Mobile Agent Guide for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted Release 9.0(1)
Chapter: Introduction to Cisco Unified Mobile Agent for Unified CCE/Unified CCH
Introduction to Cisco Unified Mobile Agent for Unified CCE/Unified CCH
- Cisco Unified Mobile Agent Description
- Feature Requirements
- Supported Unified CCE/Unified CCH features
- Important Considerations
- Unified Mobile Agent call flows
- Unified Mobile Agent Reporting
Cisco Unified Mobile Agent Description
Cisco Unified Mobile Agent (Unified Mobile Agent) enables an agent using any PSTN phone and a broadband VPN connection (for agent desktop communications) to function just like an agent sitting in a formal call center and using a Cisco IP Phone that is monitored and controlled by Unified CM JTAPI.
Unified Mobile Agent for Unified CCE/Unified CCH supports call center agents using phones that are not directly controlled by Unified CCE/Unified CCH. You can physically locate a Mobile Agent:
- Outside the contact center, by using an analog phone in the home or a cell phone.
- By using an IP phone connection that is not CTI-controlled by Packaged CCE or by an associated Unified Communications Manager.
- By any voice endpoints on any ACD (including those on other Unified Communication Managers) that are reachable by a SIP trunk from the contact center Unified Communication Manager.
In addition, a Unified Mobile Agent can be available through different phone numbers at different times; the agent enters the phone number at login time. In other words, the agent can access Unified Mobile Agent using any phone number, as long the agent can dial that number through the Unified Communications Manager dial plan.
With Cisco Unified Mobile Agent, contact centers can:
- Add/enable temporary staff during seasonal high call volume who can be brought on line with reduced startup costs
- Provide agents with the flexibility to work from home with similar quality, function, performance, convenience, and security as are available in the corporate headquarters contact center
- Allow agents to use the device they are most comfortable with, which improves agent productivity, helps to retain agents, and reduces training costs
- Hire skilled employees where they live and integrate remote workers into geographically dispersed teams with access to equivalent corporate applications
The sections that follow highlight some of the benefits of Unified Mobile Agent, and describe its features.
- Unified Mobile Agent extends Unified CCE/Unified CCH capabilities
- Unified Mobile Agent Provides Agent Login Flexibility
- Connection modes
- Agent Greeting and Whisper Announcement
Unified Mobile Agent extends Unified CCE/Unified CCH capabilities
Prior to Unified Mobile Agent, Unified CCE/CCH used a JTAPI interface to Unified CM to connect customer calls arriving on a voice gateway to an agent's IP phone. Unified Mobile Agent extends the Unified CCE/Unified CCH architecture by enabling it to connect customer calls to an agent phone that is not controlled by Unified CCE/Unified CCH.
Unified Mobile Agent uses a pair of CTI ports that function as proxies for the Mobile Agent phone and the caller phone. Two CTI ports (local and remote) are required for every logged-in Mobile Agent, and the two CTI ports take the place of the Cisco IP Phone monitored and controlled by Unified CM JTAPI. The local CTI port DN is used by the agent at login and is where callers are routed when this agent is selected. The remote CTI port calls the agent either at login for a nailed (permanent) connection or upon being selected for a call by call connection.
Cisco Unified Contact Center functionality remains intact whether an agent is mobile or local:
- Mobile Agents have the same capabilities and functionality that local agents have.
- Mobile Agents do not need any specialized equipment; they can receive calls on an analog or cellular phone.
- Unified Mobile Agent supports Cisco CTI OS Agent Desktop, Cisco Agent Desktop (CAD), Cisco Agent Desktop-Browser Edition (CAD-BE), and Cisco Finesse.
- Mobile Agent activity is recorded in the same contact center reports as local agent activity.
- Mobile Agent CTI and application data uses the same security mechanisms as local agent data.
Unified Mobile Agent Provides Agent Login Flexibility
Agents, at various times, can be either local agents or a Mobile Agents, depending on how they log in.
Regardless of whether agents log in as local or Mobile Agents, the skill groups that they belongs to do not change. In addition, because agents are chosen by existing selection rules and not according to how they are connected, the same routing applies regardless of how the agents log in. In other words, if you want to use the scripting environment to control routing depending on whether agents are local or mobile, you need to assign the agents to different skill groups and design the script accordingly.
Connection modes
Cisco Unified Mobile Agent allows system administrators to configure agents to use either call by call dialing or a nailed connection, or the administrator can configure agents to choose a connection mode at login time.
Mobile Agents are defined as agents using phones not directly controlled by Unified CC, irrespective of their physical location. (The term local agent refers to an agent who uses a phone that is under control of Unified CC, irrespective of physical location.)
You can configure Mobile Agents using either of two delivery modes:
- Call by Call—In this mode, the Mobile Agent's phone is dialed for each incoming call. When the call ends, the Mobile Agent's phone is disconnected before being made ready for the next call.
- Nailed Connection—In this mode, the agent is called at login time and the line stays connected through multiple customer calls.
 Note |
The administrator can select the Agent chooses option, which allows an agent to select a call delivery mode at login. |
Call by Call
In a call by call delivery mode, the Mobile Agent's phone is dialed for each incoming call. When the call ends, the Mobile Agent's phone disconnects before is it made ready for the next call.
The call by call call flow works as follows:
- At login, the agent specifies an assigned extension for a CTI port.
- A customer call arrives in the system and, through normal Unified ICM configuration and scripting, is queued for a skill group or an agent. (This is no different than existing processing for local agents.)
- The system assigns an agent to the call. If the agent's Desk Setting is Unified Mobile Agent-enabled and configured for either call by call or Agent chooses mode, the router uses the extension of the agent's CTI port as a label.
- The incoming call rings at the agent's CTI port. The JTAPI Gateway and PIM notice this but do not answer the call.
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A call to the agent is initiated on another CTI port chosen from a preconfigured pool. If this call fails, Redirect on No Answer processing is initiated.
Note
In call by call mode, the Answer Wait Time is 3 to 15 seconds longer than in a local agent inbound call scenario. Specify a Redirect on No Answer setting large enough to accommodate the extra processing time. - When the agent takes the remote phone off-hook to answer the call, the system directs the customer call to the agent's call media address and the agent's call to the customer's call media address.
- When the call ends, both connections are terminated and the agent is ready to accept another call.
Note |
In call by call delivery mode, callers often perceive a longer ring time compared to nailed connection delivery mode. This is because callers hear the ringtone for the duration of the call flow; ringing stops only after the agent answers. From the Unified CCE reporting perspective, a Mobile Agent in call by call delivery mode has a longer Answer Wait Time for the same reason. |
Nailed Connections
In nailed connection delivery mode, the agent is called once, at login, and the phone line remains connected through multiple customer calls. See the following figure.
The nailed connection call flow works as follows:
- At login, the agent specifies an assigned extension for a CTI port from a pool.
- A call to the agent is initiated on another CTI port chosen from a preconfigured pool. The agent answers the call. (The agent must answer this setup call to complete the connection and finalize the login procedure.)
- A customer's call arrives in the system and, through normal Packaged CCE configuration and scripting, is queued for a skill group or an agent. (This is no different than existing processing for local agents.)
- The system assigns an agent to the call. If the agent's Desk Setting is Unified Mobile Agent-enabled and configured for either nailed connection or Agent chooses mode, the router uses the extension of the agent's CTI port as a label.
- The incoming call rings at the agent's CTI port. The JTAPI Gateway and PIM notice this but does not answer the call.
- The agent desktop indicates a call is ringing and the agent clicks Answer.
- When the agent indicates that they will answer the phone, the system directs the customer call to the agent's call media address and the agent call to the customer's call media address.
- When the call ends, the customer connection is terminated and the agent state is set to Ready.
Connect Tone
The Connect Tone feature in the nailed connection mode enables the system to play a tone to the Mobile Agent through the agent's headset to let the agent know when a new call is connected. In the nailed connection mode, you can configure an audible connect tone in addition to a call arrival notice (on the desktop only).
Connect Tone is particularly useful when Auto Answer is enabled or the agent is an Outbound agent. Here are its features:
- An audible tone (two beeps) is sent to the Mobile Agent headset when the call to the nailed connection Mobile Agent is connected. It is a DTMF tone played by Unified CM and cannot be modified.
- The Connect Tone plays only when the nailed connection Mobile Agent receives a call, as in the following examples:
Agent Greeting and Whisper Announcement
Note |
You can use Agent Greeting for Mobile Agents only with parent/child deployments that are approved by Cisco Assessment-to-Quality (A2Q) with Design Mentoring Services (DMS). |
Agent Greeting
You can use the Agent Greeting feature to record a message that plays automatically to callers when they connect to you. Your greeting message can welcome the caller, identify you, and include other useful information.
Limitations
The following limitations apply to the Agent Greeting feature for Mobile Agents.
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If a Mobile Agent hangs up when an Agent Greeting plays, the customer still hears the complete Agent Greeting before the call ends. This applies for both call by call and nailed-up calls.
Note
In the Agent Greeting Call Type Report, this call does not appear as a failed agent greeting call. - A supervisor cannot barge in when an Agent Greeting is playing.
- If a Peripheral Gateway (PG), JTAPI Gateway (JGW), or PIM failover occurs when an Agent Greeting plays for a Mobile Agent, the call fails.
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If a Mobile Agent hangs up when an Agent Greeting plays, the customer still hears the complete Agent Greeting before the call ends.
Note
In the Agent Greeting Call Type Report, this call does not appear as a failed agent greeting call.
- If a Peripheral Gateway (PG), JTAPI Gateway (JGW), or PIM failover occurs when an Agent Greeting plays for a Mobile Agent, the call fails. This applies for both call-by-call and nailed-up calls.
For more information about Agent Greeting, see Agent Greeting requirements.
Whisper Announcement
With Whisper Announcement, agents can hear a brief prerecorded message just before they connect with each caller. The announcement plays only to the agent; the caller hears ringing (based on existing ringtone patterns) while the announcement plays. The announcement can contain information about the caller that helps the agent to prepare for the call; for example, language preference or customer status.
Configuration Requirement
For the Whisper Announcement feature for Unified Mobile Agents, you require a Media Termination Point (MTP) resource on an incoming SIP device. .
For more information about Whisper Announcement, see Whisper Announcement requirements.
Feature Requirements
Hardware and software requirements
Hardware and software requirements for the Unified Mobile Agent are identical to those of Unified CCE. For more information about limitations and scalability for Unified Mobile Agent, see the Hardware & System Software Specification (Bill of Materials) for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted, Release 9.0(1).
Phone Requirements
A Unified Mobile Agent can use an analog, digital, or IP phone to handle calls.
Conference Requirements
To use Agent Greeting for Mobile Agents, you must configure external conference-bridge (hardware) resources. To estimate the number of required resources, you can use the following formula:
Number of conference bridge resources = Mobile Agent call rate × Average greeting time (in seconds)
For information about configuring external conference-bridge resources, see the dspfarm profile 1 for conference configuration section in the sample configuration gateway, listed in Media Termination Points Configuration.
For information about using Agent Greeting from CTI OS Agent Desktop, see the note in Verify Login.
CTI Port Requirements
You require two CTI ports (local and remote) for every logged-in Mobile Agent.
Unified Mobile Agent uses Unified CM CTI Port as a proxy for the agent's phone. When this proxy is set up, whenever a Mobile Agent is selected to handle a customer call, the following happens:
- The call is directed to the CTI port extension.
- Unified CCE/Unified CCH, using the JTAPI Gateway, intercepts the call arriving on the CTI Port and directs Unified CM to connect the call to the Mobile Agent.
Unified Mobile Agent requires that maximum number of calls is set to 2 and busy trigger is set to 1.
For Unified Mobile Agent to work properly, you must configure two CTI ports:
One port is required per Mobile Agent. You must assign these CTI ports to theUnified ICME application. The ports are recognized by Unified ICME when receiving the Unified CM configuration.
Supported Unified CCE/Unified CCH features
The following features are supported:
- Unified CCE support temporary uninstallation while preserving Mobile Agent data. For more information about temporary uninstallation, see the Installation and Configuration Guide for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted
- Mobile Agents can participate in outbound campaigns, but they must use a nailed-up connection for all outbound dialing modes.
- Unified Mobile Agent supports Redirect on No Answer (RONA). If the Mobile Agent fails to answer, the agent is made Not Ready, and the call is redirected to a RANA DN route point.
- Unified Mobile Agent supports silent monitoring in CTI OS and in Cisco Agent Desktop (CAD)
- Unified Mobile Agent supports the same call control capabilities as Unified CCE/Unified CCH (answer, hold, transfer, and so on). All call control is done through the CAD.
- Unified MA supports G.711A law, G.711U law, and G.729 codecs.
- There is no direct interaction between Unified Mobile Agent and multichannel applications. Email and Chat are IP applications that continue to operate normally, assuming the Mobile Agent has a desktop with enough bandwidth on the broadband connection to support them.
- Unified Mobile Agent supports Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (Unified CVP) and Cisco Unified IP-IVR (Unified IP IVR).
Fault tolerance support
Fault tolerance for the Unified Mobile Agent follows the behavior of Unified CCE/Unified CCH:
- The JTAPI Gateway, IPCC PIM, and CTI components record key events related to Unified Mobile Agent as part of their normal logging.
- As with standard Unified CC calls, if a Peripheral Gateway (PG) component such as the JTAPI Gateway fails, the phone call is not lost, but subsequent call control (transfer, conference, or hold) might not be possible after a failover. The Mobile Agent is notified of a failure (on the desktop), but they must log in again after a Unified CM or Unified ICM failure occurs.
- Where CTI data is delivered for screen pops, CTI data is preserved.
Unified Mobile Agent can experience many of the same failure cases as Unified CC:
There are also some failure cases that are unique to Unified Mobile Agent:
- A situation where a Mobile Agent is using a cellular phone and the connection is dropped due to non-availability of a signal, is deemed as external failure. The agent must call back and log-in again.
- If a Mobile Agent's phone line disconnects while using nailed connection mode, the agent must log in again to receive new calls.
Important Considerations
Before you proceed, consider the following Unified Mobile Agent limitations and recommendations:
Failover
- During failover, if an agent in call by call mode answers an alerting call, the call can drop. This occurs because the media cannot be bridged when there is no active PG.
- During a prolonged Peripheral Gateway (PG) failover, if an agent takes call control action for a Unified Mobile Agent-to-Unified Mobile Agent call, the call can drop. This occurs because the activating PG might not have information for all agents and calls at that point.
- Unified CM failover causes a Mobile Agent call to be lost because call preservation on H.323 devices is not supported.
- If a call by call Mobile Agent initiates a call (including a supervisor call) and does not answer the remote leg of the call before PG failover, the call fails. The agent must disconnect the remote agent call leg and reinitiate the call.
Performance
- Mobile Agent call processing uses significantly more server resources and therefore reduces the maximum number of supported agents on both Unified CM and the Unified ICM Agent PG. For more information about sizing Mobile Agents, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise 8.x Solution Reference Network Design (SRND). For more information about this release, see the Hardware & System Software Specification (Bill of Materials) for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted, Release 9.0(1).
- Because Unified Mobile Agent adds processing steps to Unified CCE/Unified CCH default functionality, Mobile Agents might experience some delay in screen popup windows.
- From a caller's perspective, the call by call delivery mode has a longer ring time compared with the nailed connection delivery mode. This is because Unified CCE/Unified CCH does not start to dial the Mobile Agent's phone number until after the call information is routed to the agent desktop. In addition, the customer call media stream is not connected to the agent until after the agent answers the phone. The caller hears a repeated ring tone while Unified CCE/Unified CCH makes these connections.
Codec
Silent Monitoring
Unified Mobile Agent provides the following silent monitoring support:
- Mobile Agent supports CTI OS server-based silent monitoring only. Unified CM-based silent monitoring is not supported.
- Unified Mobile Agent requires that caller and agent voice gateways be on separate devices if silent monitoring is to be used.
- Unified Mobile Agent does not support desktop monitoring.
- Whenever silent monitoring is used on Unified Mobile Agent, caller and agent voice gateways must be on separate devices. Similarly, if MTP is enabled when silent monitoring is used, MTP resources for caller and agent must also be on separate devices.
Note |
For more information about Silent Monitoring requirements in a Unified Mobile Agent environment, see CTI OS System Manager's Guide for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted. |
Mobile Agent scalability
Mobile Agent scalability may be contingent on specific Unified CM versions. For more information, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise 8.x Solution Reference Network Design (SRND).
Unsupported Features
The following is a list of unsupported features for Mobile Agent:
Unified Mobile Agent call flows
This section provides sample Unified Mobile Agent call flows for:
- Inbound calls
- Local consultation calls
- Remote consultation calls
- Remote conference calls
In all Unified Mobile Agent call flows, the JTAPI Gateway maintains the signaling association between the inbound and outbound calls and, if necessary, performs further operations on the call. JTAPI Gateway, however, does not terminate media; it uses CTI to deliver the customer call from the inbound gateway port to the outbound gateway port.
This means that a Mobile Agent must use an agent desktop application to log in, change agent state, log out, and perform call control.
- About figures in this section
- Inbound call flow
- Local consult calls
- Remote consult calls
- Remote conference calls
- Outbound Option call flow
About figures in this section
The figures in this section:
- Show a caller and a Mobile Agent in a cellular network. However, the same concepts apply whether the Mobile Agent is using an enterprise desk phone, an IP Phone spanning another Unified CM cluster, standard analog phone, or a third-party ACD phone.
- Focus solely on call media flow; a Mobile Agent must use a CTI Desktop with broadband access to perform agent state and call control.
- Show only a sampling of the call flows possible with Unified Mobile Agent.
Inbound call flow
The following figure shows an inbound call flow.
Note |
Caller and Agent voice gateways can coreside on one device, except in deployments where Silent Monitoring is required. |
The following describes an inbound call flow:
- The Mobile Agent becomes available to answer calls by:
- A customer call arrives at the Unified CC.
- The JTAPI Gateway creates a Mobile Agent class to manage local and network CTI ports for a Mobile Agent.
- The Router passes the call to the local CTI Port of a Mobile Agent.
- The JTAPI Gateway places a call on a network CTI port to the agent's cell phone.
- The JTAPI Gateway uses local and network CTI ports of the Mobile Agent to stream the media for the call from the inbound (caller) gateway port to the outbound (agent) gateway port.
Local consult calls
The following figure shows a consult call flow between a Mobile Agent and a local agent.
Note |
Caller and Agent voice gateways can coreside on one device, except in deployments where Silent Monitoring is required. |
The following describes a local consult call flow:
- The Mobile Agent becomes available to answer calls by:
- A customer call arrives at the Unified CC.
- The JTAPI Gateway creates a Mobile Agent class to manage local and network CTI ports for a Mobile Agent.
- The Router passes the call to the local CTI Port of a Mobile Agent.
- The JTAPI Gateway places Agent Connection Call 1 on a network CTI port to the agent's cell phone.
- The Mobile Agent places the customer call on hold and consults a local Unified CCE/Unified CCH agent.
- The JTAPI Gateway uses local and network CTI ports of the Mobile Agent to stream the media for the call from the IP hard phone to the outbound gateway port.
Remote consult calls
The following figure shows a remote consult call flow between two Mobile Agents.
Note |
Caller and Agent voice gateways can coreside on one device, except in deployments where Silent Monitoring is required. |
The following describes a remote consult call flow:
- The Mobile Agent becomes available to answer calls by:
- A customer call arrives at the Unified CC.
- The JTAPI Gateway creates a Mobile Agent class to manage local and network CTI ports for a Mobile Agent.
- The Router passes the call to the local CTI Port of a Mobile Agent.
- The JTAPI Gateway places Agent Connection Call 1 on a network CTI port to the agent's cell phone.
- Mobile Agent 1 puts the customer call on hold and consults Mobile Agent 2.
- The JTAPI Gateway uses the network CTI port of Mobile Agent 1 and the network CTI port of Mobile Agent 2 to stream the media for the call from the outbound gateway port on Agent Gateway 1 to the outbound gateway port on Agent Gateway 2.
Remote conference calls
The following figure shows a remote conference call flow between two Mobile Agents.
Note |
Caller and Agent voice gateways can coreside on one device, except in deployments where Silent Monitoring is required. |
The following describes a remote conference call flow:
- The Mobile Agent becomes available to answer calls by:
- A customer call arrives at the Unified CC.
- The JTAPI Gateway creates a Mobile Agent class to manage local and network CTI ports for a Mobile Agent.
- The Router passes the call to the local CTI Port of a Mobile Agent.
- Unified CM redirects the media stream 1 from inbound gateway on the Caller Gateway to the conference bridge during call merging process.
- The JTAPI Gateway uses local and network CTI ports of Mobile Agent 1 to loop the Media Stream 2 for the call from the outbound gateway port on the Agent Gateway 1 to the conference bridge.
- The JTAPI Gateway uses local and network CTI ports of Mobile Agent 2 to loop the Media Stream 3 for the call from the outbound gateway port on the Agent Gateway 2 to the conference bridge.
Outbound Option call flow
The following figure shows a Outbound Option call flow between a customer and a Mobile Agent.
Note |
Unified Mobile Agent supports Outbound Option calls in nailed connection delivery mode only. |
Note |
Caller and Agent voice gateways can coreside on one device, except in deployments where Silent Monitoring is required. |
The following describes an Outbound Option call flow:
- The Mobile Agent becomes available to answer calls by:
- The JTAPI Gateway creates a Mobile Agent class to manage local and network CTI ports for a Mobile Agent.
- Outbound Option dials the customer number and, after reaching a live customer, the Dialer redirects the customer call to the local CTI Port of an Outbound Option Mobile Agent.
- The JTAPI Gateway places a call on a network CTI port to the agent's cell phone.
- The JTAPI Gateway uses local and network CTI ports of the Mobile Agent to stream the media for the call from the inbound gateway port to the outbound gateway port.
Unified Mobile Agent Reporting
Unified Mobile Agent-specific call data is contained in the following Cisco Unified Intelligence Center reports: Agent Team Historical, Agent Real Time, and Agent Skill Group Historical. These “All Field” reports contain information in multiple fields that show what kind of call the agent is on (nonmobile, call by call, nailed connection) and the Unified Mobile Agent phone number.
Notes about Mobile Agents and reporting:
- The Mobile Agent must be logged in through the agent desktop for call data to be recorded in Unified CC reports.
- Service level for Mobile Agent calls might be different than local agent calls, because it takes longer to connect the call to the agent. For example, a call by call Mobile Agent might have a longer Answer Wait Time Average than a local agent. This is because Unified CCE/Unified CCHdoes not start to dial the Mobile Agent phone number until after the call information is routed to the agent desktop. In addition, the customer call media stream is not connected to the agent until after the agent answers the phone. For more information about Unified Mobile Agent fields in the database schema, see Database Schema Guide for Cisco Unified ICM/Contact Center Enterprise & Hosted.
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