Telephonic communications – Centralized switching system – Call distribution to operator
Reexamination Certificate
2001-11-08
2004-05-11
Matar, Ahmad F. (Department: 2642)
Telephonic communications
Centralized switching system
Call distribution to operator
C379S265020
Reexamination Certificate
active
06735299
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed generally to call centers and specifically to the administration of call centers having multiple telephony switches.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
FIG. 1
depicts a conventional call center
100
comprising multiple telephony switches
104
a-n
, or private branch exchanges. Each switch
104
a-n
in the center
100
includes an automatic call distribution application (or ACD)
108
a-n
which further includes a router. As used herein, an ACD is software and/or hardware in a telephony switch that provides determined call center functionality, such as determining which skill is best for a selected contact, directing a contact in a queue for the respective switch to a desired agent, handling call prompting, and the like. Examples of ACDs include Definity™ sold by Avaya, Inc. and Magellan™ sold by Nortel. The router
112
manages call routing or load balancing among switches in multi-switch call centers based upon predetermined rules and/or policies, such as queue waiting times. An example of a router is Best Service Routing™ sold by Avaya, Inc. A call center management system or CMS
116
typically runs on an adjunct processor and collects information about each switch from the switch's corresponding ACD. The CMS enables call center administrators to monitor and manage call centers by generating reports on the statuses of agents, splits/skills, trunks, trunk groups, vectors and vector directory numbers or VDNs. An example of a CMS is Avaya CMS™ and of a toolset providing a graphical user interface for a CMS is Avaya CMS Supervisor™, both sold by Avaya Inc. The collected information is maintained in CMS database
120
. As shown in
FIG. 1
, a single CMS typically serves multiple switches. Multi-switch call centers are gaining in popularity for call centers having agents in multiple geographical locations and for out-sourced call centers, whereby portions of an ACD or set of ACDs are leased to different clients with a concomitant need to enforce privacy and security.
Administration of multi-switch call centers can be labor intensive and therefore expensive. Currently, multi-switch call centers are managed by the CMS using a single-ACD administration and reporting model whose architecture was created for single-switch call centers. To avoid conflicts, agents are assigned to the same split/skill in each of the ACDs, i.e., agents are administered identically across the multiple ACDs. In adding an agent to the call center, for example, an administrator must add the agent separately to each ACD. Likewise in deleting an agent from the call center, the administrator must delete the agent separately from each ACD. Any inconsistency in agent names, login ids, and the like among the ACDs can cause system conflicts. Other synonym types (e.g., aux reason codes, logout reason codes, VDNs, vectors, etc.) require the same type of administration assistance. As will be appreciated, a synonym is a data structure that associates an entity name with an entity id; an entity is a measurable resource, such as an agent, a split/skill, a trunk, a trunk group, a VDN, and a vector; an entity id is an identifier (typically numerical) that corresponds to the entity; and an entity name is a name (e.g., a character string) that corresponds to an entity.
Further problems are encountered in aggregating collected information about the call center. Administrators must aggregate data across several reports when exploring activities across ACDs. For example, to monitor agent performance an administrator must individually generate a report on agent performance for each ACD and manually combine selected contents of the various reports to produce a report for the group of ACDs.
Further problems are encountered in enforcing privacy and security for personnel not only within a company owning a call center but also among multiple companies sharing portions of the call center. Privacy and security typically involve data structures known as permissions, which are rules, policies, or codes restricting CMS read and/or write access. Permissions, like synonyms, are periodically updated and, when updated, must be done for each ACD individually to avoid inconsistencies and system conflicts.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
These and other needs are addressed by the various embodiments and configurations of the present invention. Generally, the present invention uses data structures corresponding to a group of switches to cause additions, modifications, and/or other types of queries to be executed for all members of the group.
In one embodiment, a telecommunications system includes at least:
(a) a plurality of telephony switches (e.g., any communication switches such as private branch exchanges or PBXs) that receive incoming contacts and route the contacts to a corresponding agent;
(b) a management system (e.g., CMS) that interfaces with the plurality of telephony switches and maintains for each of the plurality of telephony switches entity-related information (e.g., performance statistics, login ids, names, permissions, etc.) associated with at least one entity. At least two of the plurality of telephony switches define at least a first group of switches (e.g., an ACD group). The management system includes at least one of the following:
(i) a propagator that propagates automatically at least one of additions to, modifications of, and deletions of the entity information to each member of the first group of switches; and
(ii) an aggregator that receives queries for the entity information for the first group of switches and retrieves automatically the entity information associated with each member of the first group of switches and/or with the first group of switches. In one configuration, an ACD attribute is used to distinguish whether an ACD is ungrouped or is a member of a group. As used herein, an “attribute” refers to a property of a communications switch, such as the feature expert agent selection set including vectoring and EAS™ sold by Avaya, Inc., and a switch grouping such as an ACD group.
By using the concept of the switch or ACD group, the management system can provide the dynamic ability to group switches and manage the resultant groups for a variety of entities. Call center supervisors can have transparent views of their agents regardless of which switch/ACD the agent is logged in to and consolidated agent, split/skill and agent group reporting that aggregates data from multiple ACDs. These capabilities can be provided for realtime and historical reporting, such as through the Centre Vu CMS™ or Centre Vu Supervisor™ (“CVS”) interfaces of Avaya, Inc. The customer can view a group of switches as if the switches were a single, virtual switch. The switch group concept is extendible to any ACD resource or entity tracked by CMS, including vectors, VDNs, trunk groups, call work codes, split/skills, trunks, permissions, etc.
In one configuration, the telecommunications system includes a conflict checker that determines when a conflict exists between the addition to, modification of, and deletion of the entity information (which includes permissions) and existing entity information (which also includes permissions). The conflict checker typically first determines when a conflict exists between an entity identifier and/or an entity name and an existing entity identifier and/or entity name. When a conflict is identified by the conflict checker, the propagator does not automatically propagate the addition to, modification of, and deletion of the entity information. As part of the conflict check the management system typically determines when a switch is included in more than one group of switches. Although certain entity conflicts are only examined for certain entities and/or members of the group, other entity conflicts are also examined for members of overlapping groups.
In one configuration, the ACD Group must satisfy two axioms: (1) ACD resource or entity ids are unique among ACD Groups; and (2) entity names are unique within an ACD Group and its ACD members (at least at the time
Johns Robert T.
Krimstock Roger I.
Avaya Technology Corp.
Matar Ahmad F.
Nguyen Quynh H.
Sheridan & Ross P.C.
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