Contact Expert v7.6

Designing Queues & Campaigns

Queues & Campaigns

In CE terminology the term Campaign is used to describe all outbound interactions. The term Queue is used to represent all inbound communication. In this version of the product both Queues and Campaigns are presented by the same resources under Queues & Campaigns menu.

Administrators can manage and maintain campaigns through the CE portal.

Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Queues & Campaigns.

The Entry Point column contains an icon and the name of the campaign endpoint. In case you have Active Directory authentication enabled and successfully signed into the integrated Skype for Business client, this will show the current status of each endpoint. You can hover over the icon with the cursor to get the textual representation of the presence.

The Skype for Business presence can only be queried for valid campaign endpoints.

A campaign must be in Running state in order to have a presence other than Offline or Unknown.

The following table indicates the meaning of each presence.

Presence	Campaign Status
Available	The campaign is in Running state and does not have any active tasks.
Busy	The campaign is in Running state and has one or more active tasks.
Offline	The campaign is not in Running state.
Unknown	Cannot retrieve the status. The campaign endpoint might be invalid.

Voice and Chat media campaigns require valid Service Endpoints for transmitting communication requests (via SfB and cloud chat services, respectively). Email campaigns need valid Mailboxes. Read the Service Endpoints article for more information.

Campaign States

A campaign might have one of the following states:

Running	Represents an active campaign. If the dial rule is also active, then the system allows inbound calls to the queues and agents, as well as initiates outbound communication requests from outbound campaigns.
Available	Indicates that the campaign is ready, but not active yet. Independently from the dial rule used for the campaign, no communication requests are permitted through this campaign.
Design	This state allows system administrators to modify contact and campaign properties. No communication requests are permitted through this campaign.
Importing	This state is set by the Contact Manager Service during contact list export/import processes. When the process is terminated the campaign state returns to the original state.
Terminated	This state indicates that the system automatically terminated the campaign, because one of the specified campaign termination criteria was satisfied.

Use the Edit button in order to change the state of a campaign, select a new state, then click Submit.

Creating a New Campaign

Tenant and business unit administrators are able to create new campaigns and queues.

1. Use the +New campaign button to specify a new campaign entry.
2. Specify the properties described below.
3. Click Submit to save the modifications to the database.

General Campaign Properties tab

Name	Assign a unique name to identify the campaign.
Status	Specifies the status of the campaign after creation.
Direction	Specify the direction of the interaction this resource will handle primarily. It can either be Inbound or Outbound.
Media	Specify the type of media used as the main channel. It can be Voice, Email or Chat
Tenant	Specify the tenant this resource will belong to.
Business Unit	Specify the BU this resource will belong to.
Skill	The skill should match the skill associated to the agents to work with this resource.
Domain	Specify the domain where this resource should be running at.
Entry Point	This identifies the connection points towards the various media backend systems. It is a drop-down list including all registered and valid endpoints. For voice media this specifies the Service Endpoint (effectively a phone number or SIP URI) from which outbound calls are initiated or where inbound calls arrive. For email media this refers to the Mailbox. For chat media this specifies the Service Endpoint transmitting chat messages between the customer and the agent.
Dialing rule	Select from the list of available Dialing Rules to associate interaction routing and treatment rules to this resource.
Importance	For outbound campaigns this determines the rate of outbound calls initiated from this resource compared to other campaigns with less priority in this tenant.
Restricted	Reject calls to / from customers who are not included in the contact list.
Time Range	The time range this resource is active. When creating a new queue / campaign, make sure the start date is in the past, otherwise the resource might not start running immediately.
Reopen	Limit the number of incoming calls to 1 per customer in this resource. This property is not used for outbound campaigns.

Notes on Entry Points

Note

Please note that the Entry Point drop-down will only list available choices if the Media, Tenant, Business Unit and Domain properties are already specified!

The entry point list contains a No service item so you can have a queue/campaign created even if there is no endpoint associated to it, however its state can not be set to Running in this case.

It is not possible to start more than one queue or campaign with the same entry point, unless these entry points are associated to an Avaya type Voice Gateway. Read the Voice Gateways article for more information.

If the Media type is Voice or Chat, the Entry Point will list the domain related Service Endpoints registered.

If the Media type is Email, the Entry Point will list the Mailboxes registered in the tenant. Only one mailbox can be assigned to a campaign.

Read the Service Endpoints article for more information.

Dialing Properties tab

Dialing Mode

Progressive: calls are automatically initiated and classified by the system in the background. Agents generally receive only those tasks which are associated to calls answered by a person. This saves the time otherwise would be spent by the agent waiting for a long ring or reaching an answering-machine.

Preview: agents receive tasks before the associated contacts are dialed. They can dial the contacts by clicking the Dial contact button on the soft-phone. The benefit of this option is that agents have the opportunity to review, check or modify data in the contact record before dialing the contact. A preview task can be closed without calling the associated contact.

Predictive: after a certain period of statistical analysis – or using manually provided initial statistical values – the dialer can launch more calls then the number of agents available at the time, connecting live customers to agents exactly when they become available. This method attempts to minimize the amount of time agents spend in available state by maximizing the amount of calls initiated.

AMD Mode

Specifies the method to handle answering-machines detected by the telephony switch. This field can have one of the following 4 values:

• Connect: Each answering-machine call will be routed to operators or IVR channels regardless of the settings in the switch.
• Disconnect: The opposite of Connect - no such calls will be routed.
• No-treatment: Instructs not to detect answering-machines.
• Switch-defined: This option is not relevant in CE for SfB (always connects remote party to agent).

Recording Rule

Specifies which rule to apply for call recording purposes.

Preview Timeout

This field determines the timeout value (in seconds) for the Automatic preview dialing parameter.

ACW (secs)

After closing a task, the agent is put into a timed after call work (ACW) state. No tasks are delivered to the agent while in this state. The maximum duration of this state can be specified here. The agent has the opportunity to interrupt this state and return to an active state. If agents do not activate themselves, then they will be taken into active state automatically by the system as soon as this timer expires.

This value can not be less than 1 seconds.

Wrapup (secs)

Specifies the time-frame of the wrap-up timeout for a task. It enables the supervisor to offer different amount of administration time after an interaction is finished.

Automatic Preview Dialing

If the Dialing mode is set to Preview then this field specifies whether the system should dial contacts for preview tasks automatically after the timeout established in the Preview Timeout parameter.

Redial Lost Calls

If this option is checked, the system will automatically generate callback records for calls that are disconnected while waiting in the inbound queue.

Disable Contact Cache

The outbound dialler service caches contacts to be called up, to ensure efficient and speedy operation. The only reason to disable this mechanism is if the contact sorting order is deemed more important than the efficiency and speed of the dialling process.

Note

Do not disable the cache if you use external routing. It makes the dialling process an order of magnitude less efficient than if no external routing was used. This is due to the way external routing's own caching relies on the contact cache.

Automatic Closure of Abandoned Calls

If this option is checked, the system will automatically close all calls that have been terminated by the customer after the call left the queue but before an agent could take it.

Note

The Agent alert timeout needs to be smaller than the "Call Forwarding option" value in the Skype for Business client application, so that CE can handle the terminated call and then close the task.

Read the Routing Rules section to see how to set the Agent alert timeout.

Phone Numbers tab

Multiple phone numbers can be assigned to each contact.

The properties of the available phone numbers can be specified as follows:

Phone Type	Currently 3 types of phone numbers are defined: Wired, GSM or SIP.
Daily Start and Daily End	This daily time interval specifies when the given phone number is active. For example, a contact can be dialled using a mobile number in the morning, office number during the working hours and home number in the evening.
Maximum Retries	This parameter specifies the maximum number of call attempts for a given phone number. If the number of unsuccessful call attempts exceeds this threshold, the system automatically inactivates the given phone number and switches to one of the active ones.

Tip

By default the system enables the assignment of 5 phone numbers to each contact. However, this system wide parameter can be changed.

Business Tags tab

This tab allows you to associate a list of business specific tags (often known as 'closure codes' or 'disposition codes') to the queue or campaign.

Business tags are presented in the Closure code dialog box. This dialog box shows up when the call is terminated, and operators can select from the available tags.

Values should be entered in new lines, separated by Enter.

There can be a total of 100 rows of values, with each value being up to 512 characters long including spaces and punctuation marks.

Contact Management tab

You can set up an automated contact list management - importing and/or exporting - using this tab. This functionality relies on an external FTP service provided by your IT department.

For more information on CE's contact management service configuration, read the Contact Records and Contact Lists article.

Server FQDN	Specify the host address of the FTP server where to import and/or export files.
Start time	Specify the time the import or export process should be started.
FTP User Name	Specify the account name to log in to the FTP server.
FTP Password	Specify the password for the FTP login.
Import File Name	Specify the relative path of the contact list file – containing new contact data – on the FTP server.
Field Separator	Specify the file format of the import/export file (the separator character can be comma, semicolon, colon, space and tabulator).
Export Directory	Specify the directory on the FTP server where the export files should be saved into.
Export Existing Contact Records	Specify whether existing contacts (and contact related data) should be exported from the database at the specified time or not.
Import New Contact Records	Specify whether new contacts should be imported to the database at the specified time or not.
Brief Export	Specify whether to export all data from contact records or only the ones specified in the config files.
Append To Existing Contact Records	Specify whether the new contacts should be appended to the existing ones or existing ones should be removed before appending new ones.
Import Rule	It specifies what to do with contacts which exists in the import file only. Options: Do nothing, Append.
Update rule	It specifies what to do with contacts which exists in the database only. Options: Do nothing, Activate(contact), Activate(contact, phone), Inactivate, Delete.
Merge rule	It specifies what to do with contacts which exists both in the import file and the database. Options: Do nothing, Activate(contact), Activate(contact, phone), Inactivate, Delete, Append, Replace.

Message Template

This tab allows you to create and edit outbound message templates be able to insert any data item from the contact record into special tags of the template text. Tags in templates are automatically populated with up-to-date data when tasks are delivered to agents.

Inserting Data Template

Tags can be inserted to the message body by using the Insert Data Template function on the editor's toolbar. The following data tags can be inserted:

Agent Name	The name of the agent who is working on the task.
Contact Related CRDS data	Insert CRDS data of the customer(s) who will receive the email.
Campaign Related CRDS data	Insert CRDS data of the specific campaign.

Contact related CRDS data can be set via the Operations → Customers →Contact Master Data Fields menu.

Campaign specific CRDS data can be set via Operations → Workflows → Queues & Campaigns → Edit → MORE ACTIONS → Edit Contact Record Structure menu.

Adding Attachments to Message Templates

You can also attach files to the templates, which will be sent out with the email in case agents decide to use the template in their email communication.

1. Place the attachment files onto a network share.
2. Share the network location so that the computer account of the CE Core Host can read files from it.
3. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Queues & Campaigns menu.
4. Click Edit of a preferred campaign entry.
5. Go to the Message Template tab.
6. Insert the file names separated by semicolons.

Note

In case of a multi-tenanted environment, where the secure separation of tenant specific data is paramount, you need to take special attention to the access privileges of these network shares.

Email Handling tab

This tab provides email routing configuration options.

Strict Follow-up Email Handling

When set, CE will hold follow-up emails from the same customer email address, sent to the same email queue address, in queue until the original customer email is processed (to avoid disrupting the inbound email sequence from the customer). This could be counterproductive in case a centralized email address is used to send inbound emails for various different topics (e.g. from a web based request form). When not set, CE will treat each new email from the same source address to the same email queue address as a new work item and not hold back routing them.

Phrases tab

In case of a chat queue, message phrases can be entered here which can be inserted by operators into their chat conversation windows.

Values should be entered in new lines, separated by Enter.

There can be a total of 100 rows of values, with each value being up to 512 characters long including spaces and punctuation marks.

Scripting tab

Use this tab to associate a scripting method to the queue or campaign, or to let the Agent Policy take effect. If a Cloud or Custom type scripting is selected, then a particular script (version) needs to be specified as well.

Read the Scripting on Queue or Campaign Level chapter for further details.

1. Select the scripting method from the Scripting dropdown.
2. For a Cloud script:
   1. Specify the ID of the workflow.
   2. Select a Workflow Start Method.
3. Click Submit.

To modify an existing Cloud script, or create a new one:

1. Click Open Script Editor.

Campaign Linking tab

You can start other campaigns based on certain conditions met with regards to this queue or campaign. The following properties must be provided to enable this feature:

Linked Campaign	Specify which of the existing campaigns to start when the conditions are met.
Start Time	Specify the exact time that indicates when to start the particular campaign.
Contact Closure Rate	Specify a limit in percentage that indicates when to start the linked campaign. The ratio adds up of the closed contacts and the active contacts.
Remaining Contact Rate	Specify a limit in percentage that indicates when to start the linked campaign. The ratio adds up of the remaining contacts and the active contacts.

Campaign Specific Report Thresholds

This tab provides the ability to modify the reporting threshold settings of a specific queue or campaign.

Follow the below steps in order to enter the Queue/Campaign Configuration window and alter the value settings.

1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Queues & Campaigns menu.
2. Click Edit on a preferred campaign.
3. Go to the Thresholds tab.

Thresholds are related to the Queue Service Level of the concerned queue or campaign.

These thresholds are media specific, so if the media of a campaign is modified, the thresholds will be applied to that specific, newly added media. For example, if you change a chat campaign to a voice campaign, the threshold values will be related to the voice media. However, if these changes are reverted, the previous threshold settings will be applied.

Maximum Answer Time [sec]	It is a data type threshold, which specifies the time period within the requests should be handled. Provide this value in seconds.
Maximum Ratio of Abandoned Requests [%]	It is a visual threshold, which specifies a high number of abandoned requests. Provide the percentage which abandoned interactions should be kept under.
Minimum Abandoned Request Time [sec]	It is a data type threshold, which specifies the minimum period of a request to be spent in queue before considering as abandoned. Provide this value in seconds.
Minimum Service Level [%]	It is a visual threshold, which specifies a critically low service level. Provide the percentage of interactions to be answered within the target answer time.

This option is only available for voice and chat campaigns.

Cloning Queues and Campaigns

Cloning of an existing queue or campaign is the process of creating a new resource and having all properties copied from the resource it was cloned from in one automated step.

1. Use the Clone button on one of the resources in the list.
2. The new queue/campaign creation form will be presented, pre-populated with data copied from the chosen resource.
3. Update any property you see fit.
4. Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

Default Name for Cloned Queues or Campaigns

Note that these campaigns inherit the name of the cloned campaign appended with the " - Clone" text. Often this needs to be changed to a more meaningful name.

Mandatory Changes When Cloning

The Entry Point must be changed in the cloned resource so it could be saved.

Contact Record Structure

Queues and campaigns can be personalized for a better engagement with the customers. Administrators or supervisors can extend the default contact record structure with campaign specific custom data fields as per the business needs.

Each queue / campaign has its own Contact Related Data Structure (CRDS) table in the system database. Each row in the CRDS table represents a contact record, to which new fields can be added or removed.

1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Queues & Campaigns menu.
2. Click on Edit the appropriate resource.
3. Click MORE ACTIONS and then Edit Contact Record Structure.
4. Use the +New data field button and specify the properties described below.
5. Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

Specify the following properties:

Field Name	Assign a unique name for the Data Field.
Size	Specify the size of the data field.
Required	It indicates whether the agent has to select a value or not.
Unique	It indicates if the data column includes a unique value.
Valid Values	Specify valid values for the Choice data type.

CRDS Field Types

Choice	Set of values that is presented to the agent during the call, valid values need to be specified.
Integer	Integer value, can be a unique identifier (enable "Unique" property for the field)
Date	Data field representing a date
Time	Data field representing time
String	Free text field, please maximum allowed characters in the Size property
Boolean	Logical value, that represent a yes or no (true/false) answer

Removing CRDS fields

Administered CRDS data fields can be removed from the Contact Record Structure list view. Please note that removing a CRDS data field cannot be reverted and all data contained in the given field in all records will be lost.

Master Data

The CRDS data table is extended with custom fields defined via Operations → Customers → Contact Master Data Field as specified by the Master Data document.

Scripting on Queue or Campaign Level

It is possible to specify scripting methods on a queues or campaigns level, overwriting the Policy Template set on the tenant level in the relevant Agent Policy. As with the Agent Policy template, there are two distinct scripting methods to choose from: legacy or modern.

The modern method covers the cloud based scripting service, but also it's on-premises alternative, whereby the components providing the cloud service are deployed into a customer's datacenter.

The difference between these methods is the format of the below URLs also specified in Agent Policies:

• Close Task URL
• Default Task URL
• Display Task URL

For further details on scripting please read the Scripting document.

To set a scripting method on the queue or campaign level, you first need to set up a Scripting object for the target script:

1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Scripting menu.
2. Click +New Script.
3. Select the proper Tenant.
4. Type a Name for the new scripting definition.
5. Select the Type of the scripting method. Follow guidance in the next sections as per your selection.

Legacy Scripting

When using the legacy scripting, you resort to the old Script Designer type agent scripts. This is an entirely different scripting method from the modern solutions we offer. In this case you need to associate scripts to queues or campaigns outside of the CE portal, using the Script Designer utility installed onto the CE Core Host computers (not to be confused with the Script Editor web service used by the modern scripting method).

1. Navigate to Operations → Agents → Agent Policies and click Edit for your tenant.
2. Select the Use legacy agent scripting (Script Designer) policy template.
3. Make sure the Use Enhanced Scripting check-box is un-selected.
4. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Queues & Campaigns menu and click Edit for your campaign or queue.
5. Click the Scripting tab and select the legacy script defined previously.
6. Click Submit to save the changes.

Custom Scripting

Custom scripting allows you to define custom URLs the agent application should load. When selecting this option, the above URL fields are empty, showing no preloaded values.

Note

'Custom scripts' are basically web pages served by 3rd party web services entirely separate from and external to CE or Geomant's Scripting solutions.

On-premises Scripting

There is no such option available from the Type dropdown in the Scripting resources, because the underlying scripting mechanism is essentially the same as the cloud based scripting. Therefore, if you employ on-premises modern scripting, select the Cloud option.

However, when selecting the cloud method, a parameter needs to be removed from the preloaded URL values:

1. Select Cloud from the Type dropdown.
2. Remove the &accesstoken={ga_AccessToken} bit from the Display URL.

Cloud Scripting

For cloud based or on-premises scripting, you also need to define the actual script (version) the queue or campaign should launch, see the steps at the Scripting tab section.

Dialing Rules

Among many of its features, Dialing Rules control queue and campaign availability related events like interaction treatment rules, holidays, active periods, etc. For example, you can set a campaign to be active from Monday to Wednesday between 8 am and 8 pm and from Thursday to Friday between 9 am and 5 pm.

There can be any number of Dialing Rules created in a tenant.

1. Navigate to Operations → Workflows → Dialing Rules.
2. Use the +New dialing rule button to create a new dial rule.
3. Specify the properties described below.
4. Click the Submit button to save the modifications to the database.

Note

Please note that you can only remove rules that are not associated to any queue or campaign.

General Properties

Specify the following general settings:

Tenant	Specify the tenant to be associated with the dial rule.
Name	Assign a unique name to the dial rule.
Prefer Last Agent for Inbound Calls	If checked, the call will be routed to the Agent who handled the specific contact the last time - this can happen if the Agent is available.
Maximum Number of Outbound Call Attempts Per Contact	Specify the maximum number of attempts to reach a contact.
Maximum Outbound Ringing Time	Specify the maximum number of seconds to alert the contact.
Contact Sorting Rule	It specifies the sorting rule of the contacts for outbound dialling in the associated campaign. The By priority setting will make sure the system attempts to dial phone numbers associated to contacts with higher priorities. When set to By retry count the system will first dial phone numbers associated to contacts with the lowest total accumulated retry count values of their numbers. For example, a contact with low priority but having phone numbers of a total accumulated retry counts of 0 will be dialled sooner than a contact with high priority but a total accumulated retry count of 1. See the Notes on Sorting Rules below for further details.
Phone Number Sorting Rule	After the system found a contact to dial from an outbound voice campaign, it sorts the associated phone numbers based on this setting and takes the top of the list. A setting of By sequential order will consider the numbers in the order they were added to the contact. The By retry count setting will take the number with the smallest retry count value first – it will prefer numbers with the least amount of failed attempts in the past. See the Notes on Sorting Rules below for further details.
Outbound Dialing Prefix	Prefix to append to the PSTN number before dialing.
Maximum Inbound Hop Count	Specify the maximum number of times the request can be redirected.

Notes on Sorting Rules

Both sorting rules are in effect for outbound voice campaigns only and are disregarded for any other campaign or queue.

The Contact Sorting Rules are in effect only for the first call of every contact. For subsequent calls the outcome of that first call attempt dictates what happens with the contact (e.g. rescheduled to another time).

The dialling mechanism uses a contact cache for efficient outbound campaign operation. Changing the Contact Sorting Rule in a running campaign does not affect the contacts currently in cache; they will however be affecting the outstanding contacts in the campaign.

However, in case the retainment of the contact order is more important than the dialling efficiency, it is possible to disable the contact cache, but that has its own caveats, see the linked chapters.

Active Daily Periods

Activate or deactivate days, specify daily start and end times. The availability is set to every day from 00:00:01 to 23:59:59 by default.

Predictive Parameters

When an outbound campaign is set to use the predictive dialling scheme, the system collects statistical information from a wide scope of campaign operation on a periodic basis to measure if and when is it safe to switch to predictive mode. It is using the information provided on this tab as well as the Predictive Parameters tab of the Skills resources for that.

For further details on the Skills resources, read the Configuring Agents article.

Predictive Warmup and Healing

The system constantly calculates the optimal dialing rate to keep the contact centre efficiency at peak level. When certain types of diversions happen from one statistical time frame to the next – e.g. the nuisance call rate is violated, the telephony endpoint connection is severed temporarily, too many agents become unavailable, etc. – the system goes into a "healing" mode, gradually slowing the dialing rate until the diversion disappears. When the system finds that the statistical values are once again stabilized, it starts a "warmup" process to gradually speed up the dialing rate until it reaches the optimal level for the campaign.

Maximum Variance [%]	Specify the maximum value of the call statistics changes from one statistical period to the next allowed by the system to keep the predictive dialing mode active. When not using Initial Statistics: If this value is exceeded, the system stays in predictive mode using a call pacing that ensures 0% nuisance rate. With Initial Statistics: If this value is exceeded, the system stays in Predictive mode and switches back to using the Initial Statistics value.
Minimum Call Count	Specify the minimum number of calls that is necessary in order to accurately measure the statistical parameters of calls and to determine variance in the statistical time frames. When not using Initial Statistics: If this value is exceeded, the system stays in predictive mode using a call pacing that ensures 0% nuisance rate. With Initial Statistics: If this value is exceeded, the system stays in Predictive mode and switches back to using the Initial Statistics value.
State Refresh Period [secs]	Specify the time frame the system should recalculate the statistical samples. Statistical data is evaluated after every interval. The time frame should be set in a way to allow the system to handle the minimum number of calls for the defined set of agents.
Statistic Time Frame [secs]	The length of time the system looks back to collect statistical data after each Refresh Period.
Dialing Backoff [%]	The percentage of calls to be initiated in terms of the number of calls calculated by the system. If the system calculates e.g. 10 calls/sec as the optimal outbound call rate then 10% specified here instructs the system to initiate only 9 calls/sec.
Nuisance Preview Fallback	The parameter defines how the system should handle nuisance calls - calls that reached the called party but have been terminated due to no agent availability. If checked, the system will generate a preview task for these contacts and routes these to a reserved agent as a Preview task - the agent will dial the contact if decides to do so. Otherwise, the contact remains in predictive mode and the system initiates the callback accordingly.

Initial Statistics

For customers having in depth knowledge of their contact list – in other words, they know how many of those contacts will actually pick up, how long the average talk time is going to be, etc. – and wishing to avoid the initial warm-up period needed for the system to learn this by itself, the Initial Statistics tab provides the means to set these values. The system will use these to start the campaign in predictive mode right away.

Average Working Time on Tasks [secs]	The average time the agents spend working on tasks (including, but not limited to actually talking to customers over the phone).
Average Inter-Interaction Arrival Time [secs]	The average time between two consecutive inbound interactions – outbound calls picked up by the called party and being handed off to an available agent.
Average Answer Rate [%]	The percentage of outbound calls initiated by the system actually picked up by the called party.

If one of these fields are filled, the CE portal requires all the rest to be filled properly as well. The fields are either all empty or all of them properly set.

When the these values are set, the system switches back to using these values in some discrepancy situations without dropping out of the predictive mode. This provides an overall better efficiency as long as the values themselves are correct for the campaign specifics (e.g. the 'quality' of the contact list loaded, the number of available agents, etc).

If these values are not correct, the overall system efficiency could drop significantly which can result in either agents getting underutilized - sitting in Available state without receiving calls -, or the maximum nuisance rate getting frequently violated. In such cases supervisors are advised to either fine tune the Initial Statistics values or delete these altogether and let the system learn how to maintain the predictive mode on itself.

Outbound Rules

This parameter section enables the definition of a number of actions the system performs automatically upon various outbound call outcomes.

The available actions are:

Use the current number	The phone number used in the current outbound call will be re-used in the next interaction.
Inactivate phone number	Inactivates the phone number used in the current outbound call. Would the contact qualify for further outbound call attempts then the next interaction will be attempted on another phone number registered for this contact. If all of the phone numbers were inactivated (or if there is no other phone number assigned to the contact) then there will be no further outbound calls attempted for this contact regardless of whether the Maximum number of retries was exhausted yet.

Currently the system handles the following outbound call outcomes:

Outcome	Built in	Gateway detected	SfB/Lync platform	Avaya and other platforms
Answering machine is detected
Busy tone is detected
Fax tone is detected
Modem tone is detected
No answer from contact
SIT no circuit, network connection
SIT unspecified: re-ordered; intercept; vacant code
Invalid destination
Agent signed out meanwhile
Abandoned in queue
Undesired party
Nuisance call

Legend

Enabled

Skype for Business / Lync Mediation server can filter out custom SIP header messages

Not tested on the platform

Not implemented

The next interaction attempt can be scheduled by specifying the Schedule property. The scheduled time should be given as a relative time; e.g. "00:00:05:00" schedules the next attempt in 5 minutes.

Contact Expert will attempt to call the phone number in this outbound call again if:

• the Maximum Number of Outbound Call Attempts Per Contact is greater than 1, and
• the number of outbound call attempts is lower than Maximum Number of Outbound Call Attempts Per Contact, and optionally
• for preview campaigns: the agent selected a failure outcome or reason code type in the call closure dialog.

Note

For preview outbound call strategies, if the agent selected a non-failure type of code, the system will not attempt to call this phone number again, even if the Maximum number of retries was not exhausted yet.

Contact Expert considers the Outbound attempts and Maximum number of retries settings for predictive, progressive and preview outbound strategies.

Automated Outbound Call Attempts Versus Callback Calls in Preview Campaigns

In case the agent closes an unsuccessful outbound call with a callback request scheduled, then the system registers a callback attempt at the scheduled time.

Closing an unsuccessful outbound call with a callback request will immediately terminate the dial rule logic on the contact. Instead, the callback schedule will dictate when the next call attempt will be made.

Routing Rules

The Routing Rules tab can be used to specify what to do with inbound requests if no suitable agent is available or the allocated one does not pick up the call in a given time. In these cases, the interactions can be redirected to different destinations.

The following properties are available for redirection purposes:

Contact is Rejected	Specified callers are not allowed to access the campaign and are routed to this particular URI.
No Agents Signed In	Calls are routed to this URI when no suitable operator is available (i.e. no properly skilled agents logged in to CE).
Holiday	All incoming calls are routed to this URI when a holiday is in effect. This rule is applied for both Public Holidays and Dialing Rule Holidays.
Emergency	All incoming calls are routed to this URI when the emergency status is activated.
Queue Size Limit	Calls are routed to this URI when the number of callers waiting in queue exceeds the queue size limit. The maximum queue size (number of calls in queue) can be specified in the Threshold column.
Queuing Timeout	Calls are routed to this URI when the maximum queuing time is exceeded. The maximum queuing time (in seconds) can be specified in the Threshold column.
Agent Alert Timeout	Calls are routed to this URI when the allocated operator does not pick up the call within the specified amount of time. This maximum waiting time (in seconds) can be specified in the Threshold column. In the SfB edition of Contact expert it is possible to enter a Threshold value but keep the Redirect To field empty. In this case the calls will be redirected to the same queue.
Nuisance Queuing Timeout	Calls are routed to this URI when the customer is ready to be routed to an operator but none of them are available. The maximum time (in seconds) can be specified in the Threshold column.
Every other case	This rule is applied to calls that suffer inbound routing failure for reasons none of the other rules cover. Prominent cases for this are when the call arrives outside of the Active Daily Period, or when the Queue/Campaign is not in the Running state, and others. This rule does not act as a 'fallback' option for when other rules are not set! These rules gets activated in their specific inbound routing failure scenario, there is no rule to catch them all.
Redirect to	Specify the phone number or SIP address of the destination to route the calls to in any of the above described cases. If no entry is defined in this field, the call will be routed back to the originating campaign or queue.
Threshold	Specify the duration of the events described above in seconds to define after how long a call should be redirected to the specified destination in any of the cases mentioned above.

Post Call Treatment

This tab provides options to engage a customer in a call when it draws to a close. This comes handy for example in case the customer agrees to provide feedback via a voice based survey solution.

The following properties are available:

Post Agent Destination

A destination URI – can either be a SIP or TEL URI – where the voice call is going to be transferred by the system in case the interaction media is voice, the human agent initiated the disconnection by clicking the Drop button in the CE Agent Application and there is no 3rd party (consultant) connected to the call.

Note

Transferring to Post Agent Destination will not happen in the following circumstances:

1. The call is handled by an IVR Channel working behind the queue (and not a Human Agent).
2. The customer disconnects before the agent.
3. The agent uses anything other than the CE Agent Application to disconnect the call.

This feature can be used to perform voice based surveys (IVR) with cooperating customers. To help this, Contact Expert inserts the Conversation ID of the interaction in the TO field as the value of the ce-convid tag.

Note

The conversation ID is inserted only if the Post Agent Destination call is targeting a SIPURI. It is not inserted if the PAD call has a TELURI destination.

For Avaya systems, this ID is passed along in the UUI field.

Tip

CE applies its Normalization Rules to PAD calls having a TELURI destination.

Campaign Termination

This tab – applicable for outbound campaigns only – can be used to specify automatic campaign termination criteria. The termination criteria means that after one of the predefined criteria is met, the campaign should be terminated automatically. Such a criteria can be that the number of failed calls in the campaign exceeds a predefined threshold. The currently available criteria types can be seen on the right.

Records satisfying the logical expression

While the majority of termination rules are self explanatory, this one is fundamentally different and is related to the collected data. So the last criteria means evaluating a logical expression over each contact record and if the number of contact records satisfying the expression exceeds a given threshold, then the campaign is automatically terminated.

Holidays

The Holidays tab can be used to add new or remove existing holidays. These settings are applicable only for the current Dialing Rule, not globally.