Category / Contact Center

by dmacias

Troubleshooting UCCX Outbound Dialer Agent Based Preview Campaigns

A deep dive to how to use the UCCX logs to track an agent based campaign call.

It had been years, maybe 10 years, since I had done dialer campaigns on Cisco Contact Center Express (UCCX). I recently got a chance to do a deep dive to some SFDC integration I did and I wanted to capture how to track a call via the UCCX logs. What we will be coving is an UCCX outbound campaign that is agent based and preview. Next you need a CSV or use the API to load a new call list. Login the agent to Finesse and a preview call will be presented to the agent. If the agent accepts the preview and the customer is then dialed out. Otherwise the agent could end the call or schedule a callback if it was accepted. The steps below walk you through every single step.

Trace levels you should have set in UCCX Serviceability:
SS_OB: Debugging, XDebugging1, XDebugging2
SS_RM: Debugging, XDebugging1
SS_RMCM: Debugging

You’re going to need RTMT and Notepad++.

  • Start with getting the ANI of the record that you were going to dial and downloading the MIVR and JTAPI logs.
  • Using RTMT download the Cisco Unified CCX Engine and Cisco Unified CCX JTAPI Client logs from your server for the time frame needed.
  • Go to the logs downloaded MIVR directory and unzip all files and leave in place.
  • Open Notepad++ Find in Files, choose the location C:\YourServer\YourTimeStamp\uccx\log and search for the ANI sent to the dialer.
Notepad++ Search Settings

Notepad++ Search Settings

  • Start with any hits in your JTAPI folder. This will tell you the calls placed to your ANI and correlate it to an agent extension. The below example show 3 total calls made to that ANI by an agent. This is across 3 different JTAPI logs.
    CiscoJtapi041.log

17467378: Sep 07 13:53:41.861 CST %JTAPI-JTAPI-7-UNK:(P2-ccxrmcm)[pool-26-thread-1193][(P2-ccxrmcm) GCID=(1,15759614)->IDLE]Request: connect (CSFdavidmacias, 155551, 912145551234featurePriority=1)17467379: Sep 07 13:53:41.861 CST %JTAPI-PROTOCOL-7-UNK:(P2-1.1.1.30) [pool-26-thread-1193] sending: com.cisco.cti.protocol.LineCallInitiateRequest {sequenceNumber = 41195lineCallManagerID = 4lineID = 35553globalCallManagerID = 1globalCallID = 15759614callingAddress = 155551destAddress = 912145551234userData = nullmediaDeviceName = mediaResourceId = 0featurePriority = 1}

CiscoJtapi043.log

17485516: Sep 07 14:00:54.648 CST %JTAPI-JTAPI-7-UNK:(P2-ccxrmcm)[pool-26-thread-1196][(P2-ccxrmcm) GCID=(1,15759713)->IDLE]Request: connect (CSFdavidmacias, 155551, 912145551234featurePriority=1)17485517: Sep 07 14:00:54.648 CST %JTAPI-PROTOCOL-7-UNK:(P2-1.1.1.30) [pool-26-thread-1196] sending: com.cisco.cti.protocol.LineCallInitiateRequest {sequenceNumber = 41214lineCallManagerID = 4lineID = 35553globalCallManagerID = 1globalCallID = 15759713callingAddress = 155551destAddress = 912145551234userData = nullmediaDeviceName = mediaResourceId = 0featurePriority = 1}

CiscoJtapi046.log

17516022: Sep 07 14:15:45.225 CST %JTAPI-JTAPI-7-UNK:(P2-ccxrmcm)[pool-26-thread-1200][(P2-ccxrmcm) GCID=(1,15759923)->IDLE]Request: connect (CSFdavidmacias, 155551, 912145551234featurePriority=1)17516023: Sep 07 14:15:45.225 CST %JTAPI-PROTOCOL-7-UNK:(P2-1.1.1.30) [pool-26-thread-1200] sending: com.cisco.cti.protocol.LineCallInitiateRequest {sequenceNumber = 41258lineCallManagerID = 4lineID = 35553globalCallManagerID = 1globalCallID = 15759923callingAddress = 155551destAddress = 912145551234userData = nullmediaDeviceName = mediaResourceId = 0featurePriority = 1}

  • Next we need to see what the engine sees for that ANI on the same search you did before open the earliest MIVR log that shows the ANI in question. You need to find the record id for your specific call, this record id is how the outbound subsystem tracks the call. This means that while you start the search with your ANI, subsequent searching will be based on this record id. Below are two examples of how to locate the record id: 15541. Additionally, you see what was imported into UCCX. You can now validate that the data received by UCCX was the data you sent.

125439796: Sep 07 13:53:16.034 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_ReadContactsThread-750-0-ReadContactsThread] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigManagerImpl ConfigManagerImpl-getAll():CIR[0]=ConfigImportRecord[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,implClass=class com.cisco.crs.outbound.DialingListConfig,desc=,values=[15541, 30, 5008DM, Other.wav, Agent, 912145551234, , , 92, true, -1, true, -1, true, , 2024-03-05 19:53:13.0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, false, 0, null, null, null],evalues=null]125439797: Sep 07 13:53:16.034 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_ReadContactsThread-750-0-ReadContactsThread] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigManagerImpl ConfigManagerImpl-getAll():configObjs[0]=DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=,callbackDateTime=2024-03-05 19:53:13.0,callStatus=1,callResult=0,callResult01=0,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=0,callsMadeToPhone01=0,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=0]

  • Next we want to find out who all was offered this call. Using Notepad++ Find in Files, same location, using a regular expression with your record id: associateContactToReservedAgent.*dlc:15541.
Notepad++ Search Settings Regular Expression

Notepad++ Search Settings Regular Expression

  • This will give you who the call was sent to and at what time. In my case you can match these 3 calls to the JTAPI calls above.

125443434: Sep 07 13:53:39.146 CST %MIVR-SS_OB-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_OutboundMgrMsgProcessor-192-0-OutboundMgrMsgProcessor] com.cisco.wf.subsystems.outbound.PreviewDialer PreviewDialer:associateContactToReservedAgent() rsrc:Rsrc Name:David Macias ID:dmacias IAQ Extn:155551 for contact:OutboundContactInfo: dlc:15541 (phoneNumber:912145551234 unformattedPhoneNumber:912145551234 timezone -360 callStartTime 0 answeringMachine false )

125505817: Sep 07 14:00:49.286 CST %MIVR-SS_OB-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_OutboundMgrMsgProcessor-192-0-OutboundMgrMsgProcessor] com.cisco.wf.subsystems.outbound.PreviewDialer PreviewDialer:associateContactToReservedAgent() rsrc:Rsrc Name:David Macias ID:dmacias IAQ Extn:155551 for contact:OutboundContactInfo: dlc:15541 (phoneNumber:912145551234 unformattedPhoneNumber:912145551234 timezone -360 callStartTime 0 answeringMachine false )

125632982: Sep 07 14:15:39.532 CST %MIVR-SS_OB-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_OutboundMgrMsgProcessor-192-0-OutboundMgrMsgProcessor] com.cisco.wf.subsystems.outbound.PreviewDialer PreviewDialer:associateContactToReservedAgent() rsrc:Rsrc Name:David Macias ID:dmacias IAQ Extn:155551 for contact:OutboundContactInfo: dlc:15541 (phoneNumber:912145551234 unformattedPhoneNumber:912145551234 timezone -360 callStartTime 0 answeringMachine false )

As you saw in the JTAPI logs and above, the same record was called multiple times. One likely reason is that an agent scheduled a callback, but how do we confirm this? This part is not as clean as I would like, but the following process should give you a decent idea if a callback was rescheduled or not.

#This is the original record being set. Notice the callbackDateTime.
125445090: Sep 07 13:53:43.726 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=,callbackDateTime=2024-03-05 19:53:13.0,callStatus=3,callResult=1,callResult01=1,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=1,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=0]
#Notice that the callbackDateTime is now set to 20:15:33. One thing to note is that while the time stamp says the server’s time zone it’s actually UTC and the callback will happen at 20:15:33 UTC.
125451126: Sep 07 13:54:33.558 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=,callbackDateTime=Tue Mar 05 20:15:33 CST 2024,callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=1,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=0]
#Repeat of the above change.
125451194: Sep 07 13:54:33.853 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=912145551234,callbackDateTime=Tue Mar 05 20:15:33 CST 2024,callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=1,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=0]
#Repeat of the above change.
125508618: Sep 07 14:01:06.354 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=912145551234,callbackDateTime=2024-03-05 20:15:33.0,callStatus=3,callResult=1,callResult01=8,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=4,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=1]
#New callbackDateTime set.
125514552: Sep 07 14:01:30.954 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=912145551234,callbackDateTime=Tue Mar 05 20:30:30 CST 2024,callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=4,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=2]
#Repeat of the above change.
125514631: Sep 07 14:01:31.247 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=912145551234,callbackDateTime=Tue Mar 05 20:30:30 CST 2024,callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=4,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=0]
#Repeat of the above change.
125635076: Sep 07 14:15:54.719 CST %MIVR-CFG_MGR-7-UNK: [MIVR_SS_OB_SaveContactsMsgProcessor-198-0-SaveContactsMsgProcessor] com.cisco.config.impl.ConfigStubImpl configStubImpl-replace() exporting object: DialingListConfig[schema=DialingListConfig#4,time=2024-03-05 13:53:13.0,recordId=15541,desc=,recordID=0,dialingListID=15541,campaignID=30,accountNumber=5008DM,firstName=Other.wav,lastName=Agent,phone01=912145551234,phone02=,phone03=,gmtZonePhone01=92,dstPhone01=true,gmtZonePhone02=-1,dstPhone02=true,gmtZonePhone03=-1,dstPhone03=true,callbackNumber=912145551234,callbackDateTime=2024-03-05 20:30:30.0,callStatus=3,callResult=1,callResult01=8,callResult02=0,callResult03=0,lastNumberDialed=4,callsMadeToPhone01=1,callsMadeToPhone02=0,callsMadeToPhone03=0,numMissedCallback=0,retry=false,callsMadeToCallbackNum=1]

  • So now how do you confirm that the record is complete and there will be no more callbacks. Let’s look at the log lines above and zero in on callStatus and callResult. Status (3:Closed, 4:Callback). Result (1:Voice, 8:Callback). You need to look at all the lines to get a picture if there will be another call or not. In our case the last log found has a status of close and a result of voice with no new records. Signifying that this is now close and done. I wish it was more clear, but this is the best I could find.

    125445090: …callStatus=3,callResult=1,callResult01=1…
    125451126: …callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8…
    125451194: …callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8…
    125508618: …callStatus=3,callResult=1,callResult01=8…
    125514552: …callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8…
    125514631: …callStatus=4,callResult=8,callResult01=8…
    125635076: …callStatus=3,callResult=1,callResult01=8…

    You can find all values here.

~david

by dmacias

Two Days of Innovation and Insights at Enterprise Connect 2024: A Personal Overview

I was saddened that I could only do 2 days at EC24, but those 2 days were jam-packed. Here’s recap of what I saw and some thoughts on the some specific vendor announcements I got a chance to hear on the stage and see on the expo floor.

Overall Recap

This year brought a nice change to some of the main stage sessions with both vendors and customers sharing the stage. This added a nice dynamic to the conversation and helped balance some things out. In one of the sessions while all the vendors were saying single vendor is best a customer said the total opposite. The flip side of this is that some times the stage looked like a public school classroom with the number of people on stage. There were too many panelist and not enough time to really dive deeper into any one topic. Maybe break up the sessions to separate topics to avoid this.

It was interesting to hear that large orgs have task forces convened around how AI could be applied to their business. Sounds like use cases are brought to them and they assess the merits of using AI and put together a plan. While this all sounds like a great idea, instead of jumping head first and sprinkling AI on everything, I do wonder how much education and knowledge these tasks forces actually have. Is AI consulting a thing now? I suspect it is.

Burnout was a bigger talking point than the crunch on the potential employee pool size. While no one outright said that jobs will be eliminated, the reality is that they will. If you can reduce workload by a percentage, then there’s no reason why you couldn’t reduce your workforce by a similar amount. While we talk about cross skilling and shifting agents to do other tasks, I wonder how much that really happens. I suspect it might be easier to just hire for the new role than try to train up. Of course this is not universal, but if even half of these AI promises come through we will see a large number of agent seats evacuated. The burnout message didn’t seem aligned with what I project how AI will impact employment in the next 5-10 years.

AI dominated every session I attended and while I understand why it really felt like the same use cases over and over again. While I am sure it’s hard to come up with truly revolutionary use cases it does feel very repetitive seeing the same use case over and over again from all the vendors. It was also interesting to not see Edify be an exhibitor I wonder if this is a signal to how they are doing business wise, anyone know?

Vendor Specific Recap:

Microsoft

Live Keynote Recap: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dmacias_enterpriseconnect-activity-7178398994623078400-YD-c?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

I was expecting MS to open the floor with Copilot, then go into the demos with more Copilot, and finally bring it home with Copilot. However, this was not the case. The first part of their keynote was focused on hybrid work, which is a message that Cisco has been carrying for a few years.  Intelligent recap for phone calls was very cool and then being able to have Copilot use other assets and share outputs from the conversation with others was very cool. The voice isolation demo was a bit rough. I wonder if this is because MS has to do it all on software (Teams) while Cisco demos this on hardware.

The new to me Teams Queue App was of most interest to me. This is the greatest thread to every CCaaS provider out there. The introduction of the Queues App is the first clear signal of a native contact center like feature and while the person who gave me the demo of this feature said 3 times that “this is not a call center”, it sure smelled like a call center to me. Having an agent and supervisor view, ability to queue voicemails, ability to monitor agents and take over calls, and access to raw data make this feature very compelling and a no brainier to deploy if you want to keep everything on Teams. If I was a vendor that has bolted on contact center functionality on top of Teams I would be worried. Now, I really don’t think we’re going to see a full fledged contact center from MS next year, but I do think in the next 5 years they will finally be there and would have done it incrementally anchoring everything around Teams.

Cisco

Live Keynote Recap: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dmacias_entepriseconnect-activity-7178417256744329217-WOUg?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

The items that stood out were dropped call detection and summarization. Not sure if this is based on conversation context or PSTN signaling. It was also interesting to see Cisco talking about going beyond LLMs to what they called real time media model (RTMM). In short, giving AI other dimensions to make decisions. Their noise suppression demo was much better’s than Microsoft’s, but their noise was being produced by toys which had repetitive audio which might be much easier to filter out as well as the fact that they own the hardware which could allow for better suppression all around. Finally, Cisco still has some of the most attractive hardware out there. Their designs are just slick and the release of the 9800 (https://www.webex.com/us/en/devices/phone-series/cisco-phone-9800-series.html) phone continues that trend.

Zoom

I was not there for the Zoom keynote, but I did sit down on one of the expo sessions and went to the floor to bug them about what all they were releasing. First, VM transcription feature was pretty cool. The ability to automatically crate tasks from the content and have the system automatically bring certain VMs to the top for immediate attention. One feature I had not seen before and I believe is new is email routing, which is something none of the other big players are doing natively. Finally, licensing seems very straightforward and easy to understand… looking at your MS.

by dmacias

Read Only Script Editor Access in PCCE

This question came up this past week and I had a nagging suspicion it wasn’t the case and spent some time trying to get it to work. In the good old days of UCCE Config Manager had the Feature Control set capability which allowed users to have a limited view to the ICM Script Editor. This was great for those type of users who understood the scripting, but were not trained up enough to make changes.

The PCCE 11 documentation seems to hint at this being possible. You create a read-only Administrator and then you give them Script Editor access. I understand this is a huge leap, but it is not an unreasonable assumption. However, the 12.6 documentation removed that information as well removed the ability of having read-only administrator. It appears that your only option in CCE Admin > Users > Roles is to remove all access to Script Editor The following role:

Capture

Has this effect:

Capture1

If you add the Script Editor role again your user has full access to Script Editor again. So to summarize, it’s not possible to have a read only Script Editor user. I would love to be proven wrong. For now I hope this helps others out there looking for the answer.

~david

by dmacias

A Deeper Dive Into the Cisco Finesse Layout

I’ve been helping a customer migrate from Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) 11 to UCCE 12 and Amazon Connect. Depending on the complexity and needs of the business they might move to UCCE 12 or they might be moved to Connect. This has caused me to spend some time thinking of the most efficient way to migrate configuration between multiple environments and ensure everything is up to date.

One of the components which I’ve done a lot of work with, but never really looked at too closely is the Finesse layout. In this post we’ll break down what layouts are, how they work, and provide some interesting pieces of trivia around Finesse. This information is up to date as of Finesse 12.5. Make sure you reference the documentation for your specific version.

BACKGROUND

To start, the Finesse front end, what the agent and administrators see, are based on the OpenSocial specification. What this specification provides is a runtime environment where trusted and untrusted web components or gadgets can interact with the hosting platform, 3rd party services, or with other gadgets. Said differently, this specification sets the rules. It dictates how components will look, where they are placed, and what they can do. While the OpenSocial foundation no longer exists. At one point the foundation was moved under W3C where it was then set to inactive in 2018. The latest specification can be found living here.

An interesting bit of trivia. One of the original developers of OpenSocial was none other than MySpace. Remember them?

You will hear the word gadget multiple times and it is worth defining as it is a core block of Finesse. The best way to think about a gadget is as an application which can be embedded inside another application. If you’re familiar with widgets, you should consider gadgets to be very similar in nature. Now, something a lot of us fail to remember is that all of Finesse is actually one big gadget with a lot of smaller gadgets inside. While you can’t replace the whole gadget that runs on the Finesse server, you can add your own gadgets inside the Finesse gadget using a layout.

XML

The very first thing you need to understand is that like all things Cisco Contact Center Enterprise and Express you must be very familiar with working with XML. While XML has lost a lot of favor in the last few years, when it comes to desktop layouts, using XML makes a lot of sense. While editing a layout can be confusing, Cisco does a good job of assisting with basic syntax checking to catch simple errors. In an ideal world there would be a visualizer that previews the changes you’re making to your layout before saving them. Maybe one day.

The XML file loaded must conform to this schema. The schema is what dictates what tags your layout can have as well as naming conventions for components. 

The XML schema has the following elements defined. These are not in the order they appear in the schema, but I’ve ordered in a hierarchical way to better highlight their relationship. Additionally, there are other elements included in the schema which are not covered below. The list below shows the most important elements to read through to better understand a Finesse layout:

  • finesseLayout: Think of this as the outer boundaries of the whole desktop.
  • layout: The actual layout.
  • role: Role definition.
  • tabs: Grouping of tabs.
  • tab: Each single tab.
  • page: The grouping of gadgets within that page referenced by a tab.
  • columns: Grouping of columns.
  • column: Each single column.
  • gadget: The actual gadget URL.

Another interesting bit of trivia. The XML schema allows for three types of Finesse users: Agent, Supervisor, and Admin. While the desktop layout never references Admins the schema has an additional role that Cisco could later enable or currently uses for publicly restricted functions.

DESKTOP LAYOUTS

The layout is what dictates what will be loaded when an agent or supervisor login to Finesse. More importantly, it allows for the organization of different gadgets on the page to fit your contact center requirements. At its core the layout includes the following sections:

  • Horizontal Header: This section is the top bar across Finesse. And includes a Logo, Product Name, Agent State for Voice, State for Digital Channels, Dialer Component, and Identity Component. For most installations you’ll only ever see the logo, name, voice state, and identity components.
  • Alternate Hosts
  • Title and Logo in Header
  • Headless Configuration: If your gadget does not require a UI.
  • Customized Icons

Interesting tip: Most gadgets can be dragged and dropped and resized by agents, however out of the box this feature is disabled. To enable it look at the enableDragDropAndResizeGadget config key.

DEFAULT GADGETS

Out of the box you should see the following gadgets:

  • Call Control
  • Queue Statistics
  • Agent Call History
  • Agent State History
  • Customer Context
  • Team Data (Supervisor)

Additionally there are a good bit of disabled gadgets that you can use they all revolve around bringing CUIC data, specifically Live Data, to the agent desktop.

I hope to have time to dive deeper on this topic. There are so many little morsels of information every where you look, you just have to dig a little deeper to find them.

~david

by dmacias

Find specific phone number in Finesse phone books through the Finesse API using Python

A quick script that goes through every phone book looking for a specific number.

Here’s a quick Python script that will allow you to go through each phone book in Finesse and identify the phone book that has the phone number(s) you’re after. Just fill in your information ‘<>’ and update the numbers you want to find.

import requests # for using API
from requests.auth import HTTPBasicAuth
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET # for parsing XML

requests.packages.urllib3.disable_warnings() #If using a self signed certificate

rootURL = ‘<>’ # e.g. http://finesse.company.com
phonebooksURL = ‘/finesse/api/PhoneBooks’
username = ‘<>’ #Finesse admin username
password = ‘<>’

headers = {‘Accept’: ‘application/xml’, ‘Content-Type’: “application/xml”}

phonenumbers = [‘5555551234’, ‘5555551235’, ‘5555551236’, ‘5555551237’] #phone numbers you want to find.

res = requests.get(rootURL+phonebooksURL, headers= headers, verify=False, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(username, password))
print(res.status_code)

root = ET.fromstring(res.content)

for phonebooks in root:
phonebookId = phonebooks[3].text
res = requests.get(rootURL+phonebookId+’/Contacts’, headers=headers, verify=False, auth=HTTPBasicAuth(username, password))
print(res.status_code)
root = ET.fromstring(res.content)
for contacts in root:
for number in phonenumbers:
if number in contacts[3].text:
print(phonebooks[2].text, contacts[3].text)

~david

Audacity Export Encoding
by dmacias

Generating telephony audio prompts with Audacity on Windows and Mac

Using Audacity to generated CCITT u-law prompts on Windows and Mac.

This blog post should be pretty basic, but in the last few months I’ve had two different parties ask me about this so I figured I would capture this for posterity. If you want to use Audacity to convert your audio file to a compatible format that can play in your Cisco UCCX or CCE call center or any system that uses CCITT u-Law 8.000 Khz, 8 Bit, Mono format.

Assuming you’re running the latest version of Audacity (I’m using version 3.1.3 on both Windows and Mac). Open the audio file you wish to convert. There are 3 settings you must change.

  • The format needs to be set to PCM 16-bit.
  • Project Rate (Hz) needs to be set to 8000.
Audacity Format and Rate

Audacity Format and Rate

  • File > Export > Export as WAV and ensure you set the right encoding.
Audacity Export Encoding

Audacity Export Encoding

That’s it, you’re good to go.

~david

by dmacias

2022 Cisco Designated VIP

I am pretty jazzed for making this awesome list for the second year in a row. The amount of brain power that you can find in the Cisco community forums is insane and being grouped with them is an honor. I really appreciate the recognition from Cisco.

As an added bonus I looked back for my very first post on the community forums. It happened on 02/14/2006, almost 16 years ago. I don’t remember the specific project I was working on, but it involved IPCC Express 3.x… :)

~david

by dmacias

Adding Text to Speech to Your IVR Using SaaS (Google Cloud Functions)

A bit of code to allow your on premise IVR to have TTS using a cloud function.

I’ve been on a text-to-speech and speech-to-text kick lately. My last post talked about using AWS S3 and Amazon Transcribe to convert your audio files to text and in previous articles I’ve covered how to create temporary prompts using Poly so you can build out your contact center call flows. Well, now we’re going to expand our use case to allow a traditional on premise call center to leverage the cloud and provide dynamic prompts. My use case is simple. I want my UCCX call center to dynamically play some string back to my caller without having to use a traditional TTS service.

First, this is not new in any way and other people have solved this in different ways. This Cisco DevNet Github repo provides a method to use voicerss.org to generate TTS for UCCX. However, this process requires loading a jar file in order to do Base64 decoding. Then there’s this Cisco Live presentation from 2019, by the awesome Paul Tindall, who used a Connector server to do something similar. To be fair the Connector server allowed for a ton more functionality than what I’m looking for.

Screen Shot 2021-09-15 at 3.38.30 PM

Cisco Live Presentation

Second, I wanted this functionality to be as easy to use as possible. While functionality keeps getting better for on premise call center software there are still limitations around knowledge to leverage new features and legacy version that can’t be upgraded that makes it harder to consume cloud based services. I wanted the solution to require the least amount of moving parts possible. That means no custom Java nor additional servers to stand up.

The solution I came up with leverages Google’s cloud (GCP) specifically Cloud Functions. However, the same functionality can be achieves used AWS Lambda or Azure’s equivalent. At a high level we have an HTTP end point where you pass your text string to and in return you will get a wav file in the right format which you can then play back.

Blank diagram

Flow Diagram

The URL would look something like this:

https://us-central1-myFunction.cloudfunctions.net/synthesize_text_to_wav?text=American%20cookies%20are%20too%20big

The Good Things About This

  • Pay as you go pricing for TTS. Looking at the pricing calculator a few hours of TTS a month would run under $2.00/month.
  • Infinitely scalable. If you’re handling 1 call or 100 calls your function will always return data.
  • Easy to use.

The Bad Things About This

  • There is a delay between making the request and getting the wav file. I’ve seen as long as 7 seconds at times. I would only use this in a very targeted manner and ensure it didn’t affect the caller experience too drastically.
  • Requires your on premise IVR to have internet access. Often time this is a big no no for most businesses.

Some initial testing with UCCX is showing some positive results. I’m going to investigate if there’s a way to accelerate the processing in order to keep the request and response in under 3 seconds as well as adding the ability to set language, voice, and even SSML via arguments. If you want to build this yourself here’s the code for the function.

def synthesize_text_to_wav(request):
"""Synthesizes speech from the input string of text."""
text = request.args.get('text')

client = texttospeech.TextToSpeechClient()
input_text = texttospeech.SynthesisInput(text=text)
voice = texttospeech.VoiceSelectionParams(
language_code="en-US",
name="en-US-Standard-C",
ssml_gender=texttospeech.SsmlVoiceGender.FEMALE,
)
audio_config = texttospeech.AudioConfig(
audio_encoding=texttospeech.AudioEncoding.MP3
)
response = client.synthesize_speech(
request={"input": input_text, "voice": voice, "audio_config": audio_config}
)

src_file_path = '/tmp/output.mp3'
dst_file_path = '/tmp/output.wav'

# make sure dir exist
os.makedirs(os.path.dirname(src_file_path), exist_ok=True)

# The response's audio_content is binary.
with open(src_file_path, "wb") as out:
out.write(response.audio_content)
print('Audio content written to file "output.mp3"')
AudioSegment.from_mp3(src_file_path).export(dst_file_path, format="wav", codec="pcm_mulaw", parameters=["-ar","8000"])
return send_file(dst_file_path

Be awesome!

~david

by dmacias

Revisiting Initial Observations of Amazon Connect

Back in 2018 I made a series of posts detailing some of the good things and not so great things about Amazon Connect. Now that I’ve spent a few weeks getting reacquainted with the product I want to revisit one particular post (Initial Observations of Amazon Connect) and provide some update. While I love and am passionate about Cisco’s contact center offerings, I tried to check my bias as much as possible while working through this.

First, let’s cover some of the things I labeled as strange and provide an update:

  • Can’t change agent state while reserved or talking. Update: Has not changed.
  • If you use a desk phone, you can’t reject the call. Update: Has not changed.
  • Changes take about a minute or two to propagate and there’s no notification if your changes are live or not. Update: Has not changed.
  • If you create a new agent and then login as that agent using the same browser as before your admin session will be moved over to the new agent credentials. Painful when trying to test permissions on agents. Update: Has not changed. However, this is not an Amazon Connect issue as much as a browser caching and using multiple tabs issues.
  • You can’t re-route a connector by clicking on the start point, you must first delete the existing line and then create your new connector. Update: This has changed! You can re-route connectors by just clicking on the arrow.

Second, here are the things I said made no sense back in 2018 and their update:

  • Every step should have a Lambda invocation option. This would make the scripting a lot cleaner. Update: Has not changed.
  • If you reject a call and you’re the only agent you’re automatically set back to ready. Queue must be drained before last agent can change states out of available. Update: This has changed! You’re able to change to a non-routable state after you reject a call.
  • No default routing? I disabled the only queue and calls just dropped when I tried to route to that queue. You would think that the system would force some sort of default routing option just in case you make a mistake. Update: Has not changed. It is on the flow designer to account for queues being disabled.
  • Contact flow editor, no easy way to get back to all your contact flows. Update: Has not changed.
  • Agent auto accept takes about 12 seconds to trigger using soft-phone, this would impact agent stats and I really don’t see the point of having this feature if it’s going to take this long to connect an agent. Due to some limitation, I can’t re-rest.
  • When you save or publish a contact flow you get the same message “Contact flow saved successfully!” Different message for publish would be nice. Update: Has not changed. Seems to be such an easy change and would make the development of scripts so much easier.
  • No easy way to move the whole script. Work area should have infinite scroll to all sides. Update: I’ll give it a half change. While you still can’t select all blocks, you can zoom out and hold the control click and select the whole script or part of the script and move it. The fact that the script is still anchored to the top left corner still presents some challenges when you try to move things around.
  • You can’t select multiple nodes and move them, you must move one by one. Update: This has changed! Holding the control key allows you to select multiple nodes.
  • Flows don’t auto save drafts, if for some reason you don’t remember to save you’re SOL. Update: Has not changed.
  • How draft flows and published flows are handled is confusing. Not very user friendly. Update: Has not changed. While I’ve gotten more accustomed to it, it’s still could be a bit more intuitive.
  • Checking contact attributes doesn’t offer a NULL or NOT NULL condition check. Update: Has not changed.
  • When a connector goes behind a flow node, you can’t delete the connector. Update: I’ve not been able to reproduce this so I believe this has changed and the editor is better at automatically placing the lines.
  • No way to duplicate nodes. You must configure a new node from scratch every time. Update: This has changed! Holding the control key while you click a block allows you to copy it. This is probably the biggest change for me!

Amazon is pushing out tremendous new features and capabilities around Connect, but there are still some pretty glaring gaps which I believe could be easily solved. I will say the speed to develop and integrate feel unlimited, but once you get beyond the basics you need a good handle on code and AWS security and infrastructure to make your vision a reality.

~david

by dmacias

Update to Installing Multiple CVP Studio Versions

I was installing CVP Studio 12.5 on one of my VMs and referred back to this old blog post of mine when I realized I had missed on critical piece of information. If the installer complains that an upgrade is not supported:

[5-17-2021 17:55:31] Informational: ————————————————————
[5-17-2021 17:55:31] Informational: Starting Studio upgrade procedure…
[5-17-2021 17:55:31] Informational: User presented w/MessageBox: <Upgrade is not supported for Cisco Unified Call Studio.
Please do uninstall the older version and then install the newer version.>
[5-17-2021 17:55:37] WARNING: This installation has been aborted.

Look inside the following registry location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall In that folder do a search for CallStudio. Export that registry key’s folder and then delete it. After that you should be able to install as many CVP Studio versions as you need. Below is one of my VMs running 3 different versions. The export is as a backup in case you need to restore what you changed.

Screen Shot 2021-05-17 at 9.12.07 PM

Please note that uninstalling CVP Studio after doing this doesn’t really work well or at all. So caveat emptor.

~david