Contact Expert v7.4 for Skype for Business Server

Contact Expert v7.4 Release Notes

Release news, recommendations and up-to-date information about this version of Contact Expert

This version was released on 17th May 2022.

Important

Cumulative Update 5 was released on 1st of March 2023

Notes and Recommendations

This document describes all enhancements and bugs fixed in the above product version. In addition, all major known issues not yet addressed are also listed in this document.

Versioning and Hotfix releasing Strategy

Starting from v5.9, Contact Expert version numbers have the following format: vMajor.Minor

Major Version

The first number represents the major version. When this number is increased, a new major version is introduced. Major versions contain significant changes in the product such as an extensive set of significant new features, new architecture or completely redesigned software components. Consequently a new major version might be backward incompatible with the previous major version (but not necessarily).

Minor Version

The second number represents the minor version which is increased when less significant features are added to the product.

Cumulative Hotfixes

In addition to minor versions, Geomant also releases cumulative hotfix packages to provide quick fixes to serious problems that should not wait until the next minor release. These hotfix packages are tied to a specific minor version and contain the fixes of all the previous hotfix packages for this minor version.

Version Compatibility and Upgrade Strategy

When upgrading, consider the difference ("distance") between the old and the new version. If the upgrade is within the same major version then we are talking about a minor version upgrade. If the distance between the old and new version overlaps at least one major version, then this is a major version upgrade.

Minor versions are always backward compatible. Example

• v7.0 - major version (architectural changes & new features & bug fixes; not compatible with v6.x)
• v7.1 - minor version (new features & bug fixes; compatible with v7.x)

A clean and a cumulative upgrade installation media is created for each major and minor version, so every package contains the fixes and feature additions of all previous releases. However Geomant proceeds to perform exhaustive compatibility tests with the last 2 minor versions only, therefore if the distance between your 6.x version and the currently available latest 6.x is greater than 2 minor versions, then you might need gradual, step-by-step upgrades.

Also, since major versions usually bring architectural changes that make them backward incompatible, the old version must be completely uninstalled and the new version must be installed from a clean installation package. An upgrade install is typically not usable in such cases. When a major upgrade (thus a clean install) is due, the system typically have accumulated a number of previous minor upgrades all of which must be uninstalled individually starting from the most recent.

Or, as an alternative, instead of uninstalling all the existing upgrades, the recommended way is reinstalling Contact Expert on a clean operating system (restored from a previous snapshot or installed newly).

Note

Client/Server Version Compatibility

Please note that if you upgrade the Contact Expert server components to a new minor version, all Contact Expert agent client applications are highly recommended to be updated also at the same time. Older clients may not work with a new minor version of Contact Expert server.

However, the maintenance version of the server and the client does not matter as long as they have the same minor version. In other words, each client having the same minor version as the server's minor version is always compatible with the server, regardless of the maintenance version.

Note

Database Version Compatibility

Contact Expert databases are not removed or altered during a minor upgrade or uninstall process, therefore all the configuration data, except for the ones entered during an installation, are left intact. This includes all the business related data such as agent, campaign, contact and historical data.

Since a major upgrade typically contains database schema changes which might cause potential data loss, Contact Expert databases will need to be updated to reach compatibility with the new major version to be installed. This can be achieved by using the SQL scripts from the upgrade installation package of the concerned major version.

Microsoft Lync/Skype for Business Version Compatibility

Please review our CE Compatibility Matrix with SfB/Lync Platform on Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business support.

OnCall IVR Version Compatibility

Please review our official statement on OnCall IVR Engine and OnCall IVR Designer compatibility matrix.

Cloud Requirements

For chat functionality, a Buzzeasy subscription and cloud connection is required. For cloud based agent scripting, a cloud connection is required.

Important

64 bit Windows operating system is required for Cloud based agent side scripting!

Special Notes

Note

Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2012, 2014 are no longer supported by Contact Expert v7.4 Customers are required to migrate to one of the supported versions.

Note

Retention policy for chat data is introduced. Chat conversation history data older than 18 months will be purged/deleted from the system on a weekly basis and will not be available.

Deprecated API & Services

Legacy scripting is deprecated (since CE v6.1) and will be removed in future releases

Old scripting or legacy scripting is deprecated and will be removed from the product in future releases. Customers using old/legacy scripting are required to migrate to the new cloud based scripting platform.

Note

Legacy scripting is not tested to cooperate with other components of the product. While using it is not yet explicitly blocked, runtime errors might show up.

Skype for Business based chat service

Skype for Business platform based chat service has been deprecated and removed from Contact Expert 6.0 solution, components include:

• Chat Widget
• Chat Proxy
• WordPress plugin

Customers running chat service prior to 6.0 will need to update their corporate web site to include reference to the new cloud based chat services

Client Access Server - Administration methods removed (since CE v7.1)

Client Access Server Administration interface methods are removed, customization using this API are required to be rewritten using the REST API provided over Management Service, for more information please visit the following article.

Client Access Server - InformationService methods deprecated (since CE v7.1)

Client Access Server Information Service interface methods are deprecated, customization using this API are required to be rewritten using the REST API provided over Management Service, for more information please visit the following article.

Installation

Install the product as usual and apply all hotfixes released for this specific version as these fix every critical issues revealed.

Please read the Upgrade Guide for further details about the update process and our backup recommendations.

Feature Matrix

• Skype for Business
• Avaya

General

	7.1	7.2	7.3	7.4
Basic agent scripting
Highest priority queue ACD strategy added
Built-in call recording
Transfer to CE queues enabled
Support for localization
Support for TLS 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2
Support for secure HTTPS and TLS communication protocols
Contact Expert enabled with predictive dialing strategy
Queue and campaign linking & cloning
Automated IVR outbound campaigns using On Call IVR
Introduction of a new administration interface – CE Portal – replacing ACE Admin
Enhanced Administrative Features using CE Portal	!
Administrative Interface integrated with Skype for Business to display agent state and start chat conversation from CE Portal
User management and role based access to resources
RESTful web API is introduced to replace the Client Access Server
Retention blending introduced – allowing to keep a number of agent retained for inbound interaction for a dedicated skill
Enhanced predictive dialling strategy enables agents to work in a predictive and inbound mode
Multi-tenant architecture – allowing multiple individual organization can share the system
Ability to define custom voice messages. E.g. queue music, welcome message, hold music, etc.
Enhanced agent owned recalls – task are delivered to agents regardless of their skill settings
Enhanced skill update – supervisor performed skill updates to agent is automatically applied
Multi-tenant architecture – alarms and resource updates is applied for each tenant separately
Corporate address book
Scheduled task filtering enhancement –type, -status, -preference,
Ability to initiate a call over CE Automation API
Automatic failover support on secondary server
Campaign specific wrap-up timers
Redirect calls on no answer – place agents to RONA auxiliary reason
Support for initiating calls to response groups
In queue messaging improvement / audio volume dipping during TTS messages
Agent application automatic recovery in case of failure
Automatic (configurable) closure of abandoned calls
Support of multiple chat sources (website, social media, apps.)
Real time queue display and ability to select next work item from the queue
Control predictive start-up parameters
Predictive healing - Campaign dialing remains in predictive even if reference control values are breached
Campaign level contact phone number exclusion - Excluded numbers are not dialed
Before connect compliance messaging
Time zone support
Support for Business Unit organization layer
Multi-skill power dialling
Retain agent for running campaigns
Agent Auto Answer option by policy
Separate permissions of quick dial and customer lookup
Enhanced contact import functions

Agent Desktop

	7.1	7.2	7.3	7.4
Agent consult and transfer enabled
Enhanced agent experience in full screen and toolbar mode
MSI Installer provided for client application
Enhanced agent script pages and designer
Customizable agent dashboard – including global, team and agent statistics
Agents are able to initiate or revoke a break request during work
Agent dashboard replaces skill statistics with queue statistics
Agent can leave a comment for each interaction as is shown in the contact history
Business tags are presented in the order of administration
Email Search interface
Quick Email
Support for Arabic language localization - Agent & customer facing interfaces
Voice and email concurrent handling, ability to handle/park multiple emails and be available for voice interactions
Agent can accept internal IM’s during call handling
Agent’s ability to handle multiple concurrent chat request
Agent’s ability to handle multiple concurrent chat and email and be available for voice
Russian language support on Agent facing interfaces
Document sharing during chat session
Spell checking support when using the email editor
Agent scripting powered by Adaptive Scripting
Companion
Campaign based scripting tool support
New contact creation based on lookup criterias
Enable using computer keyboard input to keypad
Comment field on Lookup Task history page

BI and Reporting

	7.1	7.2	7.3	7.4
Reporting enhancement, filtering options added
Enhanced call detail reports showing hold and talk time
Introduction of Personal BI - Excel based personal business intelligence reporting providing flexible and comprehensive business reports
Introduction of a new reporting interface – CE Portal – replacing ACE Supervisor
CE Portal reporting interface provides daily operational reports and allows thresholds to be defined to agent and queue states
Enhanced Analytical and Executive Reports
Reporting capabilities on predictive dialling strategy – Overdialing Rate and Nuisance Call Rate
Operation report extended, time range support extended on Agent status, performance, Business Tag, Queue Service Level report
Call result – operation report introduced / detailing call activity outcome
Tracking report support displaying 5000 records
New BI Agent Break type report added
Comment collected are displayed on CE Portal reports
Agent status monitor report filtered by skills
Agent status monitor report with contact/task Ids

3rd Party Compatibility

	7.1	7.2	7.3	7.4
Verba call recorder native integration
Support for Active Directory service accounts
Support for Skype for Business Server 2015
Support for Skype for Business Client 2015
Support for Skype for Business Client 2016
Web chat JavaScript API enabling chat integration for custom web pages
Support for SQL Server 2016 and JDBC 6.0 driver
Contact Expert is integrated with Afiniti agent and optimized customer pairing
Ability to integrate with an external ACD
Embeddable web chat widget
SQL Server 2017 support
Windows Server 2019 support
Support for Skype for Business Server 2019
Microsoft SQL Server 2019 support

Highlights

Enhanced administration functionalities:

Campaign expiration reminder

This feature provides visual indicator on the CE Portal about the expiring campaigns. Alert is raised and the given campaign is highlighted in the list when the end time is approaching or elapsed. The expired campaigns are put to Design state automatically, and their state can not be changed back to Running until the end time is set to a date in the future.

Retain agent for running campaigns

CE offered the possibility to retain agents for a given skill for inbound calls, when agents were retained they could not get outbound tasks. Now, this functionality is enhanced and the agents can be retained for inbound calls only if the campaign is running and the dial rule allows calls to be routed to the given campaign. It only retains the agent if the campaign and dial rule associated with the skill is opened.

Agent Auto Answer option by policy

This feature gives control over the Auto Answer option based on the defined configuration in the policy by the supervisors.

Separate permissions of quick dial and customer lookup

New permission is introduced to control if the agent should be limited to have the quick dial only or the lookup function as well.

Central administration of consultant configuration

This feature adds value to CE for Avaya customers so that they can administer the transfer destination centrally. Addressbook Service supports phone numbers like email addresses. Agent App's consultant form provides integration to Addressbook Service. Addressbook Service's URL is added to the agent policy.

Enhanced contact import functions

The following contact import options are available: (1) Import Rule – It specifies what to do with contacts which exist in the import file only. Options: Do nothing, Append (2) Update Rule – It specifies what to do with contacts that exist in the database only. Options: Do nothing, Activate (contact), Activate (contact, phone), Inactivate, Delete (3) Merge Rule – It specifices what to do with contacts that exist both in the import file and the database. Options: Do nothing, Activate (contact), Activate (contact, phone), Inactivate, Delete, Append, Replace

Scheduled Tasks menu date filter

Date/time interval filter is available for the Scheduled Tasks menu.

Enhanced agent application functionalities:

New contact creation based on the phone number

This feature enables the agents to create contact from lookup faster to save time on administration and reducing the possibility of errors. CE validates if a contact already exists with the given phone number. It shows the matched results for a given phone number. Customer data entered in the search form is saved over to the contact creation form. The phone number is set to active by default. Once the new contact is saved, CE offers the possibility of calling the customer with a single click.

Enable using computer keyboard input to keypad

The agents can use their computer keyboard for entering numbers. The keyboard inputs are forwarded to the CE keypad.

Comment field on Lookup Task history page

Comment field is added and available on Lookup Task history page.

Enhanced reporting functionalities:

Agent status monitor report filtered by skills

This feature allows supervisors to lookup agent statuses based on the specified skills. The new filtering option is available for the real time monitor, operational and historical reports.

Agent status monitor report with contact/task IDs

Extend real-time Agent Status Monitor report to provide all the unique IDs (contactId, sduId & conversationId) which identify a task and contact when an agent is busy. These fields need to be displayed as Additional Details on the CE Portal.

Other improvements

Tomcat security hardening

• Upgraded Tomcat to the latest version.
• Removed default/unwanted Applications (docs, examples, host-manager, manager, ROOT).

Support secure SQL connection

CE powershell extended to support encrypted database connection in the connection strings (encrypt=true).

Important

Early media is available with Agent Client Application 7.3 version or newer. If you want to use the early media feature, you can not use older Agent Client Application version event if it has the same major version number.

Fixed and known issues

• Bugs fixed
• Hotfixes
• Known issues

These are product defects addressed in this version.

Issue ID	Telephony	Description
8399	All	CE Portal - Contact Master Data Fields form should not allow field names not conforming to MSSQL syntax
18623	All	Tenant A can see notes created by Tenant B
20791	UCMA	Remained in Passive agent state after logged out of voice media
21264	All	CE Portal - Service Endpoints - Field validators do not catch unacceptable SIPURI characters, like quotes or double quotes, etc
28462	All	CEPortal - Built in users password cannot be changed
31839	All	CE Email validation Upper Case letter issue
32285	All	CEAgent - Email search shows oldest 100 email instead of latest 100
32661	All	CEPortal - Campaign state change resets endpoint selection for new campaigns.
32738	All	Quotation marks in the Agent Policies break the agent policy json
39617	All	Portal: changing phone number retry count via the Portal has no effect on contact sorting
40005	All	Agent Application - Chat - Long phrases not wrapped, resulting in a disproportionately large drop down
40511	All	The agent sometimes receives a new outbound call instead of an expired callback
41065	All	ManagementSvc - RecordingRules can be created with null or "" values for Storage
42250	All	CE Portal - The portal can not be opened using Internet explorer
43025	All	CE Portal - Email History - Deleted agent's name is not displayed in the email history
43052	All	Agent available in agent app but offline in the servers.
43055	All	Agent App - Available agent sees lookup form.
43095	All	CE Portal - Can't save alarm settings if alarmtopics view permission missing.
43214	All	CE Portal - RBAC - Assign to Agent controls enabled when lacking necessary permissions
43248	All	Contact record with closed parked email can not be deleted
43620	All	Emails closed in the queue when database is not available
44835	All	CEAgent - Redial/Contact Search fails using AgentClientApp
45656	All	Email History report: "None - Closed" action displayed for emails in queue
46503	All	CE Portal - Changing the Hierarchy of a User Account from full access to a specific tenant is not reflected in the portal
46529	All	Parked email blocks contact delete
48702	All	CE Portal - Several reports are broken
48709	All	Conference time calculated into both talk and hold time
49440	All	When routing inbound email, parked email ceiling is not respected when agent logged-in to email media while she/he was on break
50897	All	CE Portal - IVR Status report's row selection is not working
51208	All	Fix NHibernate null reference mapping issue.
51907	UCMA	Predictive dialling stops in case half of the agents are on break
52408	All	Contact phone number is lost between subsequent chat interactions
52518	All	Can't send DTMF to customer
54638	All	DialerServer - Crash with unhandled exception when resource's all skills removed
54721	All	CE Portal - Resources that are automatically created with a new Tenant are not visible until login back in
54757	All	CE Portal - Campaign status report - Anytime filter returns no results
55231	All	Admin CSP installer: Reset the IIS Application Pools Identity to default
55257	All	Server CSP installer: UCMARecorderService's config.xml does not restored after upgrade
55613	All	Active alarms have different time zones
55819	All	Call History report does not displays the name of existing customers because SP_TRANSFER_CONTACTS SP fails
56485	All	AgentClientApp crashes in toolbar mode
57233	All	Can not parse an email when it contains same inline attachment multiple times
58945	All	Scheduled tasks updated on Management Service API is not visible for the agent
59252	All	Scheduled contacts not called out in time
60348	All	Contact closed with an active phone number when another phone number is inactivated before task closure
60996	All	Agent stops receiving new outbound tasks
62380	All	Management Server - Fails to retrieve scripts from cloud scripting because using wrong TLS version
64523	All	Installer db script error
64911	All	DB - Contact synchronization constantly fails when too much changes generated

Upgrade Guide

Upgrade Guide