CTI OS brings several major advances to developing custom CTI integration solutions. The CIL provides an object-oriented and event-driven Application Programming Interface (API), while the CTI OS Server does the heavy-lifting of the CTI integration: updating call context information, determining which buttons to enable on softphones, providing easy access to supervisor features, and automatically recovering from failover scenarios.

The key advantages of CTI OS include:

• Rapid integration. Developing CTI applications with CTI OS is easier and faster than any previously available Cisco CTI integration platform. The same object-oriented interface is used across programming languages, enabling rapid integrations in C++, Visual Basic, .NET, Java, or any Microsoft COM-compliant container environment.

  Note	The inclusion of the .NET toolkit allows for custom applications written in C#, VB.NET, or any other CLR-compliant language. By starting with the code for the .NET sample, the CTI Toolkit Combo Desktop developers can quickly customize the code without having to start from scratch.

  CTI OS enables developers to create a screen-pop application in as little as five minutes. The only custom-development effort required is within the homegrown application to which you add CTI.

• Complex solutions made simple. CTI OS enables complex server-to-server integrations and multiple agent monitoring-type applications. The CIL provides a single object-oriented interface that you can use in two modes: agent mode and monitor mode. For more information about these two modes, see CTI OS Developer Guide for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise at: http:/​/​www.cisco.com/​en/​US/​products/​sw/​custcosw/​ps14/​products_​programming_​reference_​guides_​list.html.

• Fault tolerant. CTI OS is built upon the Unified ICM Node Manager fault-tolerance platform, which automatically detects process failure and restarts the process, enabling work to continue. Upon recovery from a failure, CTI OS initiates a complete, system-wide snapshot of all agents, calls, and supervisors and propagates updates to all client-side objects.

The CTI OS CIL provides programmers with the tools required to rapidly develop high-quality CTI-enabled applications, taking advantage of the rich features of the CTI OS Server. Every feature of CTI OS was designed with ease of integration in mind, to remove the traditional barriers to entry for CTI integrations:

• Object-oriented interactions. CTI OS provides an object-oriented CTI interface by defining objects for all call center interactions. Programmers interact directly with Session, Agent, SkillGroup, and Call objects to perform all functions. CIL objects are thin proxies for the server-side objects, where all the 'heavy-lifting' is done. The Session object manages all objects within the CIL. A UniqueObjectID identifies each object. Programmers can access an object by its UniqueObjectID or by iterating through the object collections.

• Connection and session management. The CTI OS CIL provides out-of-the-box connection and session management with the CTI OS Server, hiding all of the details of the TCP/IP sockets connection. The CIL also provides out-of-the-box failover recovery. Upon recovery from a failure, the CIL automatically reconnects to another CTI OS Server (or reconnects to the same CTI OS Server after restart), reestablishes the session, and recovers all objects for that session.

• All parameters are key-value pairs. The CTI OS CIL provides helper classes to treat all event and request parameters as simply a set of key-value pairs. All properties on the CTI OS objects are accessible by name via a simple Value = GetValue("key") mechanism. Client programmers can add values of any type to the CTI OS Arguments structure using the enumerated CTI OS keywords or their own string keywords (for example, AddItem["DialedNumber", "1234"]). This provides for future enhancement of the interface without requiring any changes to the method signatures.

• Simple event subscription model. The CTI OS CIL implements a publisher-subscriber design pattern to enable easy subscription to event interfaces. Programmers can subscribe to the event interface that suits their needs, or use the AllInOne interface to subscribe to all events. Subclassable event adapter classes enable programmers to subscribe to event interfaces and only add minimal custom code for the events they use, and no code at all for events they do not use.

On supported Windows client machines, users must have privileges that enables them to run legacy applications and have read/write access to the Cisco registry keys that the desktop applications use. To set user privileges to enable users to run CTI OS Agent Desktop and CTI OS Supervisor Desktop, an administrator must perform the following steps.

Besides the differences in implementation, CTI OS and Unified CM also differ in when they can be invoked and when they end.

Unified CM-based silent monitor allows a supervisor to listen in on agent calls in UCCE call centers. Supervisors can send silent monitor requests to monitor agents without the agent being aware of any monitoring activity. When the Unified CM-based approach is adopted for silent monitoring, the agent phone is used to mix the media streams of the agent call. The mix is then sent to the supervisor phone.

Figure 2. Unified CM-Based Silent Monitor

CTI OS-based silent monitor allows a supervisor to listen in on agent calls in UCCE call centers that use CTI OS. Supervisors can send silent monitor requests to agent desktops without the agent being aware of any monitoring activity. Voice packets sent to and received by the monitored agent's IP desk phone are captured from the network and sent to the supervisor silent monitor service connected to the supervisor desktop. At the supervisor silent monitor service, these voice packets are decoded and played on the supervisor system sound card.

Figure 3. CTI OS-Based Silent Monitor

Note	Silent monitor does not capture and translate DTMF digits that are selected on the CTI OS Agent Desktop or on agent desk phones.

Note

For the agent using the 7941, 7961, 7970, and 7971 phones, you must configure these devices on the Unified CM Administration web page with the "Span to PC Port", "PC Voice VLAN Access" and the "PC Port" enabled. By default, the "Span to PC Port" is disabled and the "PC Voice VLAN Access" and the "PC Port" are enabled.