After you sign in, you can change your status to Ready to make yourself available for calls. The buttons in the call control area change depending on the situation. For example, when you are on a call, Consult, Hold, Keypad, and End buttons are available. When you have a call on hold and are on a consult call, Conference, Transfer, Retrieve, and End buttons are available. When you are on a conference call, buttons for Hold, Consult, Keypad, and End are available.

The Finesse agent desktop provides the following out-of-the-box functionality:

• Basic call control: Answer, hold, retrieve, end and make calls.

• Advanced call control: Make a consultation call and transfer or conference the call after the consultation.

• Send DTMF digits: Send DTMF digits to interact with an IVR system.

• Not Ready and Sign Out reason codes: Code to indicate why you are changing your status to Not Ready or signing out (your administrator defines these codes).

• Wrap-up reasons: Wrap-up reason for each call (your administrator defines the wrap-up reasons).

• Phonebooks: List of contacts from which you can select one to call (your administrator defines what contacts appear in your phonebook).

• Workflows: Your administrator can define workflows that are triggered by call events (for example, your administrator may create a workflow that causes a browser pop on your desktop when a call arrives).

• Live Data reports

The functionality available to you depends on what your administrator has configured. For example, if your administrator did not define wrap-up reasons, you cannot choose a wrap-up reason.

Note

To ensure that all features of the Finesse agent desktop work properly, you must disable pop-up blockers. If you use Internet Explorer to access Finesse, you must ensure that your browser is not running in Compatibility View. If Compatibility View is enabled in your browser, the following message appears: Your browser is now running in Compatibility View, which is not supported and may cause issues with Finesse. To continue, turn off Compatibility View. To turn off Compatibility View, click the icon to the right of the address bar in your browser, or from your browser menu, select Tools > Compatibility View.

In addition to the same call-control functionality provided by the agent desktop, the supervisor desktop also provides the following:

• Team Performance gadget

• Live Data gadget

Note	To ensure all features of the Finesse supervisor desktop work properly, you must disable pop-up blockers.

Team Performance Gadget

On the Team Performance gadget, you can select a team from a list of teams assigned to you. You can view the agents on that team, their current state, the time in state, and their extension. You can click the column headers to sort the information by Agent Name, State, Time in State, or Extension.

The Time in State field refreshes every 10 seconds. When Finesse receives an agent state change event, the timer for that agent resets to 0. Time in state displays for all agent states except for Logged Out.

The Team Performance gadget also provides the following functionality:

• Silent monitoring: Silently monitor an agent call.

• Force state change: Force an agent into Ready state or sign an agent out.

When you silently monitor an agent, a Barge In button appears in the call control area. You can click this button to barge in to a call between the agent and customer. After you barge in, you can choose to intercept the call by dropping the agent.

The Finesse desktop provides agent state and call timers.

The agent state timer appears next to the agent state drop-down list when you are in Not Ready or Ready state and updates every second. The format for this timer is mm:ss. If you are in the state for more than one hour, the format changes to hh:mm:ss (for example, 05:25 or 01:10:25).

When you change state (for example, from Not Ready to Ready or from Not Ready with a reason code to Not Ready with a new reason code), the timer resets to 00:00.

The Finesse desktop provides call timers in the Call Control gadget (in the format mm:ss). The call timers provide the following information:

• Total Call Time: Indicates the duration of your current call.

  

• Hold Time: Indicates the amount of time that the call has been on hold. When you place a call on hold, this timer shows the hold time, followed by the total call time in parentheses.

  

• Wrap-Up Time: Indicates the amount of time that you have been in wrap-up state. If wrap-up is enabled for you, you transition to wrap-up state when you end the call.

  

If the call exceeds 1 hour, the timer still displays in minutes and seconds. For example, at 1 hour and 15 seconds, the timer displays 60:15.

Note	If the Finesse server cannot accurately calculate the state time or the call time (such as under certain failover conditions), the timer displays in the format "- -:- -"

If the browser window for the Finesse desktop is minimized or behind another browser window, the browser window is restored or brought forward if any of the following occurs:

• A new call arrives on the desktop.

• You are signed out due to failover or inactivity.

• A supervisor signs you out.

The behavior of Finesse may differ depending on the browser used. The following table details the behavior of the Finesse desktop for the supported browsers.

Note

If you are using Internet Explorer to access the desktop, this feature works by default. If you use Firefox to access the desktop, you must perform the following steps for this feature to work. Open the Mozilla Firefox browser and enter the following in the address bar: about:config If a warning page appears that states this might void your warranty, click I'll be careful, I promise. In the Search field, enter dom.disable_window_flip. Double-click dom.disable_window_flip to set the value to false.

If Internet Explorer is used to access the Finesse desktop, certain settings must be configured in the browser to ensure all features of Finesse work properly.

Disable pop-up blockers.

Finesse does not support Compatibility View. Make sure the desktop is not running in Compatibility View.

Configure the following privacy and advanced settings:

1. From the browser menu, select Tools > Internet Options.

2. Click the Privacy tab.

3. Click Sites.

4. In the Address of website box, enter the domain name for the Side A Finesse server.

5. Click Allow.

6. In the Address of website box, enter the domain name for the Side B Finesse server.

7. Click Allow.

8. Click OK.

9. On the Internet Options dialog box, click the Advanced tab.

10. Under Security, uncheck the Warn about certificate address mismatch check box.

11. Click OK.

You must enable the following security settings to allow users to sign in:

• Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins

• Script ActiveX controls marked as safe for scripting

• Active scripting

To enable these settings:

1. From the Internet Explorer browser menu, select Tools > Internet Options.

2. Click the Security tab.

3. Click Custom level.

4. Under ActiveX controls and plug-ins, select Enable for Run ActiveX controls and plug-ins and Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting.

5. Under Scripting, select Enable for Active Scripting.

In a contact center deployment, Cisco Finesse is installed on two nodes. If the Finesse server that you are currently signed in to goes out of service, a banner appears at the top of the desktop that notifies you that the desktop lost connection to the server.

The Finesse desktop checks for the following:

• Whether the current Finesse server recovers its state
• Whether the alternate Finesse server is available

If the current Finesse server recovers, the desktop is reconnected. A banner appears that notifies you that you have successfully reconnected. If the current Finesse server does not recover but the alternate server is available, your desktop redirects to the alternate server and automatically signs you in.

When the desktop fails over or reconnects, if the last state you selected prior to the failover was Ready, Finesse attempts to preserve that state. When Finesse recovers, the desktop attempts to send a request to put you back in Ready state.

Note

The Finesse desktop can only preserve a selection of Ready state that was made on the same desktop. The following exceptions apply: If you are in Wrap-Up state when the desktop recovers, Finesse does not send a request because doing so would automatically end your wrap-up session. After the wrap-up timer expires, your state is determined by Unified Communications Manager and may depend on the type of failover that occurred. If you were put in Not Ready state (either by your supervisor or by the system (for example, Ring No Answer), your selection of Ready is not preserved. Unsolicited state changes are not taken into account. For example, if a supervisor put you in Ready state (you did not select Ready), your Ready state may not be preserved. If your last selection was Ready and the system attempts to change your state to Not Ready (such as for Ring No Answer), your selection of Ready is preserved.

Cisco Finesse supports only one desktop session at a time for each agent. If an agent signs in to the Finesse desktop and then tries to sign in to a second desktop session in another browser window or on another computer, on the same Finesse server, Finesse signs the agent out of the first desktop session.

If an agent signs in to Finesse and then opens another browser tab with the same URL, Finesse signs the agent out of the first session and automatically signs the agent in on the second tab. If the agent then opens a third tab with the same URL, the agent is taken to the sign-in page on the third tab. The agent remains signed in on the second tab and can continue to use the desktop. However, if the browser is refreshed, the agent is signed out of the second tab and presented with the sign in page.

It is possible for an agent to sign in to the desktop using the URL for one Finesse server and then sign in to the desktop using the URL for the alternate Finesse server. If the first server goes down and the desktop fails over to the alternate server, Finesse signs the agent out of the session on the alternate server.

Finesse does not support an agent signing in to two desktop sessions at the same time using the URL for each Finesse server.