Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE)

by Gary Ford

Overview

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE)

The complete guide to managing UCCE environments: tips, tricks, best practices, and lessons learned

 

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) integrates multiple components and can serve a wide spectrum of business requirements. In this book, Gary Ford, an experienced Cisco UCCE consultant brings together all the guidance you need to optimally configure and manage UCCE in any environment.

 

The author shares in-depth insights covering both the enterprise and hosted versions of UCCE. He presents an administrator’s view of how to perform key UCCE tasks and why they work as they do. He thoroughly addresses application configuration, agents, scripting, IVR, dial plans, UCM, error handling, reporting, metrics, and many other key topics.

 

You’ll find proven, standardized configuration examples that help eliminate errors and reduce downtime, step-by-step walkthroughs of several actual configurations, and thorough coverage of monitoring and troubleshooting UCCE systems.

 

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise (UCCE) is an indispensable resource to help you deploy and operate UCCE systems reliably and efficiently.

 

 

·                      Understand the Cisco Unified Contact Center product portfolio and platform architecture

·                      Choose the right single-site, multi-site, or clustered deployment model for your environment

·                      Take a lifecycle services approach to UCCE deployment and application configuration-–including preparation, planning, design, and implementation

·                      Implement traditional, current-generation, and next-generation call routing

·                      Master the latest best practices for call flow scripting

·                      Understand UCCE’s nodes and distributed processes and build a clean system startup sequence

·                      Design, implement, and deliver unified CM/IP IVR solutions

·                      Set up and efficiently manage UCCE databases

·                      Make the most of UCCE’s reporting tools

·                      Create advanced applications with Data-Driven Routing

·                      Effectively maintain any UCCE deployment, including older versions

·                      Use a best-practice methodology for troubleshooting, and master valuable, little-known Cisco diagnostic tools

 

This IP communications book is part of the Cisco Press® Networking Technology Series. IP communications titles from Cisco Press help networking professionals understand voice and IP telephony technologies, plan and design converged networks, and implement network
solutions for increased productivity.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587141386
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	06/27/2011
Series:	Networking Technology: IP Communications
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	504
Sales rank:	360,853
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

About the Author

For more than 13 years, Gary Ford has been privileged to work for many large systems

integration companies, Cisco Advanced Technology Partners, and end customers, designing,

deploying and maintaining Cisco telephony and contact center solutions. His introductory

role to contact centers started in 1997 while working for British Telecom (BT) as

a test engineer tasked with integrating the GeoTel ICR platform into BT’s core telephony

network. Over the following years, Cisco acquired GeoTel and rapidly transformed the

ICR product set to include solutions from other Cisco acquisitions and a great deal of inhouse

innovation. His role has changed over the years from test engineer to contact center

and unified communications consultant. Gary spends much of his time designing and

deploying Cisco unified communications solutions for a wide range of customers. Gary

also holds a bachelor's of engineering degree in computer systems engineering, the status

of Chartered Engineer, and several Cisco, Microsoft, and business-related professional

qualifications.

 

About the Technical Reviewers

Carlos Gonzales, manager of Software Development Engineering, is one of the technical

managers in the Customer Contact Business Unit in Boxborough, Massachusetts, where

he has been working as an engineering manager for the past year. In his current role, he is

involved in quality assurance testing, release engineering, and systems engineering activities

with respect to the customer contact applications. Before becoming a manager, he

held a software engineer and technical leader position for seven years in the Voice

Technology Group Solution Test team focused on solution-level testing of UCCE, CVP,

CUCM, CUP, CUSP, CTIOS, CAD, UCS, Outbound in Standalone, Distributed, CoW,

and Parent/Child deployment models. During his tenure as an engineer, he had the privilege

of leading and participating in validating the UCCE system in an end-to-end Cisco

solution, as documented in the Cisco validated design guides (aka SRND). Currently, as a

manager on the CCBU team, he has been privileged to work with UCCE development,

test, and field engineers in deploying UCCE in a UCS, VMware, and EMC data center

environment. Carlos holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is the recipient of

multiple Cisco, Microsoft, and VMware certifications in addition to more than 15 years

in the networking industry.

 

Alan Quinn, NCE Advanced Services Europe, is one of the senior consulting engineers in

the Unified Customer Contact team in London, U.K. In his current role, he is involved in

developing Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) that includes Hosted UCCE, CVP, and

CUCM; the solution is to be built on UCS technology. Before joining Cisco as an NCE,

he held a position with a large European service provider as customer design authority

for five years. This role focused on planning, designing, implementation, and operation of

large contact center solutions that used the NAM/CICM deployment model. Alan has

more than 14 years of experience in the communications industry and holds several

Cisco voice certifications.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

 

Chapter 1 Contact Center Overview 1

Contact Center Characteristics 3

Contact Channels 4

Cisco Contact Center Features 5

    Virtual Contact Center 5

    Cisco Agent Desktop with Presence 5

    CTI and CRM Integration 6

    Agent Desktop Options 6

    Cisco Unified Expert Advisor 7

    Support for Remote and Mobile Agents 7

    Self-Service and Call-Treatment Capabilities 8

    Reporting 8

    Management Portal 9

Cisco Contact Center Portfolio 9

    Cisco Unified Contact Center Express 11

    Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise 11

    Cisco Unified Contact Center Hosted 12

    Cisco Unified Intelligent Contact Manager Enterprise 13

    Cisco Unified IP IVR 13

    Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal 14

    Other Voice Components 15

Summary 16

 

Chapter 2 Platform Architecture 17

General Cisco Unified Contact Center Architecture 17

    Router 18

    Logger 18

    Administrative Workstation/Real-Time Distributor and Client AW 18

    Historical Data Server 19

    Peripheral Gateway 20

    CTI Server (Including CTI Object Server) 21

    Reporting (WebView and CUIC) 21

    Network Interface Controller 22

Cisco UCCE 23

Cisco UICM 23

Cisco UCCH 24

Platform Redundancy 25

Summary 27

 

Chapter 3 Deployment Models 29

Single-Site 30

Multisite with Centralized Call Processing 31

Multisite with Distributed Call Processing 32

Clustering over the WAN 33

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Deployment Model 35

Deployment Options 35

    Enterprise/System UCCE 35

    Parent/Child Deployment 36

Real-World Deployments 37

Summary 38

 

Chapter 4 UC Operating Systems 39

Operating Systems in Use 40

    MS Windows for Cisco Unified CM 40

    Cisco Voice Operating System (VOS) 40

MS Windows for UICM/UCCE 41

    Bill of Materials (BOM) 41

    Third-Party Software 41

Learning About Updates 42

Summary 42

 

Chapter 5 UCCE Road Map 43

Cisco Software Product Lifecycle 43

    Software Phases 43

    Software Support Road Map 44

    Platform Upgrades 45

The Evolution of UCCE 46

    GeoTel ICR 2.5 46

    GeoTel ICR 3.0/4.0/4.1 48

    ICM 4.5 48

    Cisco ICM 4.6 48

    Cisco ICM 5.0 49

    Cisco IPCC 7.0 50

    Cisco UCCE 7.5 50

    Cisco UCCE 8.0 51

    Cisco UCCE 8.5 51

Summary 52

 

Chapter 6 UCCE Platform Deployment 53

Lifecycle Services Approach 54

Prepare and Plan 57

Design 57

    Software Versions 57

    Platform Sizing 59

    Platform Redundancy 60

    Server Naming Conventions 60

    Deployment Spreadsheet 61

    Network Services 63

    Databases 68

    Cisco A2Q Process 69

Implementation 71

    Server Builds 71

    Software Installation 72

    Installation Order 74

    Implementation Testing 79

Summary 82

 

Chapter 7 UCCE Application Configuration 83

Prepare 83

    Requirements Capture 83

    Capture Spreadsheets 84

Implementation 84

    Configuration Manager 85

Summary 96

 

Chapter 8 Call Routing 97

Call Routing Concepts 98

    Carrier-Based Routing 98

    Private Network Routing 101

Traditional Call Routing 104

Current-Generation Call Routing 105

    Prerouting 105

    Postrouting 107

Next-Generation Call Routing 108

    SIP Trunks 108

Summary 111

 

Chapter 9 Call Flow Scripting 113

Contact Center Call Flow 114

    Contact Center Challenges 114

    Call Script Development Lifecycle 115

Call Scripting Best Practices 117

    Total Cost of Ownership 117

    Expect the Unexpected 118

    Change Is Good 118

    Tracking Change 119

    Script Layout 121

    Avoid Overoptimization 124

    Meaningful Names 126

    Comment Node 127

    Use a Development Workstation 128

    Custom Functions 129

    Error Handling 130

Summary 131

 

Chapter 10 Reporting 133

Reporting Packages 134

    Cisco WebView 136

    Cisco Unified Intelligence Center 138

    VIM Performance 140

    Feature Comparison 142

    Wallboards 142

UCCE Reporting 145

Reporting Notes 146

    Reporting Terminology 146

    General Reporting with Call Types 147

    Call Queuing 149

    Hiding Objects 149

    Don’t Mix and Match Reporting Entities 150

    Wrap-Up Codes 150

    Legacy Reports 151

Summary 153

 

Chapter 11 Nodes and Processes 155

UCCE Nodes 157

    Logger 157

    Router 158

    Peripheral Gateway 160

    Administrative Workstation 162

    Common Processes 163

    Support Tools Node Agent 164

UCCE Nodes Startup Sequence 164

UCCE Detailed Startup 166

    Logger A 166

    Router A 170

    Peripheral Gateway A 172

    Logger B 179

    Peripheral Gateway B 181

    Administrative Workstation 182

Summary 183

 

Chapter 12 Unified CM and IVR 185

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 185

Cisco Unified IP Interactive Voice Response 186

Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal 186

Integration with UCCE 187

    Unified Communications Manager 187

    UCCE with IP IVR 188

    UCCE with CVP 189

Cisco Unified Communications Manager 189

    Cisco JTAPI 189

    CTI Route Points 190

    Agent Phone Settings 191

    Partitions and Calling Search Spaces 192

Queuing and Self-Service 192

    CVP Versus IP IVR 196

Cisco Unified IP IVR 197

    IP IVR Call Flow 197

    Cisco Unified CCX Editor 200

    IP IVR Configuration 201

Cisco Unified CVP 203

Summary 206

 

Chapter 13 Data-Driven Routing 207

What Can Be Achieved with Data-Driven Routing 208

Data Lookup Options 210

    Static Lookup 211

    DB Lookup Node 211

    Application Gateway 212

    Within an IVR Application 212

    Agent Desktop/CRM Integration 213

Configuring UCCE Database Lookup 213

    Step 1: Database Creation 213

    Step 2: Enable the DB Worker Process 214

    Step 3: Configuration Manager: Database Lookup Explorer 215

    Step 4: Simple Call Script and Testing 216

Summary 217

 

Chapter 14 UCCE Databases 219

Relational Databases 219

UCCE Databases 221

    Database Purge 222

Database Schema Overview 224

SQL Queries 227

    Finding a Call with a Specific ANI 228

    Finding Unassigned Call Types 229

    Listing the Most Popular Callers by ANI 229

    Locating the Last Script Node 230

    Locating Agents Against Agent Desk Settings 230

    Finding DNs Associated with a Call Type 230

    Agent State Trace 232

Summary 233

 

Chapter 15 Management and Administration 235

Platform Management 236

    Potential Failures 236

    Backups 238

    Platform Monitoring 239

Application Administration 245

Summary 246

 

Chapter 16 Troubleshooting 247

Fault Logging and Handling 248

    Fault Logging 248

    Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) 250

Troubleshooting Methodology 251

UCCE Process Tracing 254

    Setting Trace Levels 257

Analysis Manager 258

Support Tools 258

Router Trace 260

UCCE Command-Line Tools 262

    dumplog Utility 263

    opctest Utility 265

    rttest Utility 269

    procmon Utility 272

UCCE Script Editor 273

    Monitoring 273

    Call Tracer 274

Summary 275

 

Index 277