DrVoIP, Author at DrVoIP - AWS Cloud Solutions

Slamming it with ShoreTel Call Manager desktop deployment option!

Posted on March 7, 2014 by DrVoIP

One of the challenges in any ShoreTel deployment is the desktop Call Manager client installation. You can breeze through the complexity of a ShoreTel multi-server, multi-site deployment only to be foiled when the desktop clients need to be installed or updated. Nobody wants the thankless task! As most users do not have Local Administration rights to install software on their desktop machines, the system administrator gets a new task. So it is either “sneaker net” or an Active Directory Group Policy push out. Meanwhile, the ShoreTel deployment is otherwise complete! Frustration as the entire deployment is good to go, but the desktop clients have yet to be installed or updated! When does the admin team get here?

Now there is a tool out there that makes sense and can be a great help to the field implementation team, charged with getting the ShoreTel system installed, on time and on budget! Enter the rock stars at AdminArsenal with a very kool software solution named PDQ deploy and put an end to this client install fiasco! The product makes it easy to do a network based push out of the ShoreTel client, by the ShoreTel installation team as long as they have an Admin account and meet these two conditions: The target computers must be on the same network. This is not an over the Internet install. The application or patch must support a silent install. Most do, however there are some who do not. The admin must determine what the silent parameter is (/s, /quiet, etc.) to do the push. (Here are package details).

Think if this as a great tool for a deployment in which the ShoreTel implementation team needs to do all the onsite work when they might not have access to the client desktop help desk. PDQ will let you install MSI files to multiple computers! If your are a ShoreTel VoIP engineer, you need to add this solution to your tool kit! Check out a free trial!

Keep those comments comming!

UCCX Cheat Sheet – Agent Log-in in using Extension Mobility!

Posted on March 5, 2014 by DrVoIP

There is a two step process for logging into the systems if you are a mobile worker. The first step is to log into a Telephone and make the phone your Extension number. The Second Step is to log into the CISCO Agent Desktop (i.e. CAD) and make yourself ³Ready² to receive calls from the Contact Center.

Step One: – GoTo the phone you are logging into and press the button labeled ³services². This will bring up a list of Services that your phone supports. You should one or more services. Select the Service entitled ³Extension Mobility² by highlighting it with up/down scroll button on phone or entering the menu number.

Step Two: You will be prompted to enter your User Name and PIN. The User Name is your Active Directory (i.e. AD) login name, usually in the form of First Letter of your First Name followed by your Last Name. For Example, pbuswell. You will have to use the Touch Tone Pad on the phone to enter your name, and it is a bit cumbersome, but you will figure it out. The PIN number, unless you have changed it, will be the default of 12345678

The Phone should wink and blink¹ and reset itself. When it comes back alive, you should see your Extension number in the Display of the Phone. This means you have successfully logged into the phone on this desk! Please remember to reverse the process and LOG OUT when you are done.

Step Three: Log into the CAD, by bringing that software up on your associated computer. This will be a Short Cut on your desktop, or you will find it with your mouse under the Start, All Programs, CISCO, Desktop, Agent. You will then be presented with a screen that prompts for your User Name, Extension and Password. Enter your AD user name as used in the above step. The Extension is to match the Extension on your phone, and the Password is your AD password.

This should log you into the Contact Center and bring up your Agent Tool bar similar to the one below, though your buttons may be smaller. To indicate that you are READY to receive calls, you will need to push the READY icon (mouse over ICON) to see what they do! When you do not want to receive calls, you will push the NOT READY icon. At the top of the tool bar you will note your current Status!

Repurpose your CISCO 7900 phones as ShoreTel sip Extensions!

Posted on February 22, 2014 by DrVoIP

The CISCO 7900 series of phones have been a very popular handset in the “hosted” PBX space. CISCO discourages the use of these phones on other than CISCO systems, but there are so many of them out there, that they end up being used on a range of other systems from 3CX, ShoreTel to Asterisk and FreePBX. A company moving from a “hosted” solution or converting from a CISCO Call Manager to a ShoreTel system, for example, would normally wanted to protect their investment in handsets and repurpose them for use on ShoreTel. The CISCO 7900 family of phones has been shipping since at least 2002 and estimates have been that over 1 million handsets ship to market every day! By any measure, the market is littered with these phones. We would caution you however, before you hit Ebay, to understand that what you save in the purchase of handset hardware, you may end up spending in professional services and cumulated aggravation! If you are still committed to burning up IT staff or professional service hours, there are a few key issues you will need to understand.

First, CISCO Call Manager solutions have historically used a proprietary protocol named “skinny” of SCCP. Most hosted solutions have used the industry standard SIP protocol and because of its wide adoption by vendors in general, most new systems can support SIP end points. CISCO 79X0, 79X1 and 79X2 handsets most have their firmware converted from SCCP to SIP before they can be used on any SIP based system or on ShoreTel. The process of converting the firmware is not all that difficult but does require some basic resources like a CISCO login account and a TFTP server, though we have found the needed firmware all over the Internet. Setting up a TFTP server can be implemented in a number of ways from open source solutions like PumKin or Tftpd64. We prefer Tftpd64 for field deployments as it can also provide DHCP services that include the ability to specify required scope Options 150 and 66!

You can try flashing the phone without defaulting the configuration by just unlocking it and setting the Alt TFTP server to the correct IP address. You unlock your CISCO phone by hitting the Menu key, scroll to the network settings, hit unlock (**#**) for Alternative TFTP server, set it to yes and then in the next field enter in the IP address of the TFTP server. Experience has proved, however, that you should reset the phone. There are subtle differences between how the reset and unlock method is executed based on your exact model. Generally, you reset the phone by holding the # key while powering the phone and when it starts flashing orange and red, enter 123456789*0# on the keyboard, then be patient. Make sure your TFTP and DHCP servers are setup and working. DHCP Option 150 and Option 66 must point the phone to the TFTP server and directory containing the firmware files.

Again you will find that you really need to tweak the SiP software version as one may run and another version may not!

You should be aware that v4.4 code uses the following tftp files (which areall case sensitive):
 OS79XX.TXT  (This file must be on the TFTP as it defines the software load WITHOUT .bin extension).
 SIPDefault  (This file denotes parameters for all phones)
 POS3-04-4-00.bin
 SIP<your mac address>  (eg, SIP00036BABD123 parameters for a specific phone)
 RINGLIST.DAT         (optional) 
 dialplan.xml		(optional)
 ringer1.pcm		(optional)

Early versions of the SIP code did not require all of these, however if they are in the tftp directory, it doesn't hurt the loading process.  Later you will still need the TFP server to obtain configuration file when you boot your CISCO phones. Power on your CISCO  and the phone should display "upgrading" and you should see file transfers in your TFTP server log.       Be careful as the phone will from time to time looks like it is dead, but it is still loading files.  It takes time and patience  will ultimately yield a phone now flashed for SIP!

That was the easy part, now you have to understand the configuration files, how to edit them and the boot process. When the phone boots, it makes a DHCP request for usual IP configuration parameters including the necessary vendor specific options. ShoreTel uses Option 156 to specify the FTP server where its phones can download firmware and configuration files. CISCO uses TFTP and specifies that IP address in CISCO Option 150 and Industry Option 66. When the phone boots it will first look for a “install trust list” or certificate file which it will not find in your TFTP directory, so expect that file failure. It will then look for a SIPDefault.cnf which has information for all phones, and then a file that contains configuration data for a specific phone which is named SIP<macaddresss>.cnf.

Edit the SIPDefault.CNF in Notepad file and change the first three values: The first line of the file,image_version, sets what firmware version we are going to use. This needs to match either the firmware version already loaded on the phone or the firmware version that you have available in the tftp folder for the phone to upgrade to. The second setting, messages_uri sets the extension number that the phone will dial to access the voicemail system. The third setting, proxy1_address, sets the IP address for the phone system so the phone knows where to send it’s registration information. In the case of ShoreTel make sure you point this at the ShoreTel SipProxy IP NOT the ShoreTel HQ server!

For real detail on the content of the config file click this link. Each phone requires its own configuration file based on the MAC address of the phone. If our MAC address is 00175989A49E, then our configuration file will be named SIP00175989A49E.cnf. This file contains a list of XML tags. You will need to modify several tag entries. You can use notepad, but if you can make use of an XML editor like Komodo or Eclipse it will help you eliminate poorly formed XML tags. Scroll through the file and edit the following tags:

<processNodeName>172.16.1.100</processNodeName> should be set to the IP address of your ShoreTel SIP Proxy, NOTE the ShoreTel HQ server!

For Each extension line you want to register you will need to set the following parameter:

<authName>1234</authName> to your ShoreTel SIP UserName
<authPassword>1234456</authPassword> ShoreTel SIP Password

The lines also have other configuration data for displaying the Name and Extension number and you should find those XML tags easy to locate. The above tags however are the 3 minimum tags required to get your phone to register with ShoreTel. It should be understood that getting your phone to register, make and receive calls is not the same as integrating your CISCO phone with ShoreTel. Getting feature buttons to work and interfacing with the telephone book is an entirely new opportunity for head banging. Some of it can be accomplished by editing XML configuration files, but well outside the scope of this nugget ! The most likely success stories for CISCO on ShoreTel are the 7940/7960 phones. Be aware that there are subtle difference between the rest of the family like the 7941G/7960G and so forth. The 7942 and 7945 take extra tweaking and you many need to SSH into the phone to debug. It takes time, patience and perseverance to tinker with the various phone loads and XML options, but it can be done! As we get more examples, we will upload sample configurations to the Member portal.

Deploying VoIP in the Cloud or rolling your own “hosted PBX” – Part 1 Server Deployement

Posted on February 13, 2014 by DrVoIP

The entire subject of Virtualization and all things “cloud” has become something that even none technical people talk about. You might say it has gone “viral” and captured the interest of geeks, business people, professional technology managers and entrepreneurs. Personally, I never did get the whole fascination with hardware. In my mind hardware was just something we had to put up with to get to play with the software. When you stop and think about it, aside from the IT folks, nobody wants a Windows 2012 Server! What they want is a Website, a CRM package, a blog or a phone system. Having to deal with hardware was always a chore and it always seemed to me that whatever we had was obsolete within a year or so. The software could be upgraded, but the hardware had to be “refreshed” an expression that generally means, purchase new stuff!

Virtualization made hardware a bit more interesting. Now we could at least run a half dozen servers on one huge hardware platform. Back up and Restore became almost fun! Now you start adding virtualized appliances like phone systems, gateways and firewalls to the mix and software professionals get almost giddy! I think VMware has caused more new business creations than any other single “stimulus” package. Now, even a guy working out of his garage could compete with the big guys! Capital requirements were significantly reduced and new cloud based business could launch at the drop of a hat and the signing of a sales agreement! Internet bandwidth, access, creativity and an Amazon account and you were in the revenue production business!

Unless you are in the business of refreshing hardware, why would you want to bother with any of that hardware stuff? How long does it take your IT team to spin up a new server? Even if you are a one man show and you can control everything without benefit of a working committee, it takes time to setup a server! Some organizations take weeks to provision a new server! Now if you happen to have an Amazon account, even your plain vanilla book buying Amazon account, you could spin up a new Linux or Microsoft Server in about 15 minutes! With your “Amazon machine instance” you get a security group (read firewall) for your public IP address, a DNS name and a local network all in less time than it takes to unbox and rack a new hardware based solution.The Amazon portal lets you change the configuration of your instance on the fly. This means you can increase disk size, RAM, change bandwidth and update your firewall without a screw driver! Think about it, fully operational on net with pubic IP access in less than 15 minutes.

Now that 3CX, ShoreTel, Mitel and so many others offer Gateways that are “virtual” machines, you could actually spin up a “hosted PBX” in just a few hours! We though we would try it just for kicks! Log into AWS spin up a new Windows Sever and deploy ShoreTel or 3CX completely virtualized, including SIP trunks, Border Controllers and Remote phones both Hard and Soft. Should be hilarious! (Thanks to winter storms back east, we just brought up a 169 users system, across three states and had the client fully operational in 12 hours from the emergency phone call to the DrVoIP hot line). This first video clip just deals with provisioning the server. In subsequent versions we will bring up an entire phone system and you can watch over our shoulders!

How to install the ShoreTel Virtual Switches!

Posted on February 10, 2014 by DrVoIP

Virtualization has significantly altered the options available for your choice of deployment models. With the introduction of ShoreTel 14.2 you can completely virtualize your VoIP deployment right down to the Gateways! If you have no Analog telephone device requirements or telephone company lines, you can now eliminate those ShoreTel Orange boxes! This is a significant advancement in the state of the art and one that will become increasingly more prevalent as we look for viable business continuity strategies. The ShoreTel virtual switches come in a number of flavors: Service appliance, phone switch and trunk switch. The Virtual appliance is similar to the ShoreTel SA100/400 server and is essentially a free feature enhancement! The ShoreTel Virtual Phone switch can also be used as the “spare” switch available for use by phones that need to register with a new switch when the ShoreGear switch they were using fails. Again, no cost associated with this unless you leave them on that virtual switch for longer than the normal 45 day grace period.

The VoIP technology in general has become more complex demanding new skill sets from those who install them. In addition to the telephony, network, firewall, SIP and Microsoft software applications that historically touch your ShoreTel deployment, you will now need to understand VMware ESXi deployments including the use of OVA files. The ShoreTel Virtual switches are now distributed as a part of your HQ and DVM server images. They live in the FTP server and can be retrieved in one of two ways. You can either download the image file when you configure your appliance in the Shoreware Director portal, or you can load it as a URL in the VMware machine configuration as the target for your OVA file.

If you are familiar with VMware, the installation process is relatively simple, straight forward and easy to understand. Once the machine is specified the Vmware configuration is as simple as adding the basic network IP components including the address of the Shoreware HQ server. The machine will ultimately configure, load and become available as a virtual machine on your ESXi platform. From that point on, there is little difference to the installation of a virtual appliance or a real ShoreGear switch in Shoreware Director. The basic difference has to do with the selection of the hardware platform type. Normally you would select an SA100 or a ShoreGear 50, for example. In the case of a virtual appliance, you will select a new category from the drop hardware list, that indicates what type of appliance you are installing. The rest of the configuration is the same. The virtual appliances behave like the normal orange” boxes, even requiring a firmware upgrade. They appear in both the Diagnostic Monitoring and Quick View and in all respects operate like their real world hardware brethren.

We should all understand that those little orange boxes contain application specific microprocessors or digital signal processors (DSP’s). The real heavy lifting normally done by those chips for CODEC work, for example, will now be done in software. Additionally, don’t make the mistake of deploying virtual appliances at sites logically, without understanding that the VMware hardware platform location is just as important on over all performance as ever! All and all this is a major step forward for ShoreTel and you can expect these virtual appliances to become a standard part of your deployments over time. The video clip reviews the actual installation of both a phone switch and a service appliance!

Note – The ShoreTel news here is that the actual Voice Gateways are virtualized, not just the application, but the Gateways!

ShoreTel V14 Real-time Diagnostic and Monitoring Dashboard

Posted on January 14, 2014 by DrVoIP

I am found of repeating that “product development is a process not an event”! Though the marketing folks need to package, position and promote products based on feature sets, generally products emerge over time. Building on previous releases, customer feed back and recommendations, products continue to emerge with new functionality. Most product development focuses on features that have market demand or differentiate one product from another. Occasionally, a new product feature is targeted at someone other than an end user. Engineers and Technicians are typically the last group of people to get a feature developed that makes their lives a bit more easy. Such is the case for ShoreTel Version 14 and the introduction of a “Diagnostic and Monitoring” tool!

The latest Version of ShoreTel has added a capability that we think is essential in iPBX technology as SIP becomes more of a standard. If you have ever attempted to trouble shoot SIP without the ability to do packet capture, you will know how valuable this feature set is. CISCO long ago had RMTM tools as a standard part of a Call Manager deployment. ShoreTel has now added that functionality to its standard product offering and it is dramatic! Now part of the ShoreWareDirector user interface, the Diagnostic Monitoring tool is a complete glass cockpit with a variety of monitoring tools. These tools include real time status updates of system areas including connections, trunk groups, bandwidth utilization, voice quality, switch status and service conditions. Combining “Quick View”, with other tools that previously required loading modules or a putty session, the Diagnostic Monitoring center is a self navigation center for trouble shooting.

We are particularly excited about the “remote packet capture” feature of the Diagnostic tools. This tool enables you to remotely capture packets and bring them to a local pcap file. You are offered the opportunity to capture everything or limit your capture to specific areas of interest. For example, if you want to capture only SIP packets related to the ShoreGear switch you are running your SIP Proxies on, the diagnostic tool set lets you select these options. The files are WireShark compatible and if you have that application on your server, a simple click will launch the application and bring up your capture for analysis. This is a very power capability and simplifies some of the issues associated with setting up WireShark for remote capture. We think this feature set was long over due, but we are just mere engineers, what do we know!

ShoreTel Version 14.2 is “Virtually there”!

Posted on January 9, 2014 by DrVoIP

We have previously argued that ShoreTel should shed the hardware business and focus on software development only. Just our opinion and personal hangup! We believe that unless you have the Market Capitalization of an Apple, it is hard to walk both sides of the street and do both Hardware and Software! Even Microsoft, does only Software! Well ShoreTel may in fact be moving to Software only through the introduction of a family of “virtual” machine offerings. Though versions prior to Version 14.1 offered some level of Server virtualization, ShoreTel deployments would still require lots of those “Orange” ShoreGear switches.

On January 28th ShoreTel will begin to ship the first release of Version 14.2 and all components of the ShoreTel architecture will be virtualized! This means that you don’t need those “Orange” boxes unless you are connecting to analog or digital trunk lines! ShoreTel Switches including Conferencing servers will be available as OVA files for VMware deployments. ShoreTel will begin to offer a virtual phone switch, a virtual service appliance and a new family of virtual SIP Switches with complete PRI parity. The ShoreTel compatible Ingate SIParator will also be available as a Virtual Session Border Controller. Licensing can be significantly reduced to a phone or trunk license, now how kool is that?

The ShoreTel virtual phone switch will support between 250 and 1000 phones based on calculated VM resources. The virtual phone switch will will support all ShoreTel features including backup automated attendant, make-me-conferences, hunt groups, bridged call appearances and extension monitoring. Pricing is estimated at 8-15% below the cost of another “Orange” box and you can mix and match virtual and real boxes! The virtual SIP trunk switch is estimated to be some 50% below “Orange” box costs! The virtual service appliance will offer IM and Web conferencing from 50-200 simultaneous sessions. Instant Messaging is now without charge from ShoreTel when implemented on a virtual server, just your usual VMware hardware costs!

We consider this the strongest move that ShoreTel has made in its product line, since it moved from analog phones to SIP handsets! Though ShoreTel is following the examples of others like CISCO Version10, we see this a the right next step in the process for ShoreTel product development. With the enterprise world solidly focused on virtualization and the rapid but steady migration from TDM to SIP, a Virtualized ShoreTel is an essential element of a successful business continuity and disaster recovery program. ShoreTel is starting to look an awful lot like a pure software company and we think that is not only “brilliantly simple”, but very smart.

– DrVoIP

ShoreTel Stock Update – Should Mitel and ShoreTel Merge?

Posted on December 10, 2013 by DrVoIP

Back in the summer we did a blog on ShoreTel from a Shareholders perceptive. There were a number of issues troubling us which did not seem to make sense and for which we, as outsiders, could not fully appreciate. Having purchased ShoreTel (NASDAQ: SHOR) at the IPO price of $10 a share, the stock was trading at about $3 this summer and had not yet found its bottom. We questioned why Management was in such as shambles with key players jumping ship, many for competitor Mitel. They were again in the process of doing yet another CEO search and had lost their VP of Marketing and several key sales executives had also migrated over to competitor Mitel (MITL) Corporation. We were also frustrated at the acquisition of a “hosted” PBX company that could not even make use of ShoreTel phones. These were very mixed messages and we were as you might suspect very bearish on the stock!

Less then six months later many of our concerns were addressed and the stock price at $8.45 seems to have rebounded, but still trades below the IPO price. ShoreTel now has a new CEO, Donald Joos, promoted from within the ranks, and with considerable credential. Today they announced that they had filled their long vacant VP of Marketing role with that of Mark Roberts, a former Mitel Executive, no less! (Mitel responded by announcing that it had hired 15 year ShoreTel Vertical Sales Executive Chuck Grogman as it’s new VP of Contact Center Sales). Aside from the obvious revolving door relationship between the executive suits of both companies, we believe these were smart moves for ShoreTel to make. ShoreTel has achieved new 52 week highs with a stock price of $3.25 – $8.45 and a Market Capitalization of $490M. By Comparison, Mitel has had a stock price of $2.80 – $9.85 and a Market capitalization of $528M. Both companies operate in the same space, use the same distribution channel and both offer hosted alternatives to their CPE product lines.

ShoreTel has introduced a new family of end points, or telephone sets that are sip enabled. This should make it possible for their hosted subsidiary to stop offering CISCO handsets! We expect a future ShoreTel iPBX software version to further blur the distinction between CPE and Hosted products, with ShoreTel able to offer both. Look for the new ShoreTel Version to be 1.0 not Version 15! We suspect that the dealer channel is a bit confused, having bitterly fought “hosted” with a CPE offering. Now with an entire new distribution channel opening through the former hosted companies sales partners, ShoreTel branded solutions are being offered by other than the traditional VAR channel. We also track Ring Central (RNG) and 8X8 (EGHT), both publicly reporting companies in the pure hosted space, to cross reference both ShoreTel and Mitel performance.

Over all, the prospects at ShoreTel from a Shareholder perspective are looking much better at the end of the year than they did at the start of the year. The CPE market will undergo continual pressure from the growing homogenization of technology through the adoption of SIP based technology. Even giant CISCO seems to be positioning SIP ahead of SCCP as the protocol of choice thanks to Jabber! The adoption of SIP will continue to drive down component hardware parts like Gateways and Handsets and is the primary reason we would like to see ShoreTel get out of the hardware business all together! ShoreTel should focus on building a scalable software technology that integrates with as much hardware in the market as can be standardized! At this point, we recommend ShoreTel as a hold with vigilant monitoring. You should keep a close watch on both Mitel and ShoreTel as well as monitoring Ring Central (RNG) and 8X8 for hedges and comparison in the hosted space. The entire sector will be undergoing an upheaval over the next year, so look for more mergers and spin offs to rule the market!

We welcome your comments and remind you that this is just our opinion!

WebRTC to change the Contact Center For Ever! Enter Amazon Mayday Button!

Posted on October 27, 2013 by DrVoIP

Last month we wrote that we believed that webRTC had the potential to change the business communications landscape forever especially as it related to contact centers! Little did we know that in less than a month, Amazon would do just that with the introduction of the “Mayday” Button. The Mayday button does just what webRTC is destined to do, embedding a real time, text audio and visual communications channel within a web browser! Technical support will never be the same and as we previously proposed, neither will the Contact Center be the same! Customer Service is about to be redefined and Amazon seems to be leading the way with the absolute first mass implementation of a webRTC application.

The button, a LifeSavior Icon, appears on Amazon’s new Kindle Fire. Push this button and a dialog box opens with a real time video image of your technical support consultant. You can see him, but he can not see you. He can hear you and remotely operate your device, trouble shooting your issue and “show you how” to do a troublesome operation. If you can not “see” the impact of this game changing technology, you most likely did not see the internet or the tablet market developing either!

What is so amazing about the technology is that the core elements for implementation are readily available. This is not and R&D project, but more of an integration of currently available technologies. WebRTC requires a modern browser but does not require any plug-ins, usernames, passwords or downloads. This technology will make peer to peer video pervasive and make establishing real time video teleconferences as easy as clicking a link! One can only hope that Microsoft will for once, just embrace the technology and skip the always painful promotion of some other “not invented” here model like CU-RTC.

Historically, Call Centers were places that you “called” from your home phone. Now we understand the immediacy of Contact Centers which treat email, chat and sms as readily as phone calls. Contact Centers understand that the “home phone” is now a mobile device and there is an entire generation of customers who have never had a “land line”. It does not take a market visionary to see the “high touch” ramifications of a video interaction and the inevitable impact it will have on the “customer service” paradigm. Adopting video on demand or “click for support” options in the call center is not an option, it is an imperative and will quickly impact the market by segmenting customer service as quickly as new technologies buried the Polaroid!

We are now integrating webRTC Call Center applications either as an appliance or as a cloud in the form of InstaVoice, FACEmeeting, TokBox and Tawk. Clearly, some customer service applications are more visual and can benefit more immediately than others by adding a video component. Clearly, technical support or instructional applications are at the top of the list. Can American Express be far behind. Are you more likely to interact with a credit card company representative you can see in addition to hear? (We can only guess at what the HR impact will be on Contact Centers that adopt webRTC, but that is another topic and also worthy of discussion).

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss the concept of webRTC within the context of a real contact center application, so call click or email! You will be “seeing” a lot more of this from DrVoIP and others, so stay tuned!

UCCX Scripting – Working with XML documents

Posted on October 18, 2013 by DrVoIP

When writing call control scripts for Contact Centers (ShoreTel ECC, CISCO UCCX ) do you really have to start over each time? Are there really that many differences between contact center applications? Well, yes and no! As we continue the search for the killer script, that “holy grail” of scripts which can do it all and never needs to be modified, we turn our attention to the wonderful world of XML! Every Scripting Engineer has a library of routines that hey have emerged over time. They accumulate over as the scripts become more refined with time and experience. You would think there would be nothing new under the sun, but from time to time someone hits on a particularly creative solution to a common call flow requirement.

I have to credit Steven Griffin, a true rockstar of a software engineer, with opening my eyes to the possibility of using a “QueueOptions.xml” file to specify parameters you might otherwise hard code in a UCCX call control script. I have learned from other engineers like Wesley Forvergne and Anthony Holloway how to build on this concept (these guys have all really advanced the state of the art IMHO) and create scripts that are extensible, supportable and flexible! Why have to write another script or launch other instance of a script just because the SLA, Menu or Schedule changed? Why not have a Script that can reconfigure itself based on parameters recovered from a configuration file, using DNIS as the file index? An inbound call to the contact center triggers a script which uses the DNIS to look up the appropriate configuration for the number dialed.

Maybe this DNIS differs from another DNIS only in as much as the On hours specified in the Schedule? If you have been using that “Day of Week” and “Time of Day” UCCX script step you have no alternative but to have either a bunch of “if” steps or creating the same script on another trigger so that you can have a different operating time. What an inefficient waste of processor and system resources! Why not just read in the Schedule from an XML file and use the same script for all your DNIS numbers, all on the same trigger? You can even reconfigure the Menu and Prompts, change the voice mail box, determine if you should play “estimated time in queue” or not and just generally customize the script on the fly!

XML is just a powerful alternative to OBDC type solutions. No special drivers, portable across operating systems, language independent and able to handle dynamic database changes. Your XML document can be updated dynamically as required through HTTP and other web based technologies. This makes it possible to integrate your call flow based on input from a website entry! How about SMS to XML? Think of the possibilities! I guess that is what we really enjoy about Contact Center scripting! Never a dull moment and limited only by imagination.

The video discusses the creation of an Xpath specification assembled on the fly and uses a string value to index the XML document. Great entertainment and fun for the entire family!