This feature provides the flexibility for agents and supervisors to access the Finesse desktop from anywhere through the Internet without requiring VPN connectivity to the enterprise data center. To enable this feature, a reverse-proxy pair must be deployed in the DMZ. For more information on this feature, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Features Guide, Release 12.6(1) and Security Guide for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise, Release 12.6(1).

Media access remains unchanged in reverse-proxy deployments. To connect to the media, agents and supervisors can use Cisco Jabber over MRA or the Mobile Agent capability of Contact Center Enterprise with a PSTN or mobile endpoint.

To use VPN-less access to Finesse desktop, you must upgrade Finesse, IdS, and CUIC to Release 12.6(1) ES02 or above. If you are using Unified CCE 12.6(1), you must upgrade Live Data to 12.6(1) ES02 or above. You can access the 12.6(1) ES03 Release and Readme from the following locations:

• Finesse 12.6(1) ES

• CUIC/LD/IdS 12.6(1) ES

Note

For Nginx-based reverse-proxy rules, installation, configuration, and security hardening instructions, refer to the Nginx TechNote article. Any reverse-proxy supporting the required criteria (as mentioned in the Reverse-Proxy Selection Criteria section of Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Features Guide, Release 12.6(1)) can be used in place of Nginx for supporting this feature. If CORS status is "enabled", you must explicitly add the reverse-proxy domain name to the list of CORS trusted domain names.

Unified CCE solution leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to provide services that assist agents. These Contact Center AI services are available for the agents through the Agent Answers gadget and the Call Transcript gadget on the Cisco Finesse desktop.

The Agent Answers gadget displays relevant suggestions and recommendations in real time for the agent to consider. The suggestions and recommendations are based on the ongoing conversation between the caller and the agent. Agent Answers enhances the customer experience because the timely suggestions improve the ability of the agent to respond.

The Call Transcript gadget dynamically converts the ongoing voice conversation to text and presents the text to an agent for real-time viewing and reference.

For details on how to configure the Agent Answers and Call Transcription features, see the Agent Answers and the Call Transcription chapters in the following documents:

• Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Features Guide, Release 12.5(1) at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-feature-guides-list.html

For information on the design considerations of the Agent Answers and Call Transcription features, see the Contact Center AI Services Considerations section in following documents:

• Solution Design Guide for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Release 12.5(1) at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-implementation-design-guides-list.html

You can modify your existing 24000 agent reference design to scale up to 36000 agents. This is accomplished by adding more peripheral VMs and peripheral gateways to the deployment and modifying specific configuration limits. You must also modify the OVA files for Live Data and Cisco Identity Service (IdS).

Note	The following engineering specials are required to support 36000 agents: ICM_12.5(1)_ES45 CUIC_12.5(1)_ES07 if you are using Live Data

This release introduces Smart Licensing that delivers visibility into your license ownership and consumption. Smart Licensing helps you to procure, deploy, and manage licenses easily and report license consumption. It pools license entitlements in a single account and allows you to move licenses freely through the virtual accounts.

Smart Licensing registers the product instance, reports license usage, and obtains the necessary authorization from Cisco Smart Software Manager or Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem.

For more information, see Configuration Guide for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-installation-and-configuration-guides-list.html.

For more information, see Administration Guide for Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-customer-voice-portal/products-installation-and-configuration-guides-list.html.

Cisco Webex Experience Management (referred to as Experience Management) is the platform for Customer Experience Management (CEM), integrated with powerful tools that allow you to see your business from your customer's perspective.

With Experience Management integrated with Unified CCE:

• Administrators can configure post call surveys to collect feedback directly from customers.

• Administrator can configure and initiate digital channel surveys when the agent responds to an email or chat from a customer by using the Enterprise Chat and Email gadget.

• Administrators can configure analytical gadgets, which can be viewed on the Finesse desktop.

• Agents and Supervisors can view pulse of the customers through industry standard metrics such as NPS, CSAT, and CES, or other KPIs.

See Experience Management Voice Surveys

See Experience Management Email/SMS Surveys

External DBLookUp registry configuration will support only encrypted value, the CCEDataProtect Tool is used to encrypt and decrypt sensitive information that the Windows registry stores in it. After upgrading to Release 12.5, if the DBLookUp is configured, then you must reconfigure the external DBLookUp registry value using the CCEDataProtect Tool to encrypt the data in the registry. For more information, refer to the Configure External DBLookUp Registry Value using CCEDataProtect Tool procedure in Administration Guide for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-maintenance-guides-list.html.

Configure the mode and percentage of the Campaign Skillgroup directly from the Campaign Skillgroup tab. This eliminates the need to use an administrative script to update the skill groups dynamically. An administrative script, if used, will override the configuration changes made from the Campaign Skillgroup tab.

For more details, see the Administrative Scripts for Outbound Option and Set Up an Administrative Script sections in the Outbound Option Guide for Unified Contact Center Enterprise at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-user-guide-list.html

If agents in Available state place outbound calls, the Unified CCE system sets the agent's state to NotReady before allowing the call (without manually setting the agent's state to NotReady from the CTI interface). The system changes the agent's state back to Available when the call ends or fails to connect.

For details on the reason code, see the Database Schema Handbook for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise, Release 12.5(1) at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-technical-reference-list.html. For details on the call manner type, see the CTI Server Message Reference Guide (Protocol Version 23) for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Release 12.5(1).

This enhancement also enables the Finesse Make Call from Ready feature via the Finesse API. For details, see Changes in REST APIs and the REST API Developer Guide at https://developer.cisco.com/docs/finesse/#!rest-api-dev-guide.

Note

Shared ACD line feature introduced in an ICM_12.5(1)_ES4, will require additional configuration in case you want to use it on 12.6(1). The behavior changes are: in that you will now select which device to use when you log into Finesse. It also requires a change in agent desk settings to enable for the agent. When you log in to Finesse, you will now select which device to use. Additional changes are required in agent desk setting incase you want to enable it for the agents.

This release includes shared ACD lines support for up to two devices. The support enables an agent with devices at different locations to utilize the same extension.

Note	UCM auto-answer and Agent Desk Settings auto-answer are not supported when shared ACD lines are in use.

For more information, see the Call Type Considerations for Phone Extensions section in the Solution Design Guide for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Release 12.5(1) at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-implementation-design-guides-list.html.

The Contact Center Enterprise (Unified CCE/Packaged CCE/Webex CCE) solutions supports the Webex Workforce Optimization offering. See https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/contact-center/webex-workforce-optimization/series.html.

This release introduces following security enhancements for CCE Administration:

• It is mandatory to import self-signed certificates (if CA-signed certificates are not used) of Solution components into the AW machines.

  For more information, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise Installation and Upgrade Guide at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-installation-guides-list.html.

• HTTP Security headers (Content-Security-Policy (CSP), X-Frame-Options, X-XSS-Protection, X-Content-Type-Options, and Strict-Transport-Security) have been introduced in the browser response to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

Note	To enable these Outbound Option enhancements, you must install the ICM_12.5(1)_ES90 on 12.5(1).

The following enhancements have been made to the Outbound Option feature:

• EnhancedPredictiveDialing, a new registry setting is added to reduce the idle time when there is a low hit rate for voice customers and when the agent idle times are long. This change adapts to the dialing rate more aggressively, irrespective of the configured abandon limit. This feature is disabled by default.

• The logic associated with the existing ReclassifyTransferFailures registry setting is modified so that the answering machine calls that are abandoned due to lack of agent or IVR resources are not counted as abandoned voice calls but as answering machine calls. ReclassifyTransferFailures registry setting is enabled by default on fresh installs and disabled by default in upgraded systems.

For more information, see the Dialer Registry Settings section in the Outbound Option Guide for Unified Contact Center Enterprise at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-enterprise/products-user-guide-list.html

Microsoft SQL Server 2017 and later versions include an execution plan enhancement that can intermittently cause performance issues with CCE database operations. If your CCE deployment uses SQL Server 2017 or later, set the SQL Server compatibility level for the CCE databases (Logger, AW, BA, and HDS) to the SQL Server 2014 equivalent—compatibility level 120. For more information, see CSCvw51851.

Do not change the compatibility level for SQL Server system databases.

Run the following query against each applicable CCE database:

ALTER DATABASE <CCE_database_name> SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 120

You can run this query while the system is in operation.

A new 12.5(1a) base installer is available for customers, which has OpenJDK JRE as the supporting Java runtime for all CCE applications. It is no different from the preceding 12.5(1) installer except for the Java runtime environment installed on the CCE virtual machines (VMs).

You can continue to use Oracle JRE if you installed CCE 12.5(1) before the release of 12.5(1a). Further Java security updates and fixes can be downloaded and installed from the Oracle website.

There is no requirement to redeploy/reinstall existing 12.5 CCE VMs using the 12.5(1a) installer to switch to OpenJDK. Download and install ES55 (mandatory OpenJDK ES) instead, as needed.

However, if you want to install any ESs released after ES55 on 12.5(1), then you must first install ES55 (mandatory OpenJDK ES) on the relevant VMs as a prerequisite.

SocialMiner will be referred to as Customer Collaboration Platform from release 12.5(1) onwards.