connected at the agent workstations.

Checking Your Audio Devices

Ensure that you have your headset selected as your primary audio device in your Skype for Business client.

The primary device is shown in your Skype for Business screen. To change your primary audio device, click the current primary device icon, then select the headset option from the menu. Your headset is now your primary audio device. You can use the Check Call Quality button to make a test call.

Note

Do not use any buttons on your headset or phone device to answer, drop, transfer, hold, etc. yor CE calls. This must all be done using the Contact Expert Agent Application at all times.

If at any time during a call you cannot hear a caller or they can’t hear you, first check that the connection between Skype for Business and your headset is active, and if the issue is still prevalent, escalate it to your supervisor or administrator, who will follow the incident investigation process to zoom in on the root cause of the issues.

Checking Windows Item Display Size

Make sure that the display size of text and other desktop items in Windows are set to their default settings.

Open the Display settings.
Check the Scaling parameter - it should be on the Recommended setting for all the screens in use for the Agent Application.
Apply the changes.

Note

Please note that the Agent Application supports the default / system recommended scaling levels only. If any other scaling is set, the application might not be displayed correctly.

Do not confuse screen Scaling with Resolution. The application supports a wide range of screen resolutions but is only guaranteed to work properly on the above scaling settings.

Understanding Contact Expert Tasks

Contact Expert supports customer interaction through a number of different multimedia communication channels in both inbound or outbound direction. On top of the voice calls, Contact Expert also supports email, customer self-service (IVR) and chat.

A customer interaction can have many attributes and phases; the actual time the customer and the agent spend connected is just a small part of the overall 'interaction'.

For these reasons, Contact Expert refers to a customer interaction as a task. A new task is opened for each new customer interaction and the task represents the complete customer interaction life-cycle, covers the following phases:


Alerting	The agent is notified about a new incoming call, email or chat session or an outbound call to be initiated or an email to be sent.
(Preview)	This phase is used only for preview outbound tasks and skipped in case of all inbound tasks and progressive outbound tasks. In such cases, Alerting is always followed by Online phase immediately. The agent prepares himself or herself to be ready for the interaction with the customer.
Online	The agent is being in conversation with a customer (in a live call or composing an email or chat reply message).
Wrap-up	The agent has completed the conversation (call, email, chat, etc.) and is now doing any work associated with this particular customer, e.g. selecting task closure code and business tag, opening a job ticket in a 3^rd party CRM application, following up with an email, etc.
Finish	Agent has completed all parts of the task and presses a button to indicate that the task is complete.

This helps Contact Expert in providing detailed metrics on all elements of each task for supervisors to know how much time has been spent on each part of the customer interaction life-cycle by selecting individuals or any group of agents.

First Steps

Starting the Agent Application

Make sure you are logged in to the Skype for Business client.
Find and open the CE Tools folder on the Windows desktop and double-click the CE Agent Application.Net shortcut. A splash screen will be displayed at the center of the screen.
Please wait until the splash screen disappears.

Agent Application Plugins

The CE Agent Application functionality can be greatly expanded by using the built-in plugin mechanism as described in great details in the agent automation API document. The application loads the plugins specified in the configuration file (AgentClientApp.Config.xml) during the startup phase.

Note

Plugins can only be loaded when the application is launched in a single instance.

Signing in to the Agent Application

In the main window, click the Voice →Login button on the Home tab of the menu bar.
Make sure that SfB login mode is selected.
Click the green check-mark to log in to Contact Expert.
If the login was successful, your Skype for Business presence has been changed to CE - Available. Please check your presence shown in the Skype for Business client.
In the main window, click the Voice →Login button on the Home tab of the menu bar.
Make sure that Skype for Business login mode is selected.
Click the green check-mark to log in to Contact Expert.
If the login was successful, your Skype for Business presence has been changed to CE - Available. Please check your presence shown in the Skype for Business client.