UCCX - 11 - Unified CCX Design Guide 11
UCCX - 11 - Unified CCX Design Guide 11
0(1)
First Published: August 27, 2015
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Preface Preface ix
Change History ix
About This Guide x
Audience x
Related Documents x
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request xi
Documentation Feedback xi
CHAPTER 2 Overview 35
Unified CCX General Rules for Design 37
Single-Server Non-High Availability Deployment Model 38
Two-Server High Availability Deployment Model 38
Unified CCX High Availability over LAN 39
Unified CCX High Availability over WAN 39
Network Requirements 40
Delay 40
Bandwidth 41
Quality of Service 43
Deployment Considerations 43
Other Design Considerations 44
Multiple Cisco Unified CCX Clusters Integrated with a Single Cisco Unified Communications
Manager Cluster 45
Other Deployment Models 46
Other Unified Communications Integration 46
CHAPTER 3 Features 47
Cisco Finesse 47
Cisco Finesse IP Phone Agent 52
Inbound Voice 52
Codec Support 52
Unified CCX Outbound Dialer 53
High Level Components 54
Functional Description 55
Outbound Preview 55
Change History
Change See Date
Cisco Finesse IP Phone Agent Cisco Finesse IP Phone Agent, on Initial release of document for
page 52 11.0(1)
Cisco Finesse Recording Cisco Finesse Recording, on page Initial release of document for
31 11.0(1)
Standalone Cisco Unified Standalone Cisco Unified Initial release of document for
Intelligence Center Intelligence Center , on page 110 11.0(1)
Remote Expert Mobile Remote Expert Mobile, on page Initial release of document for
72 11.0(1)
Reporting Scaling Considerations Reporting Scaling Considerations, Initial release of document for
on page 96 11.0(1)
Post Call Treatment Post Call Treatment, on page 72 Initial release of document for
11.0(1)
Audience
This guide is primarily for contact center designers and system administrators.
Related Documents
Document or Resource Link
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Documentation http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/
Guide ps1846/products_documentation_roadmaps_list.html
Documentation Feedback
To provide your feedback for this document, send an email to:
contactcenterproducts_docfeedback@cisco.com
Overview
Cisco Unified Contact Center Express provides a secure, highly available, and easy to deploy customer
interaction management solution for up to 400 agents. This integrated “contact center in a box” is intended
for both formal and informal contact centers.
Unified CCX provides options to address multiple contact center functional areas such as:
• Inbound voice
• Outbound campaign
• Agent email
• Inbound web chat
You can deploy these options on Cisco Unified Computing Systems (UCSs) or any other equivalent
specification-based third-party virtual servers with the supported deployment models. For more information,
see the Virtualization DocWiki located here:
http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Virtualization_for_Cisco_Unified_Contact_Center_Express
New Features
Context Service
Cisco Context Service is a cloud-based omnichannel solution for Cisco Contact Center Express.
Historical Reports
The following Historical Reports have been enhanced with the Discard Email feature included:
Email Contact Detail Report Presents information about each email contact that is handled
by the agent.
Email CSQ Activity Report Presents email activity statistics of agents in a Contact Service
Queue (CSQ) on a per day basis.
Email Traffic Analysis Report Gives the count of email messages that are received for each
CSQ.
System Enhancement
The following is a system enhancement available in the Unified CCX 11.0(1):
• Purge enhancement.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/custcosw/ps1846/index.html
Unified CCX deployments must have all product components and optional features of the same package type.
Mixing components or options from different license packages is not supported.
Desktops
Cisco Finesse provides the following desktops:
• Cisco Finesse agent desktop and IP Phone Agent (IPPA) for agent use.
Cisco Finesse desktop services are available with the following Unified CCX packages:
Table 2: Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop Features Available in Each Unified CCX Package
Call Control. From the agent desktop, agents can answer, Included Included
release, hold, retrieve, conference, and consult transfer the calls.
Blind transfer is not supported.
For example, to answer a call, the agent can simply pick up the
phone handset. The Unified CCX software ensures that the
current call state for the phone is kept in synch.
Live Data Gadgets. Agents have access to Live Data Gadgets Included Included
for themselves and the queues to which they are associated. For
example, from the Finesse Gadgets, agents can see how many
calls they have handled today and how many calls are currently
in queue for their CSQ.
Reason Codes. Agents can be configured to enter reason codes Included Included
for Not Ready and Logout.
Telephony Support. Finesse can be deployed with select Cisco Included Included
Unified IP Phone models, as described in Cisco Unified CCX
Software and Hardware Compatibility Guide, located at http://
docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Compatibility_Matrix_for_Unified_
CCX. However, there are different features available on different
phones.
An agent ACD (Unified CCX) extension cannot be shared across
multiple devices. It is valid only with a single line.
You can set the agent ACD extension for Call Forward No
Answer (to voicemail or any other endpoint) as long as the value
for the Ring No Answer timer on that device (or in Cisco Unified
Communications Manager if the default is chosen) is less than
the value for the Select Resource Timeout in the Select Resource
step of the script.
Unified CCX monitors and reports on activities for the first four
extensions on a phone, including non-ACD lines.
Agents are associated with a specific Cisco Unified
Communications Manager extension (directory number).
Automatic Failover. Upon failure of the active Unified CCX Optional with HA Optional with HA
server, Finesse will automatically log agents back in on the license. license.
standby server, and the agent will be placed into a Not Ready
state. Upon failure of the active Unified CCX server, active calls
on agents phones will survive. However, the call duration and
other information that is associated with the call in the historical
reporting database may be affected. Historical reports generated
for time periods in which a failover occurred will have missing
or incorrect data. It will be discernable from the report that a
failover occurred.
Web Chat . The web chat with premium provides the facility Included Not available
for customers to initiate a chat session with the agent.
Call Control. The Cisco Unified IP Phone provides call Included Included Included
control.
Reason Codes. Agents can be configured to enter reason Included Included Included
codes for Not Ready and Logout.
Basic CTI. IPPA allows for call data to be popped onto Included Included Included
the IP Phone display upon call ringing.
Telephony Support. IPPA can be run from any phone that Included Included Included
supports an XML client.
Table 4: Cisco Finesse Supervisor Desktop Features Available in Each Cisco Unified CCX Package
Live Data Gadgets. Supervisors can view statistics of all Included Included Not available
agents and queues that are associated with their team.
Silent Monitoring. Supervisors can silently monitor agent Included Included Not available
calls. Supervisor can only monitor one agent at a time. To
monitor another agent, supervisor must end the silent
monitoring call, and then select a new agent who is in
Talking state.
Barge-in. Supervisors can barge in on an agent call that Included Included Not available
they are silently monitoring. The Barge-in feature brings
the supervisor, the agent, and the caller into a three-way
conference. The agent is aware when the supervisor barges
in. Barge-in is supported with Finesse using supported
phones, or IPPA.
Search and Play Gadget. Cisco MediaSense provides Included Included Not available
Search and Play gadget, a web interface, which allows to
search and filter active and completed call recordings.
Automatic Failover and Re-login. Upon Cisco Unified Included Included Not available
CCX Engine failover, Finesse automatically fails over to
the standby Unified CCX Engine. The supervisor is logged
in again and set to “Not Ready” state, but the call will
continue to progress.
Inbound Voice
Cisco Unified CCX Standard, Enhanced, and Premium each provide varying levels of inbound voice ACD,
IVR, CTI, agent and supervisor desktops, desktop administration, real-time and historical reporting, and
web-based administration features.
Each user license is for a concurrent user. For example, a contact center with three shifts of 100 agents and
supervisors requires 100 concurrent user licenses. Each shift of 100 users would reuse these licenses during
their shifts.
The following table lists the inbound voice licensed components:
Concurrent inbound voice seat with Finesse Desktop Yes Yes Yes
Each concurrent inbound voice user (agent or supervisor)
requires a concurrent seat license.
Conditional routing (time of day, day of week, and custom Included Included Included
variables)
Custom routing based on data from database access (for Included Not available Not available
example, data-directed priority routing)
Integrated Recording
Workflow-based recording with Cisco Finesse Available with Available with Not available
MediaSense or MediaSense or
WFO license WFO license
IVR Ports
IVR ports are packaged as either Basic or Advanced IVR ports.
• Basic IVR ports licensing—Basic IVR ports are not licensed. You must use the Cisco Unified
Communications Sizing Tool to determine the maximum number of Basic IVR ports that are supported
on a per-configuration basis.
• Advanced IVR ports licensing— Advanced IVR ports are licensed on a per-inbound voice seat basis
and are available only with the Premium package. Each inbound voice seat provides two Advanced IVR
port licenses. For example, a 100-seat inbound voice deployment provides 200 Advanced IVR port
licenses. Advanced IVR port licenses counts are checked at run-time. In the example given here, the
201st simultaneously active request for an Advanced IVR port to handle an incoming call would be
denied. Deployments that require additional advanced IVR ports need to purchase add-on Unified CCX
Premium seats. Each Premium seat provides two advanced IVR ports.
Note The maximum number of IVR ports is limited by the maximum number supported for
a given OVA profile. For more information, see Virtualization for Cisco Unified Contact
Center Express available at:
http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Virtualization_for_Cisco_Unified_Contact_Center_Express
Agent Selection. Unified CCX supports the longest Included Included Included
available, linear, most handled contacts, the shortest
average handle time, and circular agent selection
algorithms. With Basic ACD functionality, agents
are associated with one resource group only.
High Availability Failover. With HA failure of the Optional with Optional with Not available
active server can be detected and the ACD subsystem HA license HA license
can automatically fail over from the active to the
standby server.
Agent Routing. Unified CCX routing applications Included Included Not available
can select a specific agent if that agent is in Ready
state. (Queuing on a per agent basis is not supported.)
Wrap-Up and Work Modes. After call completion, Included Included Not available
an agent can be configured to be automatically placed
into Work state, on a per CSQ basis. The agent can
also choose to enter work state if that option is
provided by the agent desktop administrator. A
wrap-up timer is also configurable on a per CSQ
basis.
Wrap-Up Codes. Agents may select administratively Included Included Not available
defined wrap up codes.
Advanced IVR Port SMTP outbound Included Not available Not available Included
mail subsystem that may be used at
run time under workflow control to
send an email message. Third-party
paging or fax products that accept an
incoming email message to invoke a
page or fax service may use this
subsystem to provide real-time paging
and fax responses in addition to email
responses.
Advanced IVR Port Voice XML 2.0 Included Not available Not available Included
Support. Unified CCX supports
executing application logic developed
with the Voice XML (VXML) standard.
VXML is required for certain complex
grammar ASR and TTS interactions and
is optional for a DTMF or simple ASR
or TTS voice interaction service. VXML
allows organizations to reuse application
logic from other applications, such as a
transaction server to a mainframe
database.
Note 1 Unified CCX uses MRCP
v1 for communicating with
third-party ASR-TTS
servers.
2 The supported ASR-TTS
server includes Nuance.
Advanced IVR Port Automatic Speech Optional with Not available Not available Optional with
Recognition via MRCP. ASR provides purchase of purchase of
the ability to use natural human speech compatible ASR compatible
to replace DTMF keypad presses as a product ASR product
way to interact with IVR applications.
Advanced IVR Port Text to Speech Optional with Not available Not available Optional with
via MRCP. TTS provides the ability to purchase of purchase of
use flat text files as input to a compatible TTS compatible
computer-generated speech engine. TTS product TTS product
can replace prerecorded human speech
in IVR applications.
Advanced IVR Port Remote Silent Included Not available Not available Not applicable
Monitoring. Provides a mechanism for
silent monitoring of calls using an IP
phone or a PSTN phone. This form of
silent monitoring does not require a CSD
application to be running but does
require a seat license for any supervisor
engaged in remote silent monitoring.
Remote silent monitoring also does not
require any data network connectivity
and is ideally suited for management of
outsourced customers of a call center
service provider. The agent is unaware
of being monitored using remote silent
monitoring.
Note This operation is not supported
in Finesse deployments.
General IVR Features
Play messages to callers: Music on hold Included Included Included Included
through Cisco through Cisco through Cisco through Cisco
Unified Unified Unified Unified
Communications Communications Communications Communications
Manager Music Manager Manager Manager
on Hold server Music on Music on Hold Music on Hold
or .wav file Hold server or server or .wav server or .wav
.wav file file file
Play messages to callers: Combine Included and Included and Included and Included and
prompts, music, and messages fully fully fully fully
customizable customizable customizable customizable
Capture and process caller DTMF input Included Included Included Included
Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) Optional Not available Not available Through
through Media Media
Resource Resource
Control Protocol Control
(MRCP) Protocol
(MRCP)
Real-time notification services (email; Included Not available Not available Included
support for paging and fax) (paging and fax (paging and
require fax require
integration with integration
third-party with
services) third-party
services)
VoiceXML for ASR, TTS, and DTMF Included Not available Not available Included
Read data from HTTP/S and XML pages Included Included Included Included
Run workflows through HTTP/S request Included Not available Not available Included
Retrieve XML data using HTTP/S Included Not available Not available Included
mechanism
Retrieve XML/JSON based data using Included Not available Not available Included
generic REST API call
The following table describes the Outbound IVR features that are available with a premium package.
Table 9: Outbound Features (IVR and Agent) Available with a Premium Package
Feature Premium
General System Features with Server Software
Administration
The summary overview of system maximums for inbound and outbound voice in the tables are for reference
only.
CTI may also include the ability to invoke a third-party application and to pass data to that application as part
of the agent screen pop.
The following table lists the CTI features that are available in each Cisco Unified CCX package.
Table 10: CTI Features Available in each Cisco Unified CCX Package
Table 11: Outbound Preview Dialer Availability for Unified CCX premium Package
Feature Premium
Preview Outbound Available
The following table describes the Outbound Preview Dialer features that are available in premium Unified
CCX package:
Note For the Outbound feature, the maximum number of campaigns supported is 15 and the maximum number
of supervisor positions supported is 42.
Table 12: Outbound Preview Dialer Features Available for Unified CCX premium Package
Premium Feature
General System Features with Server Software
Note These features are the same as for inbound voice with the exception of redundancy.
Premium Feature
Hardware configuration Deploys and executes co-loaded
on the same virtual machine or
bare metal server as the inbound
voice server.
Integrated CTI and Screen Pop Features with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Populates customer's name, account number, and phone number dialed Included
Cisco Finesse Features for Agent with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Workflow-based recording Included
Ability for supervisor to use Silent Monitor, Barge-In, and Intercept Included
Ability for agent to accept or reject outbound contact. Agent can reclassify Included
call to anyone of many call results, such as busy, fax, and answering
machine.
Cisco Finesse Features for Supervisor with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Integrated Historical Reporting with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Premium Feature
Preview Outbound Campaign Summary report Included
Administration
Area Code Management: Administrators can add mappings from area-code Included
to time zone for non-North American locations. This information is used
to determine the customer contact current time before placing an outbound
call.
Table 13: Outbound Progressive and Predictive Dialer Available with Premium Package
Feature Premium
Progressive and Predictive Agent Outbound Optional with Outbound
License
The following table describes the Outbound Progressive and Predictive features that are available for the
Outbound License with the premium package.
Note For the Outbound feature, the maximum number of campaigns supported is 15 and the maximum number
of supervisor positions supported is 42.
Table 14: Outbound Progressive and Predictive Dialer Availability with Premium Package
Feature Premium
General System Features with Server Software
Note These features are the same as for inbound voice with the exception of redundancy.
Cisco Finesse Features with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Cisco Finesse Features for Supervisor with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Integrated Historical Reporting with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Feature Premium
Agent Outbound Half Hourly Report Optional with Outbound
License
Integrated Live Data Reporting with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Seat License
Administration
Campaign Management: Administrators can create and configure campaigns Optional with Outbound
using AppAdmin web interface and REST APIs License
Web Chat
Unified CCX premium package provides the facility for customers to initiate a chat session with the agent.
State control is common for web chat and email.
Finesse Gadgets
Finesse agent desktop supports multisession chat and generation of reports. The following gadgets are available
when the administrator adds the gadgets to the desktop:
• Chat and Email Control gadget—Allows the agent to control the chat state and to accept incoming
customer chat requests.
• Manage Chat and Email gadget—Allows the agent to handle multiple chat sessions.
Feature Premium
Agent alias. Administrator can set an alias for chat agent. When the agent is on chat, Included
the alias of the agent is displayed to the customer.
Auto chat reject. If no agent is available, Web Chat rejects the chat request. Included
Chat timeouts. Session timeouts for chat inactivity and maximum wait period. Included
Audible alert. An alert is played when the agent receives a new chat request or when Included
there is a new message on an inactive chat session tab.
Multisession chat for agents. Agents can handle multiple chat sessions. The Included
administrator can set one to five sessions and the agent will be presented with set
number of sessions.
Chat transcript. Storage and retrieval of chat transcripts through Cisco SocialMiner, Included
and download of chat transcripts by end user as PDF.
Supervisor reports. Team report for CSQ and agents. Agent statistics and CSQ Included
statistics for chat.
Integrated Web Chat General System Features with Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop
Feature Premium
Separate voice and non-voice state model . Included
Maximum number of concurrent web chat sessions. Depends on the OVA profile. Included
60 / 120 chat
sessions
Agent skill and competency-based routing. You can configure 50 skills, each with Included
up to ten different competency levels. You can configure Contact Service Queues
(also known as skill groups) as requiring up to 50 skills, each with up to ten minimum
skill competency levels. The web chat routing logic then matches the contact problem
statement with agent skills to find the optimum match using one of the following agent
selection criteria:
• Longest available
• Most skilled
Dynamic reskilling by administrator. Changes to CSQ skills and competencies and Included
agent skills and competencies are applied immediately.
Conditional routing. Routing is based on a problem statement that is chosen by the Included
customer.
Agent selection. The longest available and most skilled agent selection algorithm. Included
Rerouting on chat no answer. If the allocated agent does not accept chat within the Included
allowed time limit, the contact is requeued and rerouted.
High Availability (HA) failover. With HA, failure of the active server can be detected Optional with HA
and the nonvoice subsystem can automatically fail over from the active to the standby License
server.
Agent Email
Unified CCX supports agent email with Finesse. Agent Email is available with Unified CCX premium package.
Feature Premium
Finesse Agent Email Included
Feature Premium
Auto accept email. Incoming emails are automatically presented to the agent without Included
any explicit accept (button click).
Visible alert. Email alert along with pending email count. Included
Email contact handling Agents can be configured to handle up to five email contacts. Included
Reply To Header. If the Reply To header is present, the agent's response is sent to Included
that address. Otherwise, it uses the From address of that email to respond.
Save drafts. Agent can save email draft response and resume at a later time Included
Feature Premium
Integrated Agent Email General System Features with Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop
Multiple email addresses. Assign one or more email addresses to a single Contact Included
Service Queue (CSQ)
Dynamic reskilling by administrator. Changes to CSQ skills and competencies and Included
agent skills and competencies are applied immediately. Emails currently being worked
by the agents are not affected.
Agent selection. The longest available or most skilled agent selection algorithm. Included
High Availability (HA) failover. HA is supported in Unified CCX. Upon Unified Optional with HA
CCX failover, all emails in the system are automatically requeued and rerouted. License
Reporting
Cisco Unified Intelligence Center is the web-based reporting platform that is packaged as part of the Cisco
Unified CCX. It is available with the following Unified CCX packages:
Note While using the MediaSense recording option, you must purchase the Unified CCX recording license.
While using the WFO recording option, you must have the CR/QM/AQM licenses.
The following table details the various recording features that are supported based on the type of recording
options available:
Note The licenses required for the recording options mentioned in the above table are:
• For recording using WFO, WFO licenses on Unified CCX are required.
• For recording using MediaSense, licenses on Unified CCX for Workflow based recording and Native
MediaSense licenses for IPT recording are required.
• For recording using MediaSense and WFO Solutions Plus applications, licenses on Unified CCX
for Workflow based recording, Native MediaSense licenses for IPT recording and Solutions Plus
WFO licenses are required.
Workforce Management
Cisco Workforce Management allows supervisors and contact center managers to develop schedules for their
agents and manage key performance indicators and real-time adherence. Managers can create and manage
schedules for an unlimited number of sites, manage scheduling for offices spread out in different time zones,
and schedule alternative media sources seamlessly, including email. Cisco Workforce Management also allows
agents to view their schedules and performance metrics and request exceptions to those schedules, such as
schedule offers and trades and requesting time off. Cisco Workforce Management is available with Unified
CCX Enhanced and Premium licenses.
Each user license is for a configured (not concurrent) user. For example, a contact center with three shifts of
100 agents and supervisors needs 300 configured user licenses. Each person in a shift of 100 users uses the
license associated with them during their shift.
The following Workforce Management features are available in each Cisco Unified CCX package:
• Forecasting
• Multimedia Scheduling
• Intraday Management
• KPIs and Reporting
• Alerts
• Reporting
• Web Interface
• Desktop Integration
Note Cisco Unified Intelligence Center and Cisco Finesse are deployed on the same Virtual Machine (VM)
with Unified CCX and supports all the Unified CCX deployment models.
The following table depicts the deployment models that are supported in Unified CCX. These models have
no bearing on which specific server model is used. The minimum server model required is identified by the
Cisco Unified Communications Sizing Tool. This chapter provides general rules for design and considerations
and limitations for each of these deployment models. This information allows an Unified CCX system planner
or designer to understand what other similar deployment models are supported and to understand how to
determine the best solution for a given set of requirements.
Unified CCX Deployment Model Unified CCX Components on Server Unified CCX Components on Server
1 2
Single-Server Non-High Engine, Database, Recording, —
Availability Deployment Monitoring components
Model—Unified Communication
Manager Integration
Note Unified CCX deployment model integrated with Unified CME is not supported in 9.0(1) and higher
versions.
The following figure depicts the deployment when integrating Unified CCX with Unified Communications
Manager. In this deployment, optional Unified CCX components shown with an asterisk (*) can be added.
These components are:
• Cisco Unified Work Force Management and Cisco Unified Quality Manager.
• Cisco IM and Presence Server.
For more details about deploying the Presence Server, refer the Cisco Unified Communications SRND,
which is available at this URL:
http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd
Figure 2: Deployment Model of Unified CCX Integrated with Unified Communication Manager
Note ASR and TTS can be added in Unified CCX integrated with Unified Communication Manager. ASR and
TTS software is not provided by Cisco. This software must be purchased from other vendors. These
vendors can provide design and server sizing requirements for their software.
Note For HA over LAN deployment, heartbeats are sent every half a second and failover occurs if 5 consecutive
heartbeats are missed. For HA over WAN deployment, heartbeats are sent every second and failover
occurs if missing 10 consecutive heartbeats. These values are not configurable.
• You can locate the Unified Communications Manager servers that run CTI Managers with which Unified
CCX communicates in the same campus LAN. In case of Unified CCX servers that are deployed over
WAN, for better site redundancy, Cisco highly recommends that you deploy local Unified
Communications Manager server at both sites.
• If recording is going to be used for a high availability deployment, the Recording component must be
redundant.
• All agents for a Unified CCX deployment must be using phones that register to the same Unified CM
cluster. Calls can be received from devices and callers on another Unified CM cluster (using inter-cluster
trunks).
• High availability is not supported when Cisco Unified IP-IVR is deployed in a Unified CCE environment.
• Unified CCX software and database versions must be the same for both the master and standby nodes
in a high availability deployment.
• Different server models can be used in a high availability deployment with the following constraints.
◦The capacity of the subscriber HDD should be equal to or more than that of the publisher HDD.
◦In the case of different servers being used in a high availability deployment, the system capacity
is determined by the smaller of the two servers.
• Unified CCX solution works with a combination of software and hardware components, providing an
open and flexible environment for customers to execute complex scripts, custom codes, documents, and
so on. Overloading any of the software and hardware components such as virtual memory and CPU
could impact the solution performance. Review and optimize the scripts, custom codes and documents
before they are loaded to the production setup. Also constantly monitor the system component and
hardware attributes like disk space and CPU utilization.
When deploying Quality Management and Workforce Management with Unified CCX, consider the following
guidelines:
• Quality Management and Workforce Management must be installed on separate VM from each other
and from Unified CCX. No form of co-residency is supported in this release with any other software,
such as installing on Unified CCX or installing both Quality Management and Workforce Management
on the same VM.
• Unified CCX does not support the use of third party applications (for example, using TAPI) to control
its devices.
• For more deployment information about Workforce Management and Quality Management, refer to the
Cisco Workforce Optimization System Configuration Guide available at here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps8293/products_implementation_design_guides_list.html
Note In HA deployments, historical data comes from the database located in the standby engine node. A higher
number of historical reporting sessions during operating hours is supported for HA deployments.
be located in one of the sites where the Unified CCX server resides or in any other remote sites. The following
figure depicts the deployment for Unified CCX high availability over WAN.
Network Requirements
When deploying Unified CCX HA over WAN, observe network requirements described in this section.
Delay
The maximum allowed round-trip time (RTT) between Unified CCX servers is 80 ms.
Note Do not use the ping utility on the Unified CCX server to verify RTT as it will not provide an accurate
result. The ping is sent as a best-effort tagged packet and is not transported using the same QoS-enabled
path as the WAN traffic. Therefore, verify the delay by using the closest network device to the Unified
CCX servers, ideally the access switch to which the server is attached. Cisco IOS provides an extended
ping capable of setting the Layer 3 type of service (ToS) bits to make sure that the ping packet is sent on
the same QoS-enabled path that the WAN traffic will traverse. The time recorded by the extended ping
is the round-trip time (RTT), or the time it takes to traverse the communications path and return. Refer to
the Cisco IOS document available at
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a0080093f22.shtml#extend_ping
for more detail.
Bandwidth
Sufficient bandwidth must be provisioned for Unified CCX cluster, Unified CM cluster, Remote Cisco Finesse
Users and other optional components to deploy HA over WAN.
Account for the bandwidth required for the following components:
• Unified CCX Cluster and Unified CM Cluster
Unified CCX cluster consumes bandwidth between the Unified CCX servers in high availability. If the
Unified CM running CTI Manager that Unified CCX communicates with is remote, there would be
additional bandwidth utilized by Unified CCX.
Unified CM could consume significantly higher bandwidth for Intra-Cluster Communication Signaling
(ICCS) between sites when deploying with Unified CCX. This is due to the additional number of call
redirects and CTI/JTAPI communications encompassed in the intra-cluster communications.
Unified CCX can be deployed as ACD to route and queue contacts for available agent or as IP-IVR to
perform self-service. The bandwidth requirements for Unified CCX and Unified CM clusters are different
depending on the deployment type.
The following table shows the minimum bandwidth requirement for Unified CCX and Unified CM
clusters when deploying HA over WAN.
ACD 1.2 Mbps 800 kbps 1.544 Mbps (T1) 70 kbps per 100
BHCA2
IP-IVR 1.2 Mbps 200 kbps 1.544 Mbps (T1) 25 kbps per 100
BHCA
1 This column shows the database bandwidth required for Unified CM clustering over WAN and could be subject to change. For the final authorized value, refer
to Cisco Unified Communications Solution Reference Network Design (SRND) available at: http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd
2 BHCA (Busy Hour Call Attempt) is the number of calls entering the system in the busy hour for Unified CCX or IP-IVR.
• ICCS column shows all the ICCS traffic between CallManager/CallManager services and
CallManager/CTI Manager services running in the Unified CM nodes across sites.
As an example, assume the Unified CCX HA over WAN deployment has two sites and is used as ACD.
Site 1 has the Unified CCX, one Unified CM publisher and two Unified CM subscribers. Site 2 has the
other Unified CCX and two Unified CM subscribers. Unified CCX in site 1 communicates with Unified
CM subscriber in site 2 for JTAPI signaling. In the busy hour, there are 1500 calls coming into Unified
CCX that get routed or queued for agents.
• To calculate bandwidth for Finesse, see the Finesse Bandwidth Calculator for Unified Contact Center
Express, available at:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/finesse/
products-technical-reference-list.html
Quality of Service
Quality of Service (QoS) must be enabled and engineered correctly on the network to provide consistent and
predictable end-to-end levels of service. Unified CCX software does not mark any network packet, so ensure
that you mark the traffic at the network edge routers.
The following table shows the recommendations for the QoS markings for Unified CCX HA over WAN
deployment.
Database Replication between Unified CCX nodes3 IP Precedence 0 (DSCP 0 or PHB BE)
3 The database traffic may be reprioritized to a higher priority data service (for example, IP Precedence 2 [DSCP 18 or PHB AF21] if required by the particular
business needs). An example of this is the usage of outbound dialer in Unified CCX, which relies on writing data to the Config Datastore.
For more information on QoS requirements of VoIP, refer to the Enterprise QoS Solution Reference Network
Design Guide available here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/WAN_and_MAN/QoS_SRND/QoSIntro.html#wp46447
Deployment Considerations
Consider the following when deploying high availability over WAN with Unified CCX:
• Deploy the ASR or TTS server locally in each Unified CCX site
• Set up Unified CCX to use the local Unified CM servers for both primary and secondary in the following
configurations. If this is not possible, at least the primary Unified CM server should be local.
◦AXL Service Provider
◦JTAPI Provider for Unified CM Telephony Subsystem
◦JTAPI Provider for Resource Manager/Contact Manager Subsystem
Note Significant delays in agent login will occur during Unified CCX failover if AXL and
JTAPI communications are over WAN, especially under load conditions.
• Assign the two sets of CTI Ports (one for the master and the other for the standby engine) to different
device pools, regions and locations, in the CTI Port Group.
• Data in Historical Datastore and Repository Datastore of Informix IDS database start merging after the
network partition is restored. This situation could potentially generate heavy data traffic over WAN.
Restore the WAN link during after hours to minimize the performance impact.
• Do not support VPN tunneling across the WAN.
Consider two sites (site A and site B) separated over WAN. A Unified CCX HA cluster over WAN supports:
• A single Cisco MediaSense node on either site A or site B
• A two-node MediaSense cluster, both nodes of which are on either site A or site B
For more information, see Solution Reference Network Design for Cisco MediaSense available here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps11389/products_implementation_design_guides_list.html
• The Unified CM sizing tools assume devices are evenly distributed across all servers. CTI route points
are configured as part of a device pool in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Server as the
primary CTI Manager being used; it may be required to run the Cisco Unified Communications Manager
sizing tool on a per-location or per-server basis.
• The Unified CM QSIG (Q Signaling) path replacement feature is not supported for Unified CCX calls.
• Unified CM Forced Authorization Codes and Client Matter Codes should be turned off for all route
patterns in the Unified CM cluster that are used by Unified CCX. Enabling these features for route
patterns that are not used by Unified CCX does not affect Unified CCX.
• For a list of unsupported features in Unified CM with Unified CCX, refer to the current release notes
for Unified CCX.
• Unified CCX supports different sets of IP Phones as agent devices on the Unified CM and Unified CM
platform; not all agent devices can be used as IP Phone Agent. For a complete list of supported agent
devices, refer to the Cisco Unified CCX Software and Hardware Compatibility Guide available at http:/
/docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Compatibility_Matrix_for_Unified_CCX.
• Finesse allows each agent to choose and set a language from the language selector drop-down list on
the sign-in page.
• An agent using Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop can log in using Extension Mobility but the agent phone
must be in the Unified CM cluster that is used by Unified CCX.
• Sometimes new releases of Unified CM will not support Unified CCX immediately at Unified CM first
customer ship (FCS) time. Some organizations may be early adopters of new Unified CM releases and
may be delayed from migrating to new Unified CM releases and using new Unified CM features if
Unified CCX is installed with that same Unified CM cluster. Therefore, in some situations, it makes
sense to have a separate Unified CM cluster for Unified CCX.
• Cisco Jabber runs in two modes: Deskphone Mode and Softphone Mode. Unified CCX only supports
Cisco Jabber as an agent device in Softphone Mode.
• Finesse does not support video operation if you are using Cisco Jabber for Windows as agent phone.
• The following features are not supported if you are using Cisco Jabber for Windows as agent phone:
◦Multiline (ACD and non-ACD)
◦Extension Mobility
Multiple Cisco Unified CCX Clusters Integrated with a Single Cisco Unified
Communications Manager Cluster
You can integrate multiple Unified CCX clusters with a single Cisco Unified Communications Manager
cluster.
Note There is no limit to the number of Unified CCX clusters supported with a single Unified CM cluster as
long as the combined agent phones, CTI ports, and CTI route points that are utilized by all Unified CCX
clusters are used to size Unified CM.
• To determine if you need more than one CTI Manager, refer to the Cisco Unified Communications
Solution Reference Network Design (SRND), available at http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd.
If your deployment requires more than one CTI Manager, you load-balance the Unified CCX and other
CTI applications across various CTI Managers in the cluster to provide maximum resilience, performance,
and redundancy.
For additional CTI Manager best practices, refer to the Cisco Unified Communications Solution Reference
Network Design (SRND), available at http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd.
• If more than one primary subscriber is required to support your configuration, distribute all agents equally
among the subscriber nodes. This configuration assumes that the busy-hour call attempts (BHCA) is
uniform across all agents.
• Each Unified CCX cluster is standalone and independent from other Unified CCX clusters. There is no
communication or synchronization between the Unified CCX clusters. Agents should operate using only
one Unified CCX cluster.
Unified CM Telephony Triggers (CTI Route Points) and CTI ports should be different across Unified
CCX clusters.
• In the list of Resources in Unified CCX Administration, each Unified CCX cluster displays all the agents
in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager cluster, even though the agents can operate and log in
to another Unified CCX cluster.
This situation requires that the Unified CCX Administrator be aware of which resources are associated
with each cluster. The Unified CCX Administrator can mitigate this situation by having a unique naming
convention for resources associated with a particular Unified CCX cluster.
• This deployment is not intended to provide Unified CCX redundancy across different Unified CCX
clusters. If a Unified CCX cluster fails, the agents that operate in this cluster cannot operate in other
Unified CCX clusters. If another Unified CCX cluster is configured to accept the calls that were originally
sent to the Unified CCX cluster that failed, there will be no report integration between the Unified CCX
clusters.
• This deployment does not change the characteristics and design recommendations of each individual
Unified CCX cluster. For example, within a Unified CCX cluster, high availability is still supported.
Cisco Finesse
Introduction
Cisco Finesse is a next-generation agent and supervisor desktop designed to provide a collaborative experience
for the various communities that interact with your customer service organization.
Cisco IM and Presence functionality can be provided to the agents using Jabber.
The following table lists the availability of the Cisco Finesse REST APIs by license packages:
Service Unified CCX Premium Unified CCX Enhanced Unified CCX Standard
Cisco Finesse REST Available Available Not available
APIs
The following table lists the availability of the Cisco Finesse service in the Unified CCX packages:
Service Unified CCX Premium Unified CCX Unified CCX Unified IP IVR
Enhanced Standard
Cisco Finesse Available Available Not available Not available
• Outbound agent—Supports outbound dialing including progressive, predictive, and direct preview
modes, allowing agents to handle both inbound and outbound dialing tasks.
• Multisession webchat—Allows agents to work on multiple chat sessions at the same time for increased
agent resource usage.
• Multisession email—Allows agents to work on multiple email sessions at the same time for increased
agent resource usage.
• Multiline—Provides multiple lines on agent phones.
• Extension mobility—Allows users to temporarily access their Cisco Unified IP Phone configuration
such as line appearances, services, and speed dials from other Cisco Unified IP Phones.
Note • Team composition changes in Cisco Finesse are not updated dynamically. Log in again or refresh
the browser session to see the changes.
• Transition to Logout state is possible only from Not Ready state.
• Limit the team that accesses Live Data reports to a maximum of 50 agents.
• Unified CCX 10.6 with mixed mode COP file supports concurrent use of Cisco Finesse Desktop
and Cisco Finesse Agent or Supervisor Desktop Finesse.
• Migration tools are not available to migrate configurations between Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop
or Cisco Supervisor Desktop and Finesse. When you migrate, manually recreate configurations such
as reason codes, wrap-up codes, workflows, contacts, and phone books.
You can configure the Cisco Finesse Agent and Supervisor Desktops to use Cisco gadgets and third-party
gadgets through a layout management method. You can customize the Cisco Finesse Agent and Supervisor
Desktops through the Cisco Finesse administration console. The administrators can define the tab names that
appear on the desktops and configure which gadgets appear on each tab.
For information about supported browsers and operating systems, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center
Express Software and Hardware Compatibility Guide at http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Compatibility_Matrix_
for_Unified_CCX.
Because Cisco Finesse is a web application, caching can significantly impact the required bandwidth. For
example, the first time an agent logs in, the number of bytes transmitted is approximately 2 megabytes. If
caching is enabled in the browser, during subsequent logins, the number of bytes transmitted is 0.134 megabytes.
Because of additional gadgets on the supervisor desktop, this number is higher for a supervisor login
(approximately 2.5 megabytes without caching and 0.325 megabytes with caching). To minimize the amount
of bandwidth required for login, make sure that caching is enabled in the browser.
To help you with the bandwidth calculation, Cisco Finesse provides a bandwidth calculator to estimate the
bandwidth required to accommodate the client login time.
Note that during failover, agents are redirected to the alternate server and are logged in automatically. For
example, if you configure your bandwidth so that login takes 5 minutes and a client failover event occurs,
agents will take 5 minutes to successfully log in to the alternate server.
The Cisco Finesse bandwidth calculator does not include the bandwidth required for any third-party gadgets
in the Cisco Finesse container or any other applications running on the agent desktop client.
The bandwidth listed in the bandwidth calculator must be available for Cisco Finesse after you account for
the bandwidth used by other applications, including voice traffic that may share this bandwidth. The
performance of the Cisco Finesse interface, and potentially the quality of voice sharing this bandwidth, may
degrade if sufficient bandwidth is not continuously available.
Administration
The administrator can access the Cisco Finesse administration web user interface in read and write mode from
the Unified CCX publisher node. From the Unified CCX subscriber node, access is read-only.
Silent monitoring
The supervisors can monitor agents calls using Unified Communications Manager-based silent monitoring
with Cisco Finesse.
Cisco Finesse does not support SPAN port-based monitoring and desktop monitoring to silent monitor the
agent.
Recording
Cisco Finesse workflows can be used to record agent calls using Cisco Unified Communications Manager
with Cisco MediaSense or Cisco Workforce Optimization.
Note The agent phone must have built-in-bridge (BIB) support enabled for Cisco Unified Communications
Manager-based call recording and monitoring to work with Cisco Finesse.
For information about the phones that have built-in-bridge support, see the Software and Hardware
Compatibility Guide for Cisco Unified CCX and Cisco Unified IP IVR at this location: http://
docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Compatibility_Matrix_for_Unified_CCX.
For information about recording APIs, see the Cisco Finesse Web Service Developer Guide at http://
developer.cisco.com/web/finesse/docs.
Cisco MediaSense Search and Play Gadget
The Search and Play gadget available on the Supervisor desktop allows you to access all recordings stored in
MediaSense.
Recording Tag
Recordings initiated by Unified CCX and stored in Cisco MediaSense are tagged with semantic, contextual
metadata. If participants of the call that is being recorded change, there is no change in tags for that call. These
tags are prefixed by CCX: and contain the following parameters:
• agent = <agent ID> of each logged-in Unified CCX agent who participated in the recording.
• team = <team name> of all those teams whose agents have participated in the recording.
• CSQ = <CSQ name> of that CSQ where the call being recorded was queued and processed.
Multiline support
Cisco Finesse supports the use of multiple lines on agent phones. You can configure one or more secondary
lines on an agent phone. The agent's ACD line must be in button positions 1 - 4. Any calls on the observed
lines are reported in the historical reports. However, Finesse blocks any events that are sent by the CTI server
as a result of call activity on an agent’s non-primary/non-ACD line (lines other than the one the agent is logged
into). These events are not published to Finesse clients. No information about calls that are handled on
non-primary/non ACD line appears on the Finesse desktop. Agent state is not modified as a result of activity
on the agent's secondary line.
For example, if Agent A uses his non-ACD line to call Agent B (on Agent B's primary/ACD extension), the
call does not appear on Agent A's desktop. The call appears on Agent B's desktop because Agent B received
the call on the primary/ACD extension.
Direct Transfer Across Line (DTAL) and Join Across Line (JAL) are not supported.
NAT support
Cisco Finesse does not support NAT.
IPv6 support
Cisco Finesse provides support for IPv6 with Unified CCX.
E.164 support
Unified CCX agents and supervisors can login to Finesse with ‘+’ (plus sign) as prefix. Finesse also supports
E.164 for the following:
• Enterprise Data
• Phone Book Contacts
• Workflow Rules or Conditions
Supervisor Tasks
Cisco Finesse IPPA does not support supervisor tasks such as monitor, barge, and intercept, but supervisors
can sign in and perform all agent tasks on their IP Phones. For reporting purpose the supervisor will have to
log in to Cisco Unified Intelligence Center to view the live data reports.
Inbound Voice
• Integrated IVR, call queuing, and routing under the same package
• Out-of-the-box support for scripting the business logic
• Enterprise database and document manipulation using scripting tool through REST APIs
• Real-time statistics on contacts to make run-time decisions
• Full scale automated speech recognition, text to speech and Voice XML scripting
Codec Support
Unified CCX supports the following codecs:
• G.711 a-law and μ-law
• G.729
Note Recording, playback, and TTS are not supported for a-law.
Campaign Manager Responsible for starting and stopping each campaign and retrieving and updating
contact records from and to the database.
Dialer Receives contacts from the Campaign Manager and initiates the outbound calls.
Notifies the Campaign Manager of the call status and call result after the call is
answered. The dialer software is IP based and does not require any telephony
cards for making outbound calls. In Outbound Preview, the dialer uses the Finesse
agent IP phone to place outbound calls through a voice gateway configured in
Unified CM. In Outbound IVR, the dialer uses the SIP protocol to place outbound
calls through the SIP gateway configured for the Outbound IVR feature.
Resource Manager Monitors agent states, reserves agents and receives instructions from the Dialer
to place the outbound call. This component is used only in the Outbound Preview
feature.
CTI Server Handles requests and responses from and to the Finesse and passes the customer
data to the Finesse for screen pop. This component is used only in the Outbound
Preview feature.
IVR Subsystem Responsible for execution of the IVR application associated with the campaign
when a live contact has been detected by the SIP gateway and transferred to the
configured CTI Route Point on the Unified CM. This component is used only
in the Outbound IVR feature.
All of these components run as part of the Unified CCX Engine and cannot be installed separately.
Functional Description
There are three types of dialing modes in outbound: Direct Preview, Progressive, and Predictive.
Outbound Preview
The Outbound Preview feature supports only the direct preview dialing mode. It uses a 3-stage process for
making an outbound call. The first stage is to find an available agent and retrieve the customer information
for making the outbound call. The second stage is the reservation call, and its purpose is to reserve an agent
and send customer data to the agent desktop. During this stage, the agent is reserved and the data appears on
the desktop so that the agent can review the data and decide whether to accept the call by pressing the
corresponding button on the agent desktop. If the agent does not accept the call, the call is handled by other
outbound agents or closed for the campaign. If the agent does accept the call, Outbound Preview kicks in the
last stage where Unified CM is instructed to place the outbound call using the agent's phone. When the
outbound call is answered, Outbound Preview updates the customer contact in the database with the call status
and call result.
When the outbound call connects with the customer, the agent can perform all call control operations that are
normally supported on inbound calls (transfer, conference, hold, retrieve, and so on). Ensure that the agent
transfers or conferences the outbound call, only if the call is answered by a person but not through other media
such as an answering machine or a fax machine.
Note CUBE is supported with the Outbound Predictive and Progressive dialers for agent and IVR with CPA
(Call Progress Analysis).
Outbound IVR uses the Call Progress Analysis (CPA) capability of the SIP gateway to place and filter outbound
calls. The SIP gateway filters out non-live contacts such as fax, invalid number, and no answer and forwards
only the live calls answered by a customer contact and answering machine to a CTI Route Point on the Unified
CM. This operation in turn triggers execution of an IVR application associated with the campaign at Unified
CCX.
In the case of IVR Outbound, the CTI ports on the master engine will go out of service on a failover, which
will result in calls in progress between customers and CTI ports to be disconnected. The standby server will
resume dialing out the remaining contacts in the outbound IVR campaigns after the failover.
In the case of agent Outbound (progressive and predictive), if an agent is reserved for an outbound campaign
and the master engine goes down before the call is transferred to the agent, then the agent is automatically
logged out. The dialed out contacts if any, that are yet to be connected to the agent are dropped.
When deploying Outbound in a high availability environment, only the dialer in the master node is active.
Outbound calls cannot be distributed or load balanced to the dialer in the standby node.
Scalability
These capacities and limits are supported for outbound:
• Preview outbound supports a maximum of 150 agents.
• Progressive and predictive agent-based outbound supports a maximum of 150 agents.
• Progressive and predictive IVR-based outbound supports a maximum of 150 IVR ports. The number of
active outbound IVR ports is limited by the maximum number of outbound IVR ports that are supported
for a given platform. Because IVR for inbound and outbound compete for the same set of IVR ports,
the actual number of active IVR ports in use for inbound and outbound depends on multiple parameters:
• Number of licensed inbound ports
• Number of licensed outbound ports
• Sum of the number of ports dedicated across outbound IVR campaigns
Refer to the “Configuring Unified CCX Dialer” chapter of the Unified CCX Administration Guide for details
on how the numbers of active IVR ports for inbound and outbound are determined by these parameters.
1 An agent in Ready state is available and the Dialer has retrieved contact records from the Campaign
Manager. The Dialer requests the Resource Manager to reserve the agent.
2 The Resource Manager reserves the agent by moving the agent to Reserved state.
3 The Dialer sends a reservation call to the agent desktop and, at the same time, a screen pops that contains
the customer information and is presented to the agent. The agent reviews the customer data and decides
whether to take the call.
4 The agent can choose to accept, skip, or cancel this reservation call. If the agent chooses to accept it, the
agent clicks the Accept button on the desktop.
5 The Dialer instructs the Resource Manager to place an outbound call from the agent phone through Unified
CM out to the voice gateway. Because this call is a direct preview call, the agent immediately hears the
ringback of the customer phone.
6 As soon as the call is answered, the Dialer closes the contact, classifies it as a voice call and sends the
result to the Campaign Manager. If an answering machine answers the call, the number is invalid, or the
customer requests a callback, and the agent can reclassify the call from the desktop accordingly. If the
customer requests a callback and the agent reclassifies the call, the customer is called back using the same
number, an alternate number, or a callback number specified by the customer.
IVR Mode
The call flow description for Outbound IVR is illustrated in this figure and the description that follows.
1 Outbound IVR dialer determines the number of contacts to dial per the configured algorithm (progressive
or predictive) and places outbound calls using SIP through the voice gateway.
2 Voice gateway detects non-live contact through its CPA capabilities and sends status of non-live contact
to the dialer. The dialer uses this to update contact status information in the configuration database.
3 Voice gateway detects live contact through its CPA capabilities and sends status of live contact to the
dialer. The dialer uses this to update contact status information in the configuration database and also
sends a SIP refer message to the SIP gateway which in turn transfers the call to the configured CTI Route
Point on Cisco Unified CM.
4 Cisco Unified CM transfers the call to a IVR port on Cisco Unified CCX server.
5 The IVR subsystem then associates the call with the IVR application associated with the campaign. The
engine starts execution of the application and an IVR session takes place between the IVR application for
the campaign on Cisco Unified CCX and the customer contact.
Deployment Guidelines
The following guidelines should be followed when deploying outbound:
• Outbound supports a maximum of 15 active campaigns and a maximum of 10,000 active outbound
records for each campaign.
• Outbound does not come preinstalled with any Do Not Call lists. The system administrator should
manually filter the contact list against the Do Not Call list prior to importing contacts.
The following guidelines are specific to IVR and agent-based progressive and predictive outbound:
• It is possible to only have a single instance of the SIP gateway in the deployment.
• Install the SIP gateway on the same site (that is, the same campus LAN) as the Unified CCX primary
engine. The SIP gateway can be installed across the LAN or WAN. The maximum delay over the WAN
should not exceed 80 milliseconds.
Note The primary engine is always the first node that was installed in the Unified CCX cluster
and cannot be changed.
• Remote Destinations — A numerical address that represents the user’s other phones (for example, home
office line and other PBX phone). The phone can be any off-cluster device such as DVO-R
(Dial-via-Office-Reverse).
Introduction
The Extend and Connect feature can be configured for agents and supervisors on remote devices to accept
inbound and outbound calls. This feature works with Cisco Jabber for Windows in Extended mode and the
new CTI Remote Device type and enables applications to have limited call control capability over third-party
devices of an user. Configure all third-party devices or end points of an user as remote destinations on a virtual
CTI Remote Device. You can configure third-party devices or end points of an user from Cisco Unified
Communications Manager administration console.
If there is an active remote destination set for a remote device, a call to that device is placed only to the active
remote destination.
Note You cannot perform silent monitoring on Home Agents using this feature.
When a persistent connection call is not answered, the agent is moved to Not Ready state and is not allowed
to move to Ready state until the persistent connection call is established. The persistent connection call is
dropped after the agent logs out.
The following figure shows the persistent connection call flow:
For remote phones that have persistent connection, the following features are not supported:
Signaling Flow
The following figure shows the signaling flow chart:
Deployment Guidelines
In case of fresh deployments of Cisco Unified Communications Manager and Unified CCX, ensure that the
DNS is configured for all the components.
The Unified CCX is deployed inside the enterprise firewall and SocialMiner is deployed inside company
premises in the DMZ along with the customer website. The DMZ is open to all HTTP/HTTPS traffic from
the Internet. The Unified CCX is shielded from all outside traffic except the traffic coming from the DMZ
zone. All web chat communications occur over HTTP/HTTPS and BOSH ports irrespective of where
SocialMiner is deployed.
One variation of the preceding scenario can be an addition of a proxy server that can intercept and relay all
calls going to SocialMiner.
The Cisco Finesse Agent Email feature requires the use of an external mail server (Microsoft Exchange 2010
and 2013 are supported). This mail server is not provided, installed, or configured as part of the Unified CCX
installation. To communicate with the Exchange Server, SocialMiner uses secure IMAP (for message retrieval)
and secure SMTP (for message sending). On the Exchange Server, enable IMAP (SMTP is enabled by default).
For more information about enabling IMAP, see section “Mail Server Configuration” in Cisco Unified CCX
Administration Guide, Release 11.0 at:
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-express/
products-installation-and-configuration-guides-list.html.
Unified CCX allows email contacts to be routed to agents based on the email addresses to which they are sent
by the customers. Cisco Finesse Agent Email feature uses skill-based routing and last-agent email routing.
Separate CSQs are required for Email. You must associate each Email CSQ with a separate email account on
the mail server. This account must be dedicated to the Cisco Finesse Agent Email feature and must not be
used for other purposes. Agent association with Email CSQs is configured in the same manner as Voice CSQs
by assigning skills and competency levels to the CSQ.
For information about Email Contact Distribution Features, see Finesse Agent Email Contact Distribution.
Cisco Finesse provides a common chat and email state, separate from voice state. Blending ensures that agents
can handle voice, email, and chat contacts from the same desktop. Emails are routed only to agents that are
assigned to at least one Email CSQ.
When an agent replies to the customer's email, the reply email address depends on the information in the
customer's email. If the customer's email contains the Reply-to header field, the agent's reply email is sent to
the email address in the Reply-to header. If the Reply-to header is missing in the customer's email, the agent's
reply email is sent to the From address in the customer's email. The sender address of agent's email is the
email account associated with the Email CSQ on which the reply is being sent. Upon requeue, Unified CCX
ensures that the response is sent with the email address of the requeued CSQ as the From address.
Reporting
Note Historical Reporting Client (HRC) is no longer available with Unified CCX.
Email reports
Inbound reports
Agent Not Ready Reason Code Summary Report Yes Yes Yes No
Contact Service Queue Service Level Priority Summary Report Yes Yes Yes No
Outbound reports 4
System reports
4 Obtain Outbound license that is optional with the Premium license to access IVR and Agent-Outbound reports.
Supervisor reports
Note • The team that accesses Live Data reports has a maximum limit of 50 agents.
• Maximum number of users supported is 42 to run Live-Data Reports concurrently on Cisco Unified
Intelligence Center.
• All the Live Data reports are available as gadgets. For more information to configure gadgets, see
the Cisco Unified CCX Administration Guide, located at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/
custcosw/ps1846/products_installation_and_configuration_guides_list.html.
• Live Data counters in the Unified Intelligence Center reports and the Cisco Finesse gadgets are reset
in the following scenarios:
• Manual reset—Administrator resets the real-time report counters from the Application
Administration interface.
• Automatic reset—Daily purge resets the real-time report counters at midnight (in the local
Unified CCX server time zone).
If there are active calls at the time of reset, the Contact Service Queue (CSQ) reports display data
for the calls, and the agent report counters are set to zero.
• Live Data reports are not updated dynamically if configuration changes are made to CSQ, team, or
agents. Refresh the report to see the latest changes.
• Live Data reports do not support team names and CSQ names that have multi-byte characters. Such
team names and CSQ names are not synced from Unified CCX to Unified Intelligence Center, but
user names are synced.
Finesse Reports
Agents and supervisors can access Live Data reports that are configured to be displayed as gadgets in the
desktops. The following are the default reports that are configured:
Agent desktop
• Home tab
• Agent CSQ Statistics Report
• Agent Team Summary Report
• My Statistics tab
◦Agent Statistics Report
◦Agent State Log Report
Supervisor desktop
• Team Data tab
• Team Summary Report—Short and Long Term Average
• Team Summary Report—Since Midnight
Note To add or modify the report gadgets, contact your administrator. For more information, see Cisco Unified
CCX Administration Guide available here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/ps1846/products_installation_and_configuration_
guides_list.html
Wallboards
Unified CCX supports wallboard reporting. Obtain the wallboard from a Cisco-approved vendor from Cisco
Marketplace:
https://marketplace.cisco.com/
Configuration APIs
The Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Application Programming Interface (UCCXAPI) provides a
platform to integrate provisioning applications similar to what is provided by the Unified CCX Application
Administration interface. Cisco Unified CCX exposes sophisticated control of the contact center application
management with its Configuration REST APIs. For more information on supported APIs, see Cisco Unified
Contact Center Express Developer Guide available here:
https://developer.cisco.com/site/collaboration/contact-center/uccxapi/overview/
Purge Enhancement
This feature enhances the existing feature of purging the database. The administrator can now set the purge
duration for a scheduled purge in Unified CCX Administration in addition to the purge start time. The
enhancement also allows the administrator to configure to initiate an automatic purge when the extent size
exceeds the set limits.
Security
SSL HTTPS Connection
The certificates uploaded using the Cisco Unified OS Administration interface to the Tomcat trust store is
available to secure all HTTP connections made during script execution. The following can be secured:
• Document steps
• VoiceXML script
• Custom java code that provides web services
Caller ID Support
Caller ID feature displays the caller's number instead of the CTI port number on the agent's IP phone. Caller
ID (CLID) is disabled by default. To enable CLID using a CLI command, see the Cisco Unified Contact
Center Express Operations Guide, located at http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/ps1846/
prod_maintenance_guides_list.html.
E.164 Support
Unified CCX supports E.164 numbering plan for route point directory numbers, and Finesse agent and
supervisor extensions. Unified CCX E.164 numbers support the plus sign (+) followed by up to 15 characters
that consist of numerals and the special characters—alphabet X, hash(#), square brackets ([ ]), hyphen (-),
and asterisk (*). E.164 is supported for the following components:
• CTI port directory numbers
• Contact phone numbers for outbound calls
• Cisco Finesse
• Trigger directory numbers
• Agent extensions
• Display of Incoming calls
• Phonebook and keypad
• Route points
• Configuration APIs for route points
• Script editor
Context Service
Cisco Context Service is a cloud-based omnichannel solution for Cisco Contact Center Express and Contact
Center Enterprise. It enables you to capture your customer’s interaction history by providing flexible storage
of customer-interaction data across any channel.
Context Service works out of the box with Cisco Customer Collaboration products. Context Service also
provides an SDK interface for integration with your own applications or third-party applications to capture
end-to-end customer-interaction data.
For more information about Context Service and to check service availability, see http://docwiki.cisco.com/
wiki/Context_Service.
This figure is a general overview of the design considerations for call sizing. For a detailed description of the
call center sizing design process, refer to the section on sizing call center resources in the Cisco Unified
Contact Center Enterprise Solution Reference Network Design Guide, available online at the following URL:
http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd
There are similar basic call center sizing considerations and steps for Unified CCE, and they also can be used
in sizing a smaller contact center for Unified CCX. This call-sizing approach will provide you with the
minimum number of IVR ports to support the total BHCA.
In addition, you should include the following design considerations, specific to Unified CCX, in your call
center sizing calculations:
• At a minimum, plan on enough capacity to replace your existing system. The replacement system should
perform at least as well as the one it is replacing.
• After all of the Erlang (C and B) calculations are complete for the call center sizing, any changes in
queue times or agents will affect the total number of trunks and IVR ports required for an Unified CCX
solution.
• As you increase the size of the agent pool, very small changes in the average queue time and percentage
of queued calls will affect the required number of gateway trunks and IVR ports.
• Even if you perform all of the calculations for a call center, there are still some variables that you cannot
plan for but that will affect the ports needed on a Unified CCX system. For example, one or more agents
could call in sick, and that would affect the port count and queue time for each call. Just two agents
calling in sick could increase the port count by over 12 percent. This would affect the price of the system
and, if not planned for, would affect the ability of the call center to meet caller requirements. Properly
sizing call center resources is integral to designing an effective Unified CCX system.
Note Not all of the Unified CCX system limits are available at the same time.
If all of the call sizing information is available, the next step is to apply Unified CCX sizing limits to the call
center requirements. For this step, use the Cisco Unified Communications Sizing Tool, available online at:
http://tools.cisco.com/cucst
The Unified Communications downloadable sizing tools help you with the task of sizing Unified
Communications deployments.
To determine the size of the call center, obtain answers to the following questions:
• How many IVR ports do you need?
• How many PSTN gateway trunk ports do you need?
• How many agents will answer incoming calls?
To answer these questions properly, you will need the sizing metrics and information listed in the following
table.
Metric Description
Average handle time (AHT) Average duration (talk time) of a call plus after-call
work time, which is the wrap-up time after the caller
hangs up.
Average IVR port usage time The total time for prompt playout and/or menu
navigation (if any) in the Unified CCX script. This
time should not include the queue time the caller
spends waiting in queue before an agent becomes
available. Queue time is calculated using Erlang-C
automatically.
Service level goal for agents Percentage of calls answered by agents within a
specific number of seconds.
Busy Hour Call Attempts (BHCA) Average number of calls received in a busy hour.
Grade of service (% blockage) for gateway ports to Percentage of calls that get a busy tone (no gateway
the PSTN trunks available) out of the total BHCA.
All of the metrics in this table are basic call-sizing metrics. After this information is obtained, calculate the
number of gateway trunk ports, IVR ports, and agents using standard Erlang B and C calculators.
Note If the system being designed is a replacement for an existing ACD or an expansion to an installed Unified
CCX or Cisco Unified IP IVR system, you might be able to use the historical reporting information from
the existing system to arrive at the above metrics.
In addition, call sizing design considerations may vary if the call center is more self-service oriented.
Terminology
This figure illustrates the common port types and how they map to Unified CCX.
If you want additional supporting features, such as automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS),
email notification, web server or client functionality, and database operations, you only need to purchase the
Premium package. Additional seats may also be purchased for IVR port licenses if the number of port licenses
that come with the seat licenses is not sufficient.
The Unified CCX architecture differs slightly from the example TDM call center configuration in that IVR
ports and queue ports (and P&C ports as well) are combined into one logical CTI port as shown in the figure
above.
The customer chat interface retrieves updates in batches with a maximum delay of 5 seconds between batches.
• Method used for silently monitoring and recording agent calls. The method used dictates the bandwidth
load on a given network link.
Use the following table to estimate the number of Unified CCX agents that can be maintained across the WAN
(with IP Telephony QoS enabled). These numbers are derived from testing where an entire call session to
Unified CCX agents, including G.729 RTP streams, is sent across the WAN. Approximately 30 percent of
bandwidth is provisioned for voice. Voice drops are more of an issue when you are running RTP in conjunction
with Cisco Finesse and other background traffic across the WAN. These voice drops might occur with a
specific number of agents at a certain link speed, and those possible scenarios are denoted by the entry N/A
(not applicable) in the following table.
Table 24: Remote Agents Supported by Unified CCX Across a WAN Link
In remote agent deployments, QoS mechanisms should be used to optimize WAN bandwidth utilization.
Advanced queuing and scheduling techniques should be used in distribution and core areas as well. For
provisioning guidelines for centralized call processing deployments, refer to the Cisco IP Telephony Solution
Reference Network Design documentation, available online at: http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd.
in the Unified CM configuration for each supported CODEC. Configuring packets to contain more speech
information reduces the number of packets sent over the network and reduces the bandwidth because there
are fewer packets containing the additional networking headers, but the packet sizes increase.
The following table shows the bandwidth required for a phone call for the different combinations of CODEC
and amount of speech per packet.
G.711 20 174.4
G.711 30 159.0
G.729 10 108.8
G.729 20 62.4
G.729 30 47.0
G.729 40 39.2
G.729 50 34.6
G.729 60 31.4
Note • The calculations are based on G.711 using a sampling rate of 64 kbps speech encoding and the G.729
using 8 kbps. This means one second of speech encoded into the G.711 CODEC requires 65,536
bits (or 8,192 bytes) to represent one second of sound.
• For full-duplex connections, the bandwidth speed applies to both incoming and outgoing traffic.
(For instance, for a 100-Mbps connection, there is 100 Mbps of upload bandwidth and 100 Mbps of
download bandwidth.) Therefore, an IP phone call consumes the bandwidth equivalent of a single
stream of data. In this scenario, a G.711 IP phone call with no silence suppression and containing
20 milliseconds of speech per packet requires 87.2 kbps (174.4 / 2) of the available bandwidth.
• Unified CCX supports a-law and μ-law for G.711.
• If a prompt is recorded with G711 a-law phones and uploaded, you may encounter an error while
playing the recorded prompt.
Table 26: Available Upload Bandwidth Percentage for Simultaneous Monitoring Sessions with G.711 CODEC
Call only 0.1 0.9 5.6 13.6 34.1 68.1 Not supported (NS)5
9 1.7 16.6 NS NS NS NS NS NS
10 1.8 18.3 NS NS NS NS NS NS
5 The bandwidth of the connection is not large enough to support the number of simultaneous monitoring sessions.
Table 27: Available Upload Bandwidth Percentage for Simultaneous Monitoring Sessions with G.711 CODEC
6 The bandwidth of the connection is not large enough to support the number of simultaneous monitoring sessions.
The following notes apply to the bandwidth requirements shown in the previous tables:
• The bandwidth values are calculated based on the best speed of the indicated connections. A connection's
true speed can differ from the maximum stated due to various factors.
• The bandwidth requirements are based on upload speed. Download speed affects only the incoming
stream for the IP phone call.
• The values are based upon each voice packet containing 20 milliseconds of speech.
• The number of bytes in each packet include the entire Ethernet encapsulation.
• The data represents the CODECs without silence suppression. With silence suppression, the amount of
bandwidth used may be lower.
• The data shown does not address the quality of the speech of the monitored call. If the bandwidth
requirements approach the total bandwidth available and other applications must share access to the
network, latency (packet delay) of the voice packets can affect the quality of the monitored speech.
However, latency does not affect the quality of recorded speech.
• The data represents only the bandwidth required for monitoring and recording. It does not include the
bandwidth requirements for Cisco Finesse.
Delay— The maximum allowed round-trip time (RTT) between the Unified CCX server and SocialMiner is
150 ms.
Bandwidth— In addition to the requirements for the Unified CCX and Unified CM clusters, you must
provision sufficient bandwidth for SocialMiner, the customer web server, and remote agent/supervisor desktops
to deploy Web Chat successfully. You must take into account the bandwidth required for the following
components:
• Unified CCX and SocialMiner— If SocialMiner and the Unified CCX are not co-located, there is an
additional bandwidth requirement for the communication and contact signaling.
• SocialMiner and Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop— When a chat session starts, depending on the chat
transcript size and communication frequency, there is an additional bandwidth requirement between
SocialMiner and the Cisco Finesse Agent Desktop.
• SocialMiner and customer website— The customer website transfers all new chat contact requests to
SocialMiner. When the chat contact reaches SocialMiner, an active session is maintained and when a
chat begins, the chat agent and the customer website have to and from data traffic to carry chat messages.
If the customer website is not on the same network as SocialMiner, you must ensure that the bandwidth
requirement is based on mean per session chat traffic.
The following table shows the minimum bandwidth requirement for the Unified CCX and SocialMiner when
they are not located in the same network.
1
Allocate network bandwidth for signal communication based on this formula:
Signaling network bandwidth (in KBps) = Number of new chat sessions per second × Number of messages
per chat session × Average message size
Example
If you have a Busy Hour Call Completion (BHCC) of 2400 (maximum supported) with an average chat
duration of 3 minutes, you will have 0.67 chat sessions per second. On average, if each chat session has five
messages for state signaling and contact injection and each message is 1 KB (500 characters), then bandwidth
utilization is 0.67 × 5 ×1 KBps = 3.35 KBps.
2
Allocate network bandwidth for signal communication based on this formula:
Signaling network bandwidth (in KBps) = Number of new chat sessions per second × Number of messages
per chat session × Average message size
Example
If you have a BHCC of 2400 (maximum supported) with an average chat duration of 3 minutes, you will have
0.67 chat sessions per second. On average, if each chat session has 3 messages and each message is 2 KB
(1000 characters), bandwidth utilization is 0.67 × 3 × 2 KBps = 4.02 KBps.
3
Allocate network bandwidth for chat based on this formula:
Chat network bandwidth (in KBps) = Chat sessions sending message per second × Average message size
Example
If all of the120 sessions are active and 10 percent of the chat sessions are sending messages every second,
120 × 10 / 100 = 12 chat sessions are sending a message each second.
If the average message size is 1 KB (500 characters), the chat network bandwidth is 12 KBps.
1
Allocate network bandwidth for signal communication based on this formula:
Signaling network bandwidth (in KBps) = Number of new email sessions per second × Number of messages
per email session × Average message size
Example
If you have 400 emails (maximum supported) per hour, you will have 0.11 email sessions per second. On
average, if each email session has six messages for state signaling and contact injection and each message is
1 KB (500 characters), then bandwidth utilization is 0.11 x 6 x 1 KB = 0.67 KBps.
2
Allocate network bandwidth for signal communication based on this formula:
Signaling network bandwidth (in KBps) = Number of new email sessions per second × Number of messages
per email session × Average message size
Example
If you have 400 emails (maximum supported) per hour and an agent can handle five concurrent emails, you
will have 0.11 emails per second. The agent can requeue or respond to that email directly. Assuming on
average 10% of email messages are requeued and there are 100 Email CSQs in the system, three messages,
each 1 KB, and the requeue list message is 10 KB, the bandwidth requirement is calculated as follows:
network bandwidth (in KBps) = number of concurrent emails x number of new email sessions per second x
[(number of messages per email session x average message size) + (percentage of emails requeued x size of
requeue list message)]
5 x 0.11 x ((3 x 1 KB) + (0.1 x 10 KB)) = 2.22 KBps
The flows listed above represent the extreme cases which makes the calculations conservative.
Requeues and attachments are expected to occur 10% of the time. The maximum number of emails per hour
is 400. The occurrence of each type of flow is determined by first calculating the number of basic and requeue
flows followed by the number of basic and requeue flows that contain attachments:
• Total basic email flow = Maximum email per hour – [maximum email per hour x (requeue percent /
100)]
◦Email with attachments flow = total basic email flow x (attachment percent / 100)
◦Basic email flow = total basic email flow – email with attachments flow
• Total email requeue flow = Maximum email per hour x (requeue percent / 100)
◦Email requeue with attachments flow = total email requeue flow x (attachment percent / 100)
◦Email requeue flow = total email requeue flow – email requeue with attachments flow
Each of the flows has a set of messages with different bandwidth requirements. The requirements are derived
based on the following constants:
• Customer email size = 6 KB
• Attachment size = 5120 KB
• Agent reply size = 6 KB
• SLA = 60 minutes
• Save draft interval = 3 minutes
Example
Using an email size of 6 KB and an agent reply of 6 KB, the bandwidth requirements for the set of messages
between the Finesse Agent Desktop and SocialMiner for each flow is as follows:
• Basic email flow = 6288 KB
◦Load UI files into Finesse = 6144 KB
◦Signaling = 6 KB
◦Get email body = 6 KB
◦Save draft = agent reply size x (SLA / save draft interval) = 120 KB
At 400 emails per hour, the bandwidth for each flow is as follows:
• Basic email flow = 6288 KB x 324 = 2037312 KB
• Email with attachments flow = 31888 KB x 36 = 1147968 KB
• Email requeue flow = 6300 KB x 36 = 226800 KB
• Email requeue with attachments flow = 37020 KB x 4 = 148080 KB
The total bandwidth is 3560160 KB per hour. The bandwidth in KBps between the Finesse Agent Desktop
and SocialMiner is 1024 KBps.
Example
Using an email size of 6 KB and an agent reply of 6 KB, the bandwidth requirements for the set of messages
between the SocialMiner and mail server for each flow is as follows:
• Basic email flow = 156 KB
◦Initial fetch of customer email = 6 KB
◦Get email body = 6 KB
◦Save draft = agent reply size x (SLA / save draft interval) = 120 KB
◦send = 2 x (customer email size + agent reply size) = 24 KB
At 400 emails per hour, the bandwidth for each flow is as follows:
• Basic email flow = 156 KB x 324 = 50544
• Email with attachments flow = 35996 KB x 36 = 1295856
• Email requeue flow = 162 KB x 36 = 5832 KB
• Email requeue with attachments flow = 41122 KB x 4 = 164488 KB
The total bandwidth is 1516720 KB per hour. The bandwidth in KBps between SocialMiner and the mail
server is 512 KBps.
Security
Security can be implemented on many levels. Applications security is dependent upon security implemented
at the infrastructure level. For more details on security at the network infrastructure level, refer to the security
design considerations in the Cisco IP Telephony Solution Reference Network Design documentation, available
here:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/largeent/it/ese/srnd.html
Unified CCX can communicate with these external sources through its subsystems, provided that Network
Address Translation (NAT) is not used.
A detailed description of QoS is not within the scope of this design guide. For QoS design recommendations,
refer to the quality of service design guide available here:
http://www.cisco.com/go/designzone
Unified CCX Administration and BIPPA Service HTTP / TCP 8443 AF21
— HTTP traffic destined for web administration HTTPS
and BIPPA interface on Unified CCX
Unified CCX Engine and Unified CCX HTTPS / TCP 8443 AF21
Administration — SOAP AXL HTTPS messaging SOAP
destined to Unified CM from Unified CCX
Unified CCX Engine — CTI messaging destined CTI TCP 12028 CS3
to Unified CCX from CAD clients
Unified CCX Engine — RTP voice bearer traffic RTP UDP 16384 - 32767 EF
(bi-directional)
the caller stream. Once an agent is available and selected at the remote site, Unified CCX transfers the call to
the agent.
During the transfer, before the agent picks up the call, there is another call setup between Unified CCX and
the agent phone. It takes up another call bandwidth over the WAN, and is represented by the agent stream in
the previous example. Once the agent picks up the call, the voice traffic is between the voice gateway and the
agent phone, which are both at the remote site. At that time, no bandwidth is reserved over the WAN, as
illustrated in the following example. This example shows how call bandwidth is reserved in a contact center
call that is eventually routed to an agent. Depending on where the voice gateway, the agents, and the Unified
CCX server are located, proper WAN bandwidth should be provisioned.
The Unified CCX database is local to the server. In a normal operating mode, the bandwidth between Unified
Intelligence Center and the data source can be ignored.
Note Each report requires about 2.6 Mbps of bandwidth between the user and Unified Intelligence Center.
The following table provides a selected list of capacity limits when deploying Unified CCX.
Deployment Capacity
Maximum number of inbound agents 400
This table shows absolute limits. Reaching the limits for multiple criteria in a specific configuration might
not be possible. Use the Cisco Unified Communications Sizing Tool to validate your configuration. This tool
is available at:
http://tools.cisco.com/cucst
The Cisco Unified Communications Sizing Tool is available to Cisco partners only. For more details and to
validate your configuration, contact your Cisco sales engineer or Cisco partner to access this tool.
For information on capacity and sizing of Cisco Workforce Optimization, refer to the Cisco Workforce
Optimization System Configuration Guide.
The summary overview of system maximums for inbound and outbound voice listed in the table is for reference
only.
OVA profile 3 2 1 3 2 1
Supervisors 42 32 10 42 32 10
Web Chat volume per hour 2400 2400 1200 2400 2400 1200
Silent Monitoring 42 32 10 42 32 10
Recording and Playback using N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
Finesse 9
VoiceXML ports 80 80 40 80 80 40
Busy Hour Call Completions 6000 5000 2000 6000 5000 2000
(BHCC)
7
Example; If your agent seat count is 100, you can have 25 chat sessions. If your agent seat count is 10, you can have 10 chat
sessions.
8
Example; If your OVA profile is 1, the agent seat count is 100, you can have 60 chat sessions. If your agent seat count is 10,
you can have 10 chat sessions.
9 The recording limit is based on the number of recording licenses deployed on Unified CCX. Appropriate capacity planning is required to perform recording
and playback on MediaSense. For more information see, Solution Reference Network Design for Cisco MediaSense available here: http://www.cisco.com/
en/US/products/ps11389/products_implementation_design_guides_list.html
10 The number of IVR ports is also limited by the maximum number supported for a given server platform. In case of virtualized deployment, the maximum
number of IVR ports is limited by the maximum number supported for a given virtual machine template.
Table 32: Reference Capacities for Blended Inbound and Outbound Systems
Supervisors 42 32 10 42 32 10
Silent Monitoring 42 32 10 42 32 10
Web Chat volume per hour 2400 2400 1200 2400 2400 1200
11
Example; If your OVA profile is 1, the agent seat count is 100, you can have 60 chat sessions. If your agent seat count is 10,
you can have 10 chat sessions.
12 For high-availability (HA) deployments, the BHCC listed in the table is for LAN deployments. For WAN deployments, BHCC is 5000, 750, and 750 for OVA
profile 3 and 2, and 1, respectively. In addition, the BHCC contributed by the preview outbound dialer should not exceed 1000, 750 and 750 for OVA profile
3, 2, and 1, respectively. The BHCC contributed by Outbound IVR should not exceed 1000 and 750 for OVA profile 3 and 2 respectively. These reduced
BHCCs apply only to HA over WAN deployments.
Note All the capacities stated in this section are system maximums.
Note These scenarios only apply to the Finesse desktop and not to Finesse IP Phone Agents.
Both channels for a given client must connect to the same Finesse server.
You cannot connect the load balancer to the REST connection for one Finesse server and to the XMPP channel
connection for the other Finesse server. This setup provides unpredictable results and is not supported.
IPv6 Support
Unified CCX does not support IPv6 but it can inter-operate with Unified CM running in IPv6. All CTI Ports,
CTI Route Points and agent phones have to be configured as IPv4 devices. Unified CCX servers, machines
running the agent desktop and other optional servers (for example, ASR/TTS, WFM, QM etc) should be
running in IPv4 segment, However, the calling device can be configured as either IPv4 or IPv6. Beware that
if the calling device is in IPv6 and the receiving device is in IPv4, Unified CM dynamically inserts a media
termination point (MTP) to convert the media between the two devices from IPv4 to IPv6 or vice versa. This
would have an impact on Unified CM performance.
For more information on IPv6 deployment with Unified CM, refer to the document Deploying IPv6 in Unified
Communications Networks with Cisco Unified Communications Manager available here:
http://www.cisco.com/go/ucsrnd
Sever Type Server Disk Size HR DB Size Repository DB Agent DB Size Configuration
Size (rascal) DB Size
100 Agent VM 1x146 GB 10.78 GB 40 MB 0.5 GB 0.5 GB
profile
Unified CM
• Disable advertising G.722 codec capability for the agent phone if the phone
supports this codec.
• In the Region used by the agent phone, set the audio codec as G.711 or
G.729 only and do not set the Link Lossy Type as Lossy to prevent iLBC
from being used.
Engine Redundancy
Any incoming call arriving at Unified Communications Manager destined for Unified CCX route points can
be accepted by the Unified CCX engine and all Unified CCX call treatment and ACD routing services are
operational. Automatically logging on large numbers of agents may take up to one minute.
During failover, ACD subsystem will not be able to route calls to agents until the automatic login process
completes and the agent manually sets the state to Ready. Agents on Unified CCX routed calls will see those
calls survive and Finesse will automatically re login agents back within one minute. After being logged back
in, agents will have to set the state to Ready when they are ready to begin receiving calls.
If the Island mode occurs for more than four days, DB replication between the nodes will be broken and will
need to be reestablished from Unified CCX Administration web interface when the WAN link is restored.
Backup scripts are executed on the publisher, and it backs up the database that has mastership. In Island mode,
only one node gets backed up and the data getting collected on the other node does not get backed up. The
backup is inconsistent, and if restored, there will be loss of data.
Tip You can use the Unified CCX Administration Datastore control center pages or the CLI to check the
replication status.
Smart Failover
Cisco Finesse clients do not complete redirection to the other server unless they confirm that Cisco Finesse
is IN_SERVICE on the other server. If the failed side recovers by that time, the clients automatically reconnect
to it.
Active node Yes Site B will be OUT_OF_SERVICE IN_SERVICE Clients can After the
is down (Site the master. connect and connectivity
A). operate with is
Site B. reestablished,
the primary
node will be
the master.
Clients
connected to
Site B node
are redirected
to Site A.
Island Mode
If WAN is down, the nodes function in Island mode and both of the nodes independently assume mastership
(engine and data stores components). You can access reports from either of the nodes.
Note There will be a data discrepancy in the reports as there is no data replication between the nodes till the
connectivity is restored.
For more information on how to create custom reports, see the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Report
Developer Guide, located at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/ps1846/products_user_
guide_list.html.
Note Live Data is not supported on the standalone Cisco Unified Intelligence Center.
Web Chat
With high availability, failure of the active server can be detected and the nonvoice subsystem automatically
fails over from the active server to the standby server. All unanswered chats are moved to the new active
server.
All logged-in agents are logged out and redirected to the new active server, where they need to log in again.
An active chat session is terminated in the Finesse agent desktop. The agent must log in to the new active
server.
The fault tolerance for Web Chat is provided in the Unified CCX. In an HA deployment, SocialMiner is
configured to communicate with both the Unified CCX nodes. When a new contact arrives at SocialMiner,
both the Unified CCX nodes are notified.
In the case of a failover, all queued or unread contacts are reintroduced by SocialMiner into Unified CCX,
and the new master server will queue these contacts and start the allocation.
Attention Cisco SocialMiner does not support HA deployment options. Chat will not be available if SocialMiner is
down.
Note Web Chat does not support the Island mode scenario.
References
The following table lists important links related to Unified CCX:
Category Documents
Solution Design Software and Hardware Compatibility Guide for Cisco Unified CCX and Cisco
Unified IP IVR
http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Compatibility_Matrix_for_Unified_CCX
Install and Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Installation and Upgrade Guide
upgrade
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/custcosw/ps1846/prod_installation_guides_
list.html
Virtualization for Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Virtualization_for_Cisco_Unified_Contact_Center_Express
Category Documents
Troubleshoot Troubleshooting Unified Contact Center Express
http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Troubleshooting_Unified_Contact_Center_Express