What's new for administrators in Webex Contact Center (2024)

21 December 2022

Salesforce CRM Connector enhancements

Integration of Webex Contact Center with the Salesforce CRM connector introduces the following new features:

• Advanced screen-pop and auto-population of Customer Records: This feature allows dynamic matching of the customer records based on Caller Attributed Data (CAD) passed from the Flow Designer of the Webex Contact Center. With this enhancement, field mappings are introduced in the activity records and in creating a new case.

• Omnichannel state synchronization: The connector synchronizes the Salesforce omnichannel state with the Webex Contact Center agent desktop presence status. With the enhancement, the exclusive channel modes allow agents to handle one interaction type at a time – either Salesforce omnichannel or voice channel in the Webex Contact Center.

• Salesforce Actions widget: The connector supports a new Salesforce Actions widget for quick actions. This widget appears on the desktop when the agent is connected on voice interaction.

  The following actions are available:

  • View/Edit Activity Record

  • Associate to Activity Record

  • Create Case

  • Live case notes

• Dynamic status in the taskbar (Softphone widget): The widget taskbar in salesforce displays the dynamic status of the agent state and call transition states for Webex Contact Center – Available and Idle states including idle codes, and call state transitions, such as Incoming Call, Connected and Disconnected states. This enables the agents to view their live status on the taskbar without having to open the Webex Contact Center widget.

For more information, see Integrate Webex Contact Center with Salesforce.

20 December 2022

Changelog and subscription for Developer Portal changes

The Developer Portal for Webex Contact Center now has an API Changelog. You can subscribe to an RSS feed to get the latest information about API releases, updates and changes made to API contracts, downgrade of APIs and a lot more. This service delivers updates directly from Webex Contact Center Service Groups that are usually not included as a part of release notes.

20 December 2022

Agent Desktop APIs - Call Consult APIs

Webex Contact Center now offers an additional set of Agent Desktop APIs that allow partners and customers to set up their own Agent Desktop and create task activities. These Call Consult APIs are:

• Available Agents API for Blind Transfer/Consult/Conference: Fetches the available list of agents who can be reached for consult, conference, or transfer.

• Consult Transfer: An agent can initiate a consult task with another agent and transfer the call when required.

• Reject/End Consult Request: Allows an agent to reject a consulting call request.

• Accept Consult Request: Allows an agent to accept a consulting call request.

• Consult Conference: Allows an agent to add an already consulting agent/dial number to the call with the customer, so that all three participants can be in a conference.

For more information, see Webex Contact Center for Developers. Sign in to view the specific page content.

13 December 2022

Automate provisioning using Administrator Configuration APIs

Exciting things are available from the Webex Contact Center Developer Portal team with the Configuration APIs. As a business, you can now automate provisioning for users and use key contact center features.

The administrator related APIs that are available are:

• Users: Maintain user entities to store basic user-related information such as Name, Phone Number, Email ID, Location, etc.

• User Profile: User Profile is an extension of user data that stores information such as user subscriptions, orders, rewards, preferences etc.

• Desktop Layout: Create a Webex Contact Center Desktop layout to simplify and track the moving parts of a Contact Center administrator profile, and you get to customize it to fit your needs.

• Global Variables: These variables are configurable and accessible in every facet of the Contact Center ecosystem.

• Work Types: Set and track the work status of a call, such as, when a line is idle or if a call has been wrapped up. This helps you estimate when that line would be ready to accommodate the next call.

• Audio Files: You can upload pre-recorded audio/music messages to use as part of your flow. For more information, visit the Webex Contact Center for Developers portal.

13 December 2022

Agent Desktop Enhancement: Connecting popover for a contact request

A connecting popover is used to inform an agent that a new contact request is in the process of being assigned. The connecting popover is followed by the incoming contact request for the agent to take action before the state change. The agent can’t sign out when a connecting popover appears on the Agent Desktop.

For more information, see Popover and Answer a Call.

01 December 2022

Support JSON object as a variable type in flow control

Flow developers can create custom variables of type JSON and use these variables in various activities such as HTTP Request, Parse and Set Variable. For example, in HTTP Request and Parse activities, you can extract data using JSON path filter expression and store it in JSON variable.

For more information, see Create Custom Variables in Flow Designer.

24 November 2022

New output variables in QueueToAgent activity

The QueueToAgent activity routes the contacts to the preferred agent directly. The following output variables are added to the QueueToAgent activity:

• AgentState

• AgentIdleCode

By configuring this activity, flow designers can get information about the following statuses in the Agentstate and AgentIdleCode output variables respectively:

• AgentState: Idle and Available

• AgentIdleCode: Meeting, Lunch, Coffee, Break and so on.

This enables flow designers to queue the contact to the same agent based on the idle codes configured in the Management portal. For idle codes such as lunch or meeting, flow designers will be able to direct the call to a queue or another agent. For more information, see Queue To Agent.

22 November 2022

Consult to dial number mapped to entry point

This feature is in Limited Availability (LA). We'll enable the feature for a customer only after necessary review and agreement. To enable a feature in limited availability, please contact your Partner or Customer Success Manager or Cisco support.

This feature allows an agent to initiate a consult call with another agent in another department through an entry point. The agent can choose the entry point that is mapped to the dial number from the Dial Number drop-down list of the Consult Request dialog box. With this enhancement, the Queue option in the Transfer Request dialog box lists only queues; the Dial Number option in the Consult Request dialog box lists all the entry points and address book numbers.

When a consult call is made to an entry point, the flow control manages this consult call session like a new call. Further, the flow control can assign new skills, play IVR music, and check business hours to place the consult call in the right queue.

08 November 2022

Agent Desktop API offering

Webex Contact Center now offers a set of Agent Desktop APIs that enables partners and customers to set up their own Agent Desktop with our current portfolio.

Desktop APIs:

• Agent Login: Signs the agent into their Desktop and prevents duplicate sign-in if an active session already exists.

• Agent Log out: Signs the agent out of their Desktop and can only be called when the WebSocket Secure (WSS) session has been successfully established.

• Agent State Change: The agent can set a status to indicate their availability (Available, Idle, Busy etc.)

• Reload: Allows the agent to receive all the contacts assigned to a particular agent and state.

Task or Call Control APIs:

• Get Task: Retrieves open and closed call control tasks of an agent.

• Create Task: Creates a successful task.

• Accept Task: Enables the agent to accept either an inbound or an outbound request.

• End Task: Ends an ongoing inbound or outbound request.

• Hold Task: Places a task on hold when the agent is consulting.

• Reject Task: Rejects a task, thus changing the agent's status to Available.

• Transfer Task: Transfers a task or a chat to another agent.

• Resume Task: Resumes a task that has been placed on hold.

Call Recording:

• Pause Call Recording: Pauses call recording so that the agent does not record the user's Personal Identifiable Information (PII).

• Resume Call Recording: Resumes call recording once the agent is ready to record again.

For more information, visit the Webex Contact Center for Developers portal.

03 November 2022

Secure Variables in Flow Control

As a flow developer, you can mark custom flow variables as Secure to prevent logging of Personally Identifiable Information (PII). You can also configure these Secure variables as agent viewable or editable to control the presentation of these variables on the Agent Desktop. For more information, see Secure Variables.

03 November 2022

Regional Media support through Real Time Media Service (RTMS) voice platform

Webex Contact Center supports regional media availability via RTMS. This feature allows customer media (audio and SIP signaling) to remain local in a geographic region regardless of where the Webex Contact Center tenant or its home location resides. Keeping the media local to a region decreases latency, improves audio quality, and provides unique regionalized media configurations for multi-national deployments. For example, the Webex Contact Center tenant is defined as a home region in the United States. When an inbound call arrives in a non-home region such as Sydney, Australia, the media services remain local to the Sydney, Australia region with only application control signalling backhauled to the United States home region. This feature is available for supported RTMS regions such as USA and Sydney with additional regions coming online in late 2022.

For more information, see Map an Entry Point.

03 November 2022

Webex Contact Center launch in Japan data center

Webex Contact Center services are now available from a new Japan-based data center. During the onboarding process, customers can select the country of operation that maps to the Japan data center to provision the tenant in the Japan data center. This data center provides access to dedicated VPOPs based out of Japan and benefits customers in APJC who require voice media services in this region. For more information, see the Services Setup Wizard and Data Locality in Webex Contact Center articles.

31 October 2022

Onboarding Partner as a Customer

Partners can now onboard a Webex Contact Center tenant to their own organization by selecting the I am a Customer option in the Order Setup Wizard in Control Hub.

Partners must note the following restrictions when provisioning the tenant to their own organization using Control Hub:

• If the country of operation that is selected maps to the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, or Japan data centers, the partner must onboard the tenant to the Default Platform only. The partner must not select the Exception Platform. For more information on Webex Contact Center data centers, see the article Data Locality in Cisco Webex Contact Center.

• If the country of operation that is selected maps to the Canada data center, then the partner must not have any existing customer tenants provisioned in that data center. The partner must first provision the tenant for their own use, and later start onboarding customer tenants. Don’t use this feature if a partner already has customer tenants.

28 October 2022

New and reimagined illustrations in Agent Desktop

The Agent Desktop displays enhanced and contextual illustrations that are consistent with the Webex product suite. As part of this change, a new default illustration is displayed on the landing page.

27 October 2022

Threshold alert enhancement

With this enhancement, email alerts generated for threshold breaches now include the updated time stamp and the tenant time zone. For more information, see Threshold Alerts in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

12 October 2022

Variables support for the digital channels

Webex Contact Center supports use of global variables and custom flow variables (local variables) while building flows for the digital channels. Global variables are defined in the Management Portal. Flow developers can use these variables within flows to set and pass values in the context of interactions handled in the contact center. If these variables are marked as agent-viewable and agent-editable, this feature enables agents to view and update values for these variables in the Agent Desktop during customer interaction. Additionally, you can mark global variables as reportable, whereby values are available in the Analyzer for custom reporting. All variables set in the main flow, such as global and local flow variables are also available for access in the shared flows.

For more information, see Variable support for digital channels.

4 October 2022

Agent Desktop enhancement—Set any navigation bar page as the landing page

A new property isDefaultLandingPage is added to the Desktop Layout JSON file. This property allows the administrator to set any navigation bar page as the landing page when the agent signs in. The administrator can configure the landing page at the global level or team level via the Desktop Layout.

For more information, see Navigation (Custom Pages).

29 September 2022

Delete entities permanently in Webex Contact Center

Webex Contact Center administrative configurations can now be deleted permanently. This helps customers remove unwanted configurations, keep a lightweight configuration footprint, and improve application performance. Before deleting a configuration object permanently, you will need to mark it inactive. You can also periodically delete inactive objects using an automatic purge which is at a tenant level setting.

For more information, see Delete inactive objects permanently.

28 September 2022

Surge Protection: Maximum concurrent digital contacts for a tenant

This feature defines the maximum number of digital contacts that can be active on the customer tenant. The Maximum Concurrent Digital Contact Threshold indicates this value. When the tenant reaches the threshold, it rejects any new digital contacts until existing digital contacts disconnect to bring down the number of concurrent digital contacts below the threshold. The concurrent digital contacts in the contact center include Chat, Email, SMS, and Social Channels.

This feature is applicable for customers using Webex Connect.

The value of Maximum Concurrent Digital Contact Threshold is set to 30% higher than the concurrent digital contact entitlements:

Maximum Concurrent Digital Contact Threshold = Concurrent Digital Contact Entitlements * 1.3

The value of concurrent digital contact entitlements is based on the following formula:

Concurrent Digital Contact Entitlements = (Number of committed Standard Agent licenses + Number of committed Premium Agent licenses) x 2 x 15

For zero commitment orders, the default value of concurrent digital contact entitlements is: 100 x 15

Customers can raise a support request to adjust the Maximum Concurrent Digital Contact Threshold for your tenant. The maximum concurrent digital contact threshold cannot exceed 160,000.

For more information, see Concurrent Digital Contact Settings in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

The Surge Protection Statistics report is available in the Analyzer. For more information, see Surge Protection Statistics in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

28 September 2022

Configure Variables displayed on popover and Interaction Control pane

Flow Designer allows flow developers to select the system, global, and local variables that need to be displayed on the voice call request popover and Interaction Control pane.

When the variables are marked as viewable on the Agent Desktop, the flow designer can:

• Select the variables to be displayed on the popover and Interaction Control pane.

• Arrange the selected variables in the order they should be displayed.

• Customize the label that is associated with the variable when it appears on the Agent Desktop.

The popover variables provide brief information on an incoming call, and the information helps agents to learn more about customers before interacting with them. When a voice call is accepted, the configured variables appear in the Interaction Control pane. For more information, see the following sections:

• Desktop Viewable Variables in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

• Popover in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide

• Interaction Control in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide

28 September 2022

Advanced queue information and escalate call distribution group

Webex Contact Center now supports these new Flow Control activities:

• Advanced Queue Information: This activity displays the real-time count of agents in the Available state and the count of logged in agents for a specific set of skill requirements. Based on the number of agents available to handle contacts, flow developers can use this activity to decide and manage the flow sequence.

• Escalate Call Distribution Group: This activity allows flow developers to escalate a queued contact to the next or last call distribution group. This provides better control and flexibility to the flow developer to manage contacts that are parked in a queue and helps reduce wait time for contacts.

For more information, see Advanced Queue Information.

14 September 2022

Agent Desktop enhancement – Sign in with country code

Agents can sign in to Agent Desktop based on their geographic location. They can do the following:

• Choose the country code from a drop-down list and enter the dial number in the Station Credentials dialog box.

• Save the station credential preferences for future sign-ins.

For more information, see the Sign In to the Agent Desktop section in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

9 September 2022

Real Time Media Service (RTMS) voice platform

Webex Contact Center introduces an enhanced media processing platform Real Time Media Service (RTMS) as the primary media services engine for Webex Contact Center. Phase one of the global RTMS rollout includes support for Voice POP-based PSTN connectivity options. This enables customers to use either partner-provided PSTN (service providers) or extend PSTN services such as Bring your Own PSTN (ByoPSTN) from their Private Branch Exchange (PBX) deployment for the contact center.

Support for additional connectivity such as Webex Calling Subscription-based (CCP or LGW) PSTN and Cisco Bundled PSTN will be added at a later date. Customer eligibility is evaluated during onboarding and partners will choose RTMS within Partner Control Hub during onboarding.

For more information, see the Set Up Voice Channel for Webex Contact Center article and Services Setup wizard section in the Get Started with Webex Contact Center article.

10 August 2022

Change the site of an agent

With this enhancement, you can change the site that is assigned to an agent. The teams and multimedia profile values must be changed accordingly. Cisco recommends updating agent sites within a planned maintenance window and agents to create a new session on the Agent Desktop. For more information, see Edit a User section in the Provisioning chapter of the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

5 August 2022

Flow Designer Enhancements

• Autosave Toggle for Flows: Flow developers can enable or disable autosave of a flow using the Autosave toggle button.When you enable this feature, Flow Designer automatically saves the changes made to the flow every three seconds. For more information, see Enable or Disable the Autosave Option.

• Revert a Flow to its previous version: Flow Designer allows flow developers to revert a flow to its previously published version. It opens the flow in edit mode where you can make the necessary changes and publish the flow again with a new version. For more information, see Revert a Flow.

• Export and Import of Flows: Flow Designer allows flow developers to export or import flow control scripts across the same or different tenants. This feature enables flow developers to replicate flow scripts with greater ease than having to recreate flows. You can navigate to Routing Strategy > Flows tab in the Management Portal to access the Export and Import flows feature. For more information, see Export and Import flows.

• Copy and Paste Activities in Flows: Flow Designer allows flow developers to copy and paste an existing activity in multiple places in a flow, without having to choose a new activity from the Activity panel each time. This helps to save the time and effort to choose and configure the same activity multiple times. For more information, see Copy and Paste Activities.

28 July 2022

Desktop inactivity timeout

This feature allows administrators to specify an Idle inactivity timeout for the Desktop application. This helps to prevent agents and supervisors from using licenses indefinitely and blocking contact center resources. A tenant level timeout can be defined in Management Portal > Organization > Settings and additionally administrators can also set Agent Profile level timeouts that override the tenant level settings. For more information, see Settings in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

If an agent is inactive on the Agent Desktop for a specified duration, the agent is notified with the Prolonged Inactivity dialog box. The dialog box with a countdown timer appears one minute before the configured timeout occurs. If you don't click the Stay Signed In button before the timer runs out, the Agent Desktop signs you out. For more information, see Inactivity Timeout in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

26 July 2022

Configurable RONA timeout for each channel

Administrators can now configure tenant level Redirection on No Answer (RONA) timeout for each channel. The values can be configured on the Control Hub > Contact Center > Settings > Desktop page.

The supported channel types are:

• Telephony

• Chat

• Email

• Social

For information about configuring RONA timeout values, see the article Desktop Settings for Webex Contact Center.

25 July 2022

Customize Webex Contact Center tenant time zone

This feature allows a user to select the contact center tenant time zone when provisioning a subscription or trial using the First Time Setup Wizard. For more information, see the article Get Started with Webex Contact Center.

25 July 2022

Desktop Layout enhancement

With this enhancement, new features that are released for the desktop layout are automatically available to users who use an unmodified desktop layout. No administrator action is required to apply new features to teams that use unmodified layouts. The new layout-based features are available when a user refreshes their Desktop session or signs in to the Desktop.

For teams that use a custom desktop layout, administrators must periodically refresh the layout definition to incorporate new features. When administrators view an unmodified layout or a team that uses an unmodified layout, a message is displayed indicating that new Desktop features are automatically applied.

For more information, see Desktop Layout in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

21 July 2022

Agent Desktop enhancement—Add illustration to the task page

A new property taskPageIllustration is provided in the desktop layout JSON file. The new property allows the administrator to customize the blank task page illustration based on organization preferences and brand alignment. When an agent signs in, the task page displays the configured illustration as a background. For more information, see taskPageIllustration.

18 July 2022

WhatsApp for inbound customer care:

Webex Contact Center integrates WhatsApp as a channel for improved customer interaction. The WhatsApp channel allows end consumers to reach out to businesses as an additional channel of choice. For more information, see Set up WhatsApp Channel in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

With WhatsApp integration, agents can respond to WhatsApp contacts using the Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop. For more information, see Manage WhatsApp Conversations in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop Guide.

15 July 2022

Agent Desktop enhancements

• User experience enhancement—Engaged label: When an agent is in the Available state and accepts an active request, the Agent Availability state displays an intuitive label called Engaged. The Engaged label appears on the Agent Desktop when the agent has accepted the task and connected with the customer. When the Engaged label is displayed, the agent can continue to receive active requests on other channels, depending on the channel capacity. For more information, see Agent Availability States.

• Ability for agents to provide feedback on their desktop experience: We continue to rapidly evolve the Agent Desktop based on user feedback. To make it easier for agents to provide inputs that help us to improve their desktop experience, we are providing a feedback option within the Agent Desktop. For more information, see Navigation Bar.

13 July 2022

Agent-based routing

Agent-based routing allows you to assign a dedicated agent or a relationship executive to your contacts. Use agent-based routing to route, queue, or park your contacts directly to preferred agents.

Do you have contacts that call the contact center frequently? You can assign the last agent who interacted with the contact as the preferred agent whenever that contact calls.

The queue-to-agent activity within the flow enables agent-based routing. The agent's email address or ID in the queue-to-agent activity enables routing of contacts to preferred agents.

With this enhancement, you can reduce the time that you spend resolving calls, and improve the overall customer experience. For more information, see Agent-based Routing.

13 July 2022

Update agent skills in realtime

When you update the skill profile of agents or add skills to an agent profile, this is updated in realtime without the need for agents to sign out or sign back in to see the updates. For more information, see Teams.

7 July 2022

Windows 11 support in Webex Contact Center

Webex Contact Center supports the Microsoft Windows 11 operating system for Control Hub, Management Portal, Flow Designer, Desktop, and Analyzer.

For more information, see the following topics:

• The Control Hub tab in the article System requirements for Webex services.

• The Supported Browsers for Management Portal and Flow Designer Browser Requirements sections in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

• The Browser Requirements section in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

• The System Requirements section in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

21 June 2022

Agent Desktop enhancement—Error messages when outdial calls fail

When an outdial call fails, the Agent Desktop displays new error messages for the following scenarios:

• An outdial number dialed by an agent doesn't connect to the customer. For example, call connectivity issues.

• An agent rejects an outdial call. For example, when the agent is busy in another interaction.

• A customer disconnects an incoming call. For example, the customer cancels an incoming call.

• A customer doesn't answer an incoming call. For example, the call rings but the customer fails to answer the call.

For more information, see Make an Outdial Call.

16 June 2022

Web callback enhancements

Do you want your callers to submit callback requests from any external source such as website, chat, or mobile app? We have a Web Callback API available now.

After a request is submitted, it is sent to the Webex Contact Center system. Webex Contact Center receives the callback request and initiates a call to the requestor on an outbound entry point that is used exclusively for callbacks.

Partners or customers should build and maintain the front end and user interface to submit the callback request. The ability to cancel callback requests, skill-based routing, scheduling, and the retry mechanism will not be available in this release.

The Callback report in Analyzer includes the web callback report with the following fields:

• Type of Callback: The type of callback can be Courtesy or Web.

• Source of Callback: The source of callback can be website, chat, or mobile app.

The Agent Desktop displays the new callback icon.

For more information, visit the Webex Contact Center for Developers portal.

26 May 2022

Dynamic prompt support for IVR

Flow Designer supports a single IVR flow to handle interactions in multiple languages based on the customer's choice of language. Flow developers can configure the audio prompt variable in various IVR activities such as Play Music, Play Message, Menu, and Collect Digits. This variable selects the audio prompts to be played dynamically in the language selected by the customer during the interaction.

For more information, see the Activities in Call Handling section in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

18 May 2022

System limits in Webex Contact Center

Configuration limits for Webex Contact Center are now documented and published. For more information, see System Limits in Webex Contact Center in the Getting Started chapter of the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

9 May 2022

Administrator Licensing Changes

Assigning a premium agent license to an administrator is now optional. There is no license cost for administrators who do not access any agent or supervisory features. Such administrators do not have access to the following modules in the Management Portal:

• Agent Desktop

• Reporting and Analytics

• Call Monitoring

• Recording Management

• Agent State Data Realtime

For more information about administrator licensing changes, see Webex Contact Center Documentation.

21 April 2022

Agent Desktop Enhancements

• Removed the background illustrations on the landing page: The landing page so far displayed some default illustrations as a background when an agent signed in to the Agent Desktop. These default illustrations are removed, and agents now see a landing page without illustrations.

• Reorder tabs in the Auxiliary Information pane: Agents can drag and drop tabs in the Auxiliary Information pane to change the tab order. This feature is applicable for:

  • Tabs that are displayed in the Auxiliary Information pane.

  • Additional tabs in the Auxiliary Information pane. The agent can click the More Tabs drop-down list and then select the required tab.

  The order of the tabs is retained even after an agent navigates away from the Auxiliary Information pane, reloads the browser, clears the browser cache, or sign out and sign in again to the Agent Desktop.

  To reset tabs to the default order, agents can click the More Actions () icon and select the Reset Tab Order option.

  For more information, see Auxiliary Information Pane in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

  To enable this feature, the desktop layout JSON file must include the following new properties:

  • Drag and drop tabs: Administrators must set the draggable property value to true. In addition, set the comp-unique-id property to a unique value to identify the component.

  • Reset tab order: Administrators must specify the reset attributes for the agentx-wc-more-actions-widget component.

  For more information, see Auxiliary Information Pane in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

12 April 2022

Stock transition reports

Nine new voice-only stock transition reports are now available in Webex Contact Center. These reports have the same look and feel as that of Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (CCX) reports.

For more information, see Transition Reports in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

11 April 2022

New digital channels released with full General Availability

The new digital channels are now released with full General Availability.

New digital channels—Chat, Email, Short Messaging Service (SMS), and Facebook Messenger—are now available in Webex Contact Center in the US, UK, ANZ, and EU regions. Customers can work with the partners and account managers to plan their organization onboarding and avail the new digital channels.

Customers, when using these channels, can use the following enhancements:

• Flow Builder: This enhancement empowers customers to create powerful self-help. Flow Builder is an editor that enables customers to create interactive communication flows with minimal programming or scripting efforts. It has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface called Flow Canvas, which helps to build communication flows using Nodes.

• Skills-based Routing: Administrators can assign skill requirements as well as skill relaxation criteria to contacts in the QueueTask node in the Flow Builder. Contacts are routed to agents based on skill requirements that are matched best at that point in time in the flow.

• Screen Pop: A screen pop is a window that autonomously appears in an agent's desktop when the agent performs certain actions such as accept a contact request or respond to a contact request from a customer. Screen pops help the agent to get more information about the customer to proceed further with the conversation.

• Automated interaction messages via Flow or Bot allow customers to create a QnA or Task bot, and integrate it via a Flow.

• The channel-specific capabilities allow hyperlinks and delivery receipts.

All digital channels are part of the Premium Seat License. Charges are extra for the following services: automated interaction messages, short code SMS, long code SMS, toll-free SMS, and bot usage.

For more information, see New Digital Channels in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

Migration from select older platforms is also supported. For more information, see the article Upgrade from Cisco Webex Contact Center 1.0 to Cisco Webex Contact Center.

31 March 2022

Auto Answer enables a supported Webex Calling-based agent device (Webex Calling app or MPP phone) to automatically answer calls. The agent hears a tone when the call is automatically answered.

The feature requires a subscription to Webex Calling.

The auto answer behavior applies to calls received or initiated by an agent on the Agent Desktop. Calls that agents receive that aren't managed by the Webex Contact Center ring as usual; for example, from agent to agent.

Administrators use the Agent Profile tab in the Provisioning module of the Management Portal to set the Auto Answer field to Yes. For more information, see the Agent Profile section in the Provisioning chapter of the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

30 March 2022

Switch Telephony Option

On request, customers can access a wizard-driven workflow that automatically switches the telephony provider for the tenant. This allows customers to switch among the VPOP Bridge, Cisco Bundled PSTN, or Webex Calling (CCP/Local Gateway) options. Customers need a scheduled downtime to switch the telephony provider.

For more information, see the article Set Up Voice Channel for Webex Contact Center.

16 March 2022

User Experience Enhancement in Services Setup Wizard

The Services Setup wizard is now enhanced. The Contact Center service setup aligns with the new user experience. There are no changes to the configuration options and they remain the same as before.

For more information, see the article Get Started with Cisco Webex Contact Center.

03 March 2022

Seamless Customer Upgrade Path from Cisco Customer Journey Platform (R10) or CC-One (R9) to Webex Contact Center

This feature enables customers who use Cisco Customer Journey Platform (R10) or CC-One (R9) to upgrade to Webex Contact Center. Customers who enroll for this feature are provided access to a migration workspace. This workspace has the following key capabilities:

• Tenant Configurations: Customers can extract administrative configuration data from their legacy tenant and convert it to a format that can be used to quickly create the same configurations in Webex Contact Center.

• Historical Data: After customers have migrated completely to Webex Contact Center and their legacy tenants have been decommissioned, the customers can query analyzer data that was created on their legacy platform.

• Call Recordings: After customers have migrated completely to Webex Contact Center and their legacy tenants have been decommissioned, the customers can query and download call recordings that were created in their legacy platform.

For more information, see the article Migrate from Cisco Customer Journey Platform (R10) and Cisco CC-One (R9) Releases to Cisco Webex Contact Center.

Bulk Operations for Webex Contact Center

Bulk Operations allows partners and customers to use CSV files to create administrative configurations for Webex Contact Center in bulk. This feature helps to automate the onboarding of new customers and allows existing customers to easily make large scale configuration updates to their tenant.

For more information, see the article Bulk Operations in Webex Contact Center.

15 February 2022

Surge Protection: Maximum Concurrent Voice Calls for a Tenant

This feature defines the maximum number of calls that can be active on the customer tenant. The value is termed as Maximum Concurrent Voice Contact Threshold and can be accessed on the Settings tab of the Management Portal. After the threshold is reached, any new calls are rejected until existing calls disconnect, to retain the number of concurrent calls below the threshold. The concurrent calls in the contact center include inbound calls and outdial calls (outdial calls made by agents, outbound campaign calls, and callbacks).

The value of Maximum Concurrent Voice Contact Threshold is set to 30% higher than the Concurrent Voice Contact Entitlements:

Maximum Concurrent Voice Contact Threshold = Concurrent Voice Contact Entitlements * 1.3

The value of Concurrent Voice Contact Entitlements is based on the following formula:

Concurrent Voice Contact Entitlements = [((Number of committed Standard Agent licenses + Number of committed Premium Agent licenses) * 3) + Number of IVR Add on licenses purchased]

For zero commitment subscription, the value of Concurrent Voice Contact Entitlements is: Concurrent Voice Contact Entitlements = [100 + Number of IVR Add on licenses purchased]

Customers can raise a support request to decrease or increase the Maximum Concurrent Voice Contact Threshold. The maximum value allowed for concurrent voice contact threshold is 13000. For more information, see Concurrent Voice Contact Settings in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

The Surge Protection Statistics report is introduced in the Analyzer. For more information, see Surge Protection Statistics in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

Skills-based Routing Enhancement

A new method of contact selection—Skills-based Contact Selection—is introduced in Skills-based Routing (SBR). Customers can opt for one of the following methods to select contacts—Skills-based Contact Selection or First In, First Out (FIFO) based selection. In Skills-based Contact Selection, SBR filters contacts in a queue periodically to match the agent skills in the sequence—(1) contact priority and (2) timestamp (oldest to newest).

Contacts that are sent to SBR queues are parked until a matching agent is available. When an agent is available, the matching contact among the parked contacts connects to the agent on priority, irrespective of the contact's position in the queue. The Skills-based Contact Selection method thus reduces the wait time of parked contacts and improves the productivity of agents.

By default, Skills-based Contact Selection is enabled for customers. To enable FIFO based contact selection, customers must contact Cisco Support. For more information, see Skills-based Contact Selection in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

11 February 2022

Agent Desktop Enhancement - Reorder Icons on the Horizontal Header

A new property headerActions is added to the desktop layout JSON file. This property allows the administrator to change the default order of the icons on the horizontal header of the Agent Desktop—the (1) (Webex), (2) (Outdial), and (3) (Notification Center) icons.

headerActions: ["webex", "outdial", "notification"],

The headerActions property value is case sensitive.

To remove the header icons and their associated functionality from the Agent Desktop, the administrator must remove the property values.

For more information, see headerActions in the Provisioning chapter of the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

Date Format Options for Interval Field in Analyzer Reports

The default date format for the Interval field in the Analyzer reports is mm/dd/yyyy. With the new enhancement, the Analyzer allows users to choose different date formats for the Interval field, similar to other fields in the reports.

Customization of date format was available for profile variables only, previously.

For more information, see Change Date Format of the Interval Field in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Analyzer User Guide.

10 February 2022

Handle Invalid DTMF Input in IVR Post-call Surveys

Webex Contact Center can handle scenarios where there is invalid or no DTMF (dual-tone multifrequency) input response from customers during IVR post-call surveys. Flow developers can configure the Timeout parameter in the Advanced Settings section of the Feedback activity in the Flow Designer to define the maximum duration (in seconds) for which the system waits for DTMF input from customers. Further, administrators can configure the following IVR settings for Webex Contact Center, in the Questionnaire Settings tab of the post-call survey questionnaire in Webex Experience Management:

• Maximum Invalid Inputs and Timeout Allowed: Administrators can select a value in the Maximum invalid inputs and timeout allowed drop-down list to set the maximum number of times for which the system allows invalid input or no-input responses from customers.

• Audio Files for Notification Messages: Administrators can upload audio files to play notification messages for invalid input, DTMF entry timeout, and maximum number of retries exceeded, respectively.

If a customer enters an invalid input or does not enter any input to a survey question within the specified timeout period, the contact center plays the audio message to notify the customer of the invalid entry or timeout, and then plays the same survey question to the customer. When the maximum number of attempts elapse, the contact center plays the corresponding audio notification to the customer, skips the remaining questions in the survey, and plays the Thank You message to end the survey.

For more information, see Validate DTMF Input Response in IVR Post-call Survey in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

07 February 2022

Global Variables in Webex Contact Center

Administrators can define global variables using the Provisioning module in the Management Portal. Administrators can set the global variables as agent-viewable and agent-editable in order to make them available to agents via the Agent Desktop. Additionally, administrators can set the variables as reportable to include them in Analyzer reports. Flow developers can use the global variables within flows to set and pass values in the context of interactions handled in the contact center. If an agent updates an agent-editable global variable value, the updated value will be available in the Analyzer for reporting. This feature enables administrators to define reportable global variables and persist them across Webex Contact Center components.

For more information, see Global Variables in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

Flow developers can no longer create Call-Associated Data (CAD) variables using the Flow Designer. Custom flow variables will remain non-reportable.

28 January 2022

Webex Customer Experience for Developers Portal

The Webex Customer Experience for Developers Portal enables third-party developers to access Webex Contact Center, and areas such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the journey within the customer experience platform programmatically. The portal provides REST (Representational State Transfer), gRPC (gRPC Remote Procedure Call), GraphQL APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), notifications, and SDKs (software development kits) to help developers build and enhance customer experience. Developers can become familiar with the APIs by using the API reference documents, sample code, and the Try It Out functionality that are provided in the portal, to build customer experience apps.

The following features are available as part of the new release:

• Automated Integration Process: Through integrations, developers can request permission to invoke Customer Experience (CX) APIs. Developers can now register and manage integrations easily via my-apps in Webex Contact Center Developer portal.

• Task Webhooks: Developers can receive real-time notifications on task events via task webhooks.

• Multimedia Profiles API: A new CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) API endpoint for multimedia profiles is available now.

• Rate Limiting Guide: A new Rate Limiting Guide is available at Webex Contact Center for Developers portal documentation.

• Authentication Guide: To authenticate apps to access resources, see the Authentication Guide at Webex Contact Center for Developers portal documentation.

For more information, visit the Webex Contact Center for Developers portal.

22 January 2022

E.164 Format Support for International Calling in Webex Contact Center

Webex Contact Center supports the E.164 phone number format for international calling for agents and supervisors. This is in addition to the IDD (International Direct Dialing) format that was previously supported for all telephony options in Webex Contact Center.

With this enhancement, the E.164 format is supported for all PSTN options for Webex Contact Center—Cisco Provided Bundled PSTN, Service Provider PSTN, Bring Your Own PSTN (BYO PSTN), Bring Your Own PSTN with Local Gateway (Webex Calling), and Cloud Connected PSTN (Webex Calling).

Webex Contact Center supports the E.164 format in the following scenarios:

• Inbound Calls: Contact center customers can use dial numbers in the E.164 format to connect to the contact center.

• Agent Sign-In: Agents can sign in to the Agent Desktop by entering dial numbers in the E.164 format (in addition to the IDD format) in the Station Login dialog box. This functionality enables agents located in different geographical regions to stay connected to their Webex Contact Center tenant to handle voice calls. For more information, see Sign In to the Agent Desktop in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

  For more information about configuring the dial number of an agent, see Edit a User (Agent Settings) in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

• Transfer, Consult, and Conference Calls: Agents can enter dial numbers in the E.164 format (in addition to the IDD format) in the Transfer Request and Consult Request dialog boxes to initiate transfer, consult, or conference calls with agents located in other geographical regions. For more information, see Transfer a Call and Initiate a Consult Call in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

  For more information about configuring phone numbers in the enterprise address book, see Address Books in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

• Outdial Calls and Outbound Campaign Calls: Agents can make outdial calls to contacts in other geographical regions by using phone numbers in the E.164 format, in addition to the IDD format. This enhancement is applicable for outdial calls, courtesy callback, and outbound campaign calls. For more information, see Make an Outdial Call in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Agent Desktop User Guide.

• Supervisor Call Monitoring: Supervisors can now enter the callback number for call monitoring, barge-in, and whisper coaching in the E.164 format, in addition to the IDD format. For more information, see Monitor Calls and Create or Edit a Monitoring Schedule in the Cisco Webex Contact Center Setup and Administration Guide.

Large organizations may have agents operating in many countries around the world. These agents are likely to experience longer latencies as the round trip of voice telephony can be a factor in the origination-to-termination matrix.