Call center technology notes - Indosoft

Modern technology stack drives faster Call Center Software development

2012-01-30T20:49:00.021-04:00

Modern contact center platforms are built on top of powerful technology stack. The underlying stack makes it simpler for the developers of call center software to focus on the building functionality around the two main aspects of voice customer contact, namely the Dialer and the ACD Engine. I am not ignoring the growth in the use of social media and chat within inbound centers for live customer contact. A good ACD should treat be able to all media types and queue them in a similar fashion using skills based routing and queue prioritization.

A look at the modern technology stack available for a contact center platform reveals the extent to which technology stack can impact the architecture of the platform. Operating systems like Linux with its networking tool-sets make it is possible to offer a distributed setup labelled as the Cloud Contact Center. Both the machine and human resources associated with such an operation can be distributed. The growth of VoIP and proliferation of SIP has taken the mystery out of telecom turn-ups and inter-connectivity. The availability of MySQL and Apache has revolutionized database and Web driven interface. Above all, the advent of a powerful hybrid PBX in the form of Asterisk has taken over the complete burden of the underlying telephony platform.

Now, the developers of Call Center Software have only to focus on the functional aspect of Dialer and ACD engine development. It is granted that the expectation from the end-user is a lot higher but this is more due to the maturity of the customer contact center operations as well as the economic pressures of productivity. The availability of feature-rich call center software for Asterisk telephony driven by the technology stack on Linux, MySQL and Apache has contributed greatly to the growth of Cloud and VoIP.

Web services API for Integrating into a Dialer and ACD software

2011-12-27T20:05:00.013-04:00

Dialer and ACD are an integral part of every customer contact operation. Contact Centers require an ACD to control and manage incoming call flow. They may require a Dialer to perform List based dialing in predictive, preview or progressive mode.

Asterisk is a well know hybrid PBX ideally suited for building Customer Contact Technology Platform. Q-Suite is the leading Contact Center ACD and Dialer software suite for Asterisk. Q-Suite can be deployed at-premise or in the Cloud and, can be used for an enterprise or as a multi-tenant platform.

Organizations may have existing applications and CRM as a part of their business operations and may require integration with Q-Suite ACD and Dialer database and software to easily move data in and out of the contact center suite in real-time.

Q-Suite 5.5 offers a Web Services API to allow external applications to effectively automate different aspects of the contact center operations. Q-suite Web Services API brings immediate benefit by simplifying access to Campaign Services, Lead management, Reporting and Data Transfer. Marketing campaigns using Q-Suite’s Predictive, Preview or Progressive Dialing modes can use real-time lead insertion and extraction web services, for immediate dialing and status integration into CRM applications. Inbound ACD Web services can provide Live Agent stats, Live Queue stats, Live Call flow stats and Call details. It can also provide real-time floor information for Live Dashboards and Workforce management.

These Web Services API, in conjunction with Q-Suite’s extensive API for CTI Integration, provide external applications with a comprehensive library that allows complete integration of the advanced ACD and Dialer functionality available for Asterisk.

Importance of Simplified API for CRM integration to ACD and Dialer

2011-11-06T10:36:00.016-04:00

CRM drives sales by providing centralized customer and lead management with instant access to the history of each customer and prospect. Most CRM software offer up to date customer history on demand with access through the Web or desktop application. The power of lead management and CRM can be amplified by integration to a Dialer platform to improve efficiency and productivity. Most Dialers provide for different modes of dialing like Predictive, Preview and Progressive. ACD integration to CRM allows better management of incoming calls. The most important aspect of setting up CRM integration is the ability of Dialer and ACD software to work seamlessly with the CRM.

It is critical to review the API available for the integration of Dialer/ACD system to understand how well it can work with any CRM. There will be some overlap in functionality like real-time and historical management information between CRM and the Dialer/ACD platform.

Typically the API for integration of a Dialer/ACD platform with any CRM should present three broad sets of methods. The first set of API methods cover setup and account management of the sales or customer service workforce so that they can be setup using the existing CRM user management information without duplication. The second set of methods within the API for CRM integration will cover the requirements of the day to day management. The third set of methods will be CRM specific custom requirements. These are custom methods added by the Dialer/ACD software developers to address specific CRM needs.

The benefits of a successful integration of an ACD and Dialer software to a given CRM platform provides faster access and better customer reach thus differentiating the company in competitive situations.

Social Networking, Contact Center operations and Customer Satisfaction

2011-11-05T13:58:00.012-03:00

You guessed it right. The new buzz in marketing is "Social Networking". It is interesting to see how technology providers are pursuing this buzz. We recently had Salesforce announcing acquisition of Radian6 to monitor, analyze and engage in social media conversations within its CRM platform. Now Cisco has released a self-commisioned whitepaper on next generation contact centers conducted by Forrester. It mentions customer dissatisfaction as a key finding. We all deal with customer service for services like banking, insurance, phone plans, cable and internet. I have left out many more services. The general perception is that customers are left unsatisfied while dealing with customer service contact centers to resolve outstanding issues.

What can we do about it? This white paper talks about opening new channels of communication through social networking tools. I would rather that organizations setting up customer contact centers take some time to analyze the root cause of this less than stellar customer satisfaction.

Contact centers are the first level of interaction with the organization for most customers. Customer service representatives cannot resolve issues if they are saddled with many broken processes in the back-end. They should not be used as a buffering layer to shield management and process inadequacies. Companies should market products and services after installing adequate processes in place to handle all the customer service interactions.

Modern day contact center technology platforms come with very good tools for CTI integration to CRM, ERP and other customer applications driving the business. Contact centers running with good Dialer and ACD software can effectively integrate to all Web based and proprietary solutions in the back-end. It is not more and different channel types but effective processes that will ensure success of customer service. Front end call center representatives cannot be effective with broken back-end processes. Unhappy customers will eventually move on and the cost of bringing new customers might prove to be more expensive.

Convergence of Dialers, Cloud Setup and CRM Integration

2011-10-27T19:45:00.015-03:00

Quite an interesting phenomenon is unfolding with the convergence of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Cloud Setup and Dialer technology. As we all know, CRM is the heartbeat of any sales team. CRM software provides significant edge for sales operation to scale. Similarly Web and IP connectivity form the information superhighway connecting all the major data centers around the globe in this phenomenon called "Cloud". This is seen in the growth and availability of reliable Data Centers around the world. Phone service is more important than ever because of the proliferation of Web and Online business that has changed the way commerce is carried out. Because of this, Dialers have become the engine for driving for customer contact.

Let us look at this convergence in little more detail. Dialers are a part of every modern contact center. Integrating CRM and Dialer drives efficiency of customer contact. There is some degree of duplication between the record keeping functionality of a CRM software and that of a Contact Center Software. Therefore the level of integration between a CRM and a Dialer is dictated by the requirements of the operation. Since both are database driven, there is a compelling need to keep the Dialer and the CRM databases synchronized.

Cloud setup makes it easy for running geographically distributed operations. It also allows on-demand growth in data centers and reduces the need for large capital expense. Availability of sophisticated PBX along with ACD and Dialer software has driven the build out of Cloud based CRM and Dialer platforms. This especially true with Asterisk, the leading hybrid PBX. Q-Suite, a feature rich multi-tenant contact center software for Asterisk provides a viable option for CRM integration to Dialer whether in Cloud or on premise.

Customer contact centers in Cloud

2011-10-22T18:45:00.008-03:00

Cloud is well known now. Considering the fact that Cloud used to called Co-location sites or data centers, what is different about it now? Well, the infrastructure and bandwidth has become more powerful and reliable, at the same time less inexpensive. Also "Cloud" is a neat single word to explain it all nicely.

Cloud for data is one thing and Cloud for voice is an all together different matter. The infrastructure and bandwidth considerations become paramount in planning for setting up voice communication services in the Cloud. Proliferation of SIP (VoIP) is the key driver in the move towards Cloud based infrastructure for Customer Contact centers. There is also the availability of robust and powerful ACD and Dialer software to drive customer contact services is the Cloud. At Indosoft, we have been in the fore front deploying Cloud based contact centers as early as 2007 in Europe and Australia. Now we have a world-wide presence and with the availability of excellent infrastructure, the march towards Cloud contact center services continues.

Use of Outbound Dialer in Collections

2011-10-11T22:32:00.009-03:00

Delinquent customers impact profitability and therefore increase the cost of doing business. Collections are a process of debt recovery with challenging conditions where efficiency of contact matters. Most collections and recoveries mechanism depend on efficient dialers to automate the process of customer contact. Dialer is the most important component of a debt recovery and collections contact center. The Dialer refers to the overall dialing system and should offer advanced dialing features capable of running multiple concurrent outbound campaigns in both Predictive and non-Predictive dialing modes. Collections and Debt recovery requires account code dialing where every account has multiple phone contacts. Another key component to successful outreach programs is the ability to blend with inbound calling.

A Predictive dialer should be self-pacing and efficient in order to increase agent talk time. Other key features to look for in a high-quality dialer are Concurrent Dialing, Individual Pacing Setup and Drop Rate Controls.

Indosoft offers Q-Suite, an ACD and Dialer software for Asterisk. Q-Suite offers a predictive dialer for Asterisk with precision controls for outbound campaigns to maximize productivity. Its Concurrent Dialer, Individual Pacing Setup, Drop Rate Controls, and Self-Pacing algorithm with multiple concurrent dialers enable call center floor managers to achieve the dynamics required for profitability.

Asterisk, the leading hybrid telephony switch is uniquely beneficial as a contact center technology platform for Collections and Recovery. The underlying telephony switch usually a large portion of the initial cost for contact center, comes at no cost because Asterisk is a proven, open source, next-generation switch. Therefore, a Collections and Recovery call center that utilizes Asterisk is capable of delivering an immediate cost savings.

Work Force Management (WFM) integration module within Contact Center Software

2011-09-24T09:06:00.008-03:00

Q-Suite has a Workforce Management integration module to allow larger contact center operations to obtain real-time and historical feed of reports and statistics from the call center floor to determine productivity, staffing and performance. This module also provides for integration to third party software like call recording which depend on Agent and ACD states to monitor contact center activity. Q-Suite is a next generation Contact Center ACD and Dialer software that can feed real-time and historical data and reports to such things as Supervisor Dashboards as well as Workforce Management (WFM) Solutions, eliminating countless hours of data entry.

With Q-Suite, you can setup an Asterisk based contact center operations that can scale to accommodate large call centers and grow to hundreds of seats. The WFM module will facilitate integration to any standardized WFM software to properly manage the contact center operations and ensure productivity.

Enhanced Queue Management in Asterisk with Complementary ACD

2011-05-27T09:02:00.027-03:00

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) traditionally describes the capability of an add-on module to a normal phone system to optimally manage and route incoming calls. These telephone systems receive a large volume of calls every day. The demands placed on the level of sophistication required in an ACD for queue management and call routing has continually increased over the last decade. With increase in online marketing and global trading, remote office workforce are playing a greater role in the marketing, sales, customer service and support of goods and services sold. ACD and contact centers are a vital part of this infrastructure.

Within an ACD, queues are abstractions meant to hold, order and re-sequence customer contacts based on call workflow requirements of the business. Nowadays, unified communication systems handle voice, e-mail and chat within the queue work-flow albeit with some differences. Queues are meant to hold calls that are tagged together and offer the ability to service calls based on the time of arrival. In skills based routing, agents handle calls from queues for which they have the required skills. More complex business requirements might necessitate handling some of these calls out of turn or based on triggers. Some cases might require the ACD to transparently reveal all the calls in all the queues with their associated tags. This allows the development of more complex triggers and call work flow requiring extreme flexibility from the ACD. Such mission critical ACD requirements might place extra demands on the telephone system with requirements for transfer and conferencing capabilities for ACD calls.

Asterisk is a next generation PBX that offers a solid platform for VoIP and TDM telephony. To build a flexible and powerful call flow for Asterisk, you will require to supplement it with an ACD. A standard ACD should offer Skills Based Routing, Queue Prioritization, Real-time Supervisor Dashboard, Real-time Queue Stats, detailed CDR with real and historical Agent and Queue Productivity Reports. More advanced ACD systems will offer greater flexibility and control over queue management and call handling through a powerful API for CTI integration. The level of sophistication of the business call workflow will dictate the capabilities required from the ACD.

Opportunity for CRM and ERP Solutions to Integrate CTI

2011-04-10T09:49:00.018-03:00

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) have become essential to the day to day operation of most organizations. CRM software plays a vital role in marketing, sales and customer retention process while ERP software is critical to management and monitoring of the entire work flow of an organisation. Both ERP and CRM software connect the operations to each and every activity within as well as to the outside client.

There is intense competition within the providers of CRM and ERP software. CRM and ERP software companies within various business domains are looking to differentiate their product from the rest. CTI integration into CRM and ERP is one such key differentiator that these vendors are trying implement within their software. Integrating CTI into CRM/ERP software is easier said than done due to enormous variations between various PBX and telephone system providers. This situation is changing with the emergence of IP based phone systems and the availability of powerful open source hybrid PBX like Asterisk.

There are powerful call center ACD software for Asterisk that allow full CTI integration. The availability of ".NET" and socket library for such Call Center ACD based on Asterisk presents an opportunity to integrate and embed CTI into any CRM and ERP software and provide an integrated solution. Such an integration will be a game changer for the CRM/ERP software vendor and a true differentiator.

Queue Priority Service Level and Skill Level for ACD

2011-02-08T12:06:00.006-04:00

Queue priority is dictated by the business case. Calls into a higher priority queue should be handled ahead of calls from other queues. Once within the Queue, calls are handled based on the wait time. Even though it sounds simple enough, it can get complicated because a good ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) has skills for Queues and skills with skill levels for Agents. So, when does the Skill level get applied? Generally skills will be applied when a call comes into a Queue with multiple agents waiting and available to take the call. Here the Queue Prioritization does not play any role. To summarize, skills based routing is applied to route calls to the correct queue, skills of the individual agent to qualify all the agents who are available to take the call and, skill level to decide which agent should handle a call. Queue Prioritization is applied when agent becomes available with multiple calls waiting in multiple queues. The skills determine if the agent is qualified to handle calls but Queue prioritization dictates the order. The skill level does not play a part here. For an even distribution, the skill levels and the queue priority should be set to the same value so that the longest waiting call or agent is chosen to break the tie.

Differentiate your contact center technology platform using better outbound Dialer

2010-12-17T10:12:00.007-04:00

Developing two-way interactions with your prospects is a great way to develop customer relationships, build loyalty, drive business efficiencies, and significantly increase revenues and return on investment (ROI). A feature-rich call center software will allow the implementation of innovative outreach programs within your contact center operation to reach out to customers in a timely fashion converting leads into sales; enabling the call center to take immediate advantage of a willing buyer. These innovative leaders are utilizing new, forward-thinking features to achieve greater standards in outbound marketing. Implementing these new technology components for your contact center technology platform has never been easier.

But what are these strategies and features? And how do they enable you to substantially differentiate you from your competitors? Our white paper on 'Maximizing Outbound Dialing Capabilities' provides an overview of emerging strategies in proactive outreach, and it outlines key components of a successful outbound contact center technology platform. Along the way, it discusses a leading call center software for Asterisk, Q-Suite 5.5.

One of the most important features to examine closely is what is often referred to as the ‘Dialer’. The word 'Dialer' is often loosely used to imply the overall dialing capability of the system and should offer advanced dialing features capable of running multiple concurrent outbound campaigns in both Predictive and non-Predictive dialing modes. Today contact centers are looking at selective just-in-time dialing. The flexibility of the dialer is a key component to creating successful outreach programs and the minute features of a high quality dialer can make the all the difference when reaching for true differentiation.

Taking advantage of New Technologies to realize healthy ROI on contact centers

2010-12-16T09:58:00.006-04:00

Technological changes have dramatically impacted the cost of doing business in the call center industry. The World Wide Web (WWW) and Internet Protocol (IP), evolution of next generation call center software, as well as advances in hardware and open source development, have unleashed unparalleled change that has significantly altered the industry. The importance of contact centers industry have grown due to global e-commerce. The sophistication and capabilities of the contact center technology platform have increased exponentially, while the cost per seat has gone down annually.

Contact center industry is presented with an opportunity to use changes in technology as a prime driver for healthy ROI. Factors driving this opportunity include paradigm shifts in telecommunications, cloud computing data centers, the availability of robust computing hardware at reasonable price, as well as open source and open architecture systems. The telecommunication capabilities of the contact center technology platform have been substantially improved by the emergence of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as a credible Voice over IP (VoIP) protocol, as well as the availability of Asterisk, a mature, feature-rich and robust open source telephony platform. As a result, call center deployments have become distributed, taking advantage of cost efficiencies in infrastructure, labor and telecom. We already see innovative call centers utilizing new, advanced technology to support such distributed and hosted operations; operations where the call center infrastructure is consolidated in an easy to manage location and the agents are capable of working from multiple geographic locations and from home. Read our white paper which provides a detailed insight into the technology aspects of contact center technology platform selection.

Integrating CRM and Custom Applications into your Call Center

2010-12-06T21:30:00.010-04:00

Rapid growth in communication technologies over the past years has presented call centers with an unprecedented opportunity to support complex customer interactions. Independent applications, tailored to manage the business process of customer interactions, have an increasingly important role in daily call center operations and are used extensively to perform crucial duties that significantly improve productivity.

Most frequently asked question is: ”how do we setup a flexible contact center technology platform to optimally integrate these custom applications and tailored Customer Resource Management (CRM) systems?”

There is a compelling need to have a great degree of flexibility and it is important to define the essential requirements of a call center software to efficiently support integrations to CRM and custom applications. This white paper on CRM integration into contact center platforms will outline the benefits of employing software capable of delivering these optimizing features. It will also introduce Q-Suite, a next-generation call center software for Asterisk, which is capable of providing tight integrations to your CRM and custom application, thereby optimizing performance, delivering agility, and positioning you for success in a competitive market.

A Cost Effective Next-Generation Contact Center Technology Platform

2010-10-04T14:11:00.024-03:00

For most call centers and office ACD systems, the rapid changes in telecommunications technology have brought critical opportunities – opportunities to make significant improvements in productivity while greatly reducing operating costs. Cutting-edge Internet Protocol (IP) based phone and contact center technology platforms have evolved to the point that highly reliable and full-featured systems are available to businesses of all sizes.

The widespread use of VoIP can be seen daily (we are all familiar with the likes of Skype). However, the availability of such high-grade, quality software is not limited to simply placing and receiving calls. Next-generation phone systems and call center ACD software, capable of supporting both TDM and VoIP, is available and is delivering groundbreaking advancements to office phone systems and call centers around the world. Many of these advances are due to the superiority of the telephony platform supporting the next-generation software. For example, the use of Asterisk, the leading powerhouse of IP PBX systems and VoIP gateways, is so pervasive that it can be considered omnipresent. Asterisk has experienced universal acceptance and is a market leader in delivering an enterprise-grade telephony platform at a fraction of the cost compared to the available proprietary telephony systems.

Technology managers now have access to this sophisticated and leading telephony platform for their call centers. It is a great time to evaluate the available contact center technology solutions and to build out a cost effective, sophisticated, next-generation call center technology platform. The right telephony platform with the right call center ACD software will deliver the competitive edge you require.

Any Asterisk Call center software must meet the existing demands placed upon modern call centers. Q-Suite 5.0 from Indosoft, a very high-end call center ACD software solution for Asterisk, delivers the Full-Functionality requirement to call centers. It is feature-rich, scalable, out-of-the-box software that comes with a powerful ACD and predictive dialer. It has detailed reporting capabilities and is bound to satisfy the functional requirements of most advanced call centers. With Q-Suite 5.0, you can switch to Asterisk with the right contact center technology solution and migrate seamlessly to IP telephony. Q-Suite 5.0 offers reliability, required for your daily operations. It offers High Availability, with ability to ensure that you do not loose existing calls due a single failure, and Full-Functionality, the availability of industry standard features comparable to the any of the high-end proprietary peers in the contact center technology domain.

Q-Suite 5.0 provides more than just a full-featured solution. The ease of system management and administration of the product throughout its lifecycle reduces the cost of running the system and substantially reduces ongoing overhead. Interoperability is another benefit inherent to Q-Suite 5.0. Its class of standards-based API allows you to easily support the functioning of existing business applications that utilize tried and true CTI

The paradigm shift in technology has opened an unprecedented opportunity to enhance your call center platform, lower your cost and provide much more functionality. There has been never such an opportunity to compete and grow with industry leaders. In order to take full advantage of what cutting edge technology can deliver, a close analysis of Asterisk and Q-Suite 5.0 should remain central to your search for a next-generation contact center technology platform.

Read or download the complete white paper on Asterisk call center ACD.

Call center migration to Asterisk

2010-08-21T08:58:00.024-03:00

Unification of data, voice and other forms of media in communications has generated a push to IP telephony. We all recognize that TDM is mature and reliable, but it is gradually giving way to IP telephony. This is largely due to the flexibility that comes from using IP (Internet Protocol) networks. When it comes to acquiring a new technology platform, folks in the contact center industry understand the importance of acquiring call center ACD to improve immediate and near-term productivity. Equally important considerations are the changes happening in the technology world which will have serious impacts on the economics of the call center.

Currently, while assessing call center solutions and technology platforms, a determining factor is the ability to transition from TDM to IP, and in general to be able to cope with the VoIP world. With the availability of open source Asterisk, investing in a proprietary IP telephone switch poses huge challenges in the long term. R&D costs are becoming exorbitant for switch developers when competing with the unrelenting march of feature-sets and enhancements available from Asterisk. The large install base and willingness of the users to test new features contributes to this prolific growth. Therefore, evaluating Asterisk for its IP telephony platform is a must for larger contact centers. An Asterisk based platform will bring considerable cost savings and provide greater control over the contact center technology solution, which will have positive on the long term viability of your call center. Commercial support is available from Digium, as well as the open source community at large.

At Indosoft we began porting our call center software to work with Asterisk in late 2003, thus stopping our development work on proprietary CTI boards and instead focusing on Asterisk as the telephony platform for our Call Center ACD. One of the contributing reasons was the hopelessness of keeping PBX features on CTI boards up to date with the emerging open source PBX functionalities. The other factor was the realization that the CTI board manufacturers might find it difficult to economically match Asterisk IP capabilities.

With Q-Suite 5.0, we offer a very high end call center ACD software for Asterisk. It is a feature-rich, scalable, out-of-the-box software that comes with a powerful ACD and predictive dialer. It has extensive reporting capabilities and will satisfy the functional requirements of the most advanced call centers. With Q-Suite 5.0 you can switch to Asterisk with the right contact center technology solution and migrate seamlessly to IP telephony.

Asterisk based Contact Centers

2010-06-24T13:28:00.013-03:00

I happened by chance to read an interesting blog on Asterisk Contact Centers which talks about call center solutions available for Asterisk. It was disappointing that the author made no mention of Q-Suite, Indosoft call center software for Asterisk. For well over 6 years, Indosoft has been deploying Asterisk based contact center technology solutions, all over the world. Indosoft contact center technology platform has achieved major milestones in scaling, features and robustness. Q-Suite is a unique call center software ACD offering sophisticated features required for setting up inbound, outbound and blended contact centers. Asterisk is a ground breaking, feature-rich hybrid PBX. To setup superior contact centers matching or exceeding market leaders like Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Genesys and Mitel in features and capability, you will require a good ACD software like Q-Suite that can offer skills based routing, queue prioritization and a host of essential features required by modern day call centers. When you scale beyond a single server, the Q-Suite ACD will manage multiple telephony servers seamlessly. Robustness is critical to any mission critical application. Indosoft ACD offers call recovery for single point failures which protects your existing calls as well as future calls.

Flexibility within a Call center ACD with Agent seating and ON-Hook/OFF-Hook telephony

2010-06-07T11:41:00.011-03:00

Large enterprise contact centers require their ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) to be flexible. The primary objective of a call center ACD is to manage routing and handling all incoming calls resulting in appropriate calls being connected to the most suitable agent. Hot desking is the flexibility available for agent seating within a call center. On-hook and Off-hook describe the state of the agent telephone device. An On-hook agent phone has to ring to incoming call, like regular phones. An off-hook agent is already connected and would hear an audible beep before a new call is handed out.

Hot Desking functionality

A good call center software ACD should allow agents to sit anywhere and specify an agent telephone device during login. The ACD will ring the device and the agent will answer the ring. From here on, the agent would have the ability to work On-Hook or Off-Hook. Hot desking capability of an ACD allows for sharing a phone and a desk space among multiple agents in a 7 x 24 contact center operation. For roaming agents, “agent ID” behaves like a virtual phone extension. When the agents roam, the calls coming to the roaming extension can be routed to the agent or agent’s personal queue, if agent phone is busy. In a good contact center technology platform, an ACD agent should be automatically logged into all the queues for which they have the necessary skills. Skills required for every queue is specified and skills are assigned to agents with skill levels.

ACD functionality with On-Hook and Off-Hook agent telephones

Agent phones can be On-Hook or Off-Hook. An ON-Hook agent is generally a super-set of Off-Hook. For large volume call centers, it is more efficient for an agent to stay Off-Hook. The ACD will alert the agent before handing out every call with an audible beep. For call center agents who multi-task with other duties, they may prefer to stay On-Hook and will require the ACD to ring their telephone device to alert them. If agent does not accept the alert within a specified amount of time, the ACD will push the call back into the queue to be answered by the next available agent.

Conclusion

Scaling is an essential aspect for large contact center deployments and such features need to be scalable. Indosoft Q-Suite provides a scalable flexible ACD that can deployed for Asterisk based center.

CTI (Computer Telephony Interface) for Asterisk

2010-04-19T21:31:00.011-03:00

Asterisk is a definite game changer in revolutionizing the world of computer telephony interface (CTI). When you are considering Asterisk as a hybrid PBX telephony switch for your contact center requirements, you may end up looking for an ACD that meets the requirements of your contact center. Often times you might already have a fully developed business application requiring CTI integration. Sophisticated ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) will allow the call center to handle incoming calls with greater efficiency and increased productivity. The general attributes of an ACD include,

IVR
Skills based routing
Queue Prioritization
Scheduling capability to handle calls based on time of the day, day of the week etc.
Web services interface to do Database dips

If you are planning to integrate the ACD and its CTI functionality into your business application, you will also be searching for a proper API interface. Indosoft Q-Suite is a full feature call center ACD for Asterisk with an evolved API for both .NET and socket interface. Q-Suite ACD provides skills based routing, queue prioritization as well as on-hook, off-hook agent support. It has a sophisticated Dialplan Builder for all your IVR needs. It is a full fledged call center software API and allows you to scale to multiple Asterisk servers seamlessly.

When we started the migration of our call center software to Asterisk in 2003, we invested time and engineering in developing a separate ACD layer to work with Asterisk mainly because of our background using legacy CTI boards. This has resulted in truly unique and efficient ACD layer for Asterisk that allows for setting up and scaling enterprise grade contact centers.

Call center ACD

2010-03-08T22:57:00.021-04:00

It is well understood that ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) represents much more than what a typical PBX offers. It is generally used when the purpose of incoming calls is more than trying to reach a specific phone extension. Contact centers require highly evolved ACD to bring efficiency to their operations. Let us look at what we can expect an ACD do:

ACD should be able to group calls by DID/DNIS/ANI or other unique incoming identifiers.
ACD will provide Interactive Voice Response (IVR).
ACD call handling will vary based on time of the day scheduling as well as holidays and special occasions.
Ability to register agents who will be allowed to take incoming calls.
Provide call information (referred to as call pop-up) to agents before handing over the call.
Skills-based routing to route calls to the most appropriate agent available.
Queue Prioritization based on business factors for the same type of calls.
Ability to log agents into all the queues for which they have required skills.
Provide required telephony functions like transfers, conferences etc.

These ACD functions do not necessarily require any data screen. With Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), every call center agent has computer screen which will be capable of providing relevant information about the call. Let us look the typical information that a call center ACD can provide to the agent screen:

Create session for the agent (the duration between every login and logout).
Provide a screen pop with identifiers for every call.
Translate DID/DNIS/ANI to the Inbound Service they represent.
Match DID/DNIS and filter based on ANI.
Provide database look-up to pre-populate the screen with customer information.
Present scripts which will govern the agent-customer interaction.
Present any other useful information like FAQ, Maps, Directions.
Have custom dispositions.
Have custom DND when agent take breaks within a session.

These are some of the basic functionality inherent to a call center ACD. CTI has evolved over the last 10 years and the ACD requirements have become very sophisticated. The push to IP telephony has created more requirements for ACD integration. One of the main contributors is the growth and proliferation of Asterisk world-wide. This has dramatically altered the CTI landscape with Asterisk making it possible to have both IP telephony and TDM (PRI T1/E1) work seamlessly. With migration to IP telephony and VoIP becoming a compelling case, Asterisk presents itself as one of the most efficient and cost effective option due of its enormous functionality and feature-set.

Your vertical application may require a call center ACD to be integrated as a part of the CTI. Indosoft Q-Suite offers a fully functional ACD with an elaborate API both in socket and .NET libraries. This ACD for Asterisk comes with skills based routing, queue prioritization, on-hook, off-hook agents, detailed universal identifier based Call Detail Record (CDR), trunk tracking and cradle to grave reporting. You can find more details about Q-Suite in the Asterisk Exchange.

Agent telephone state is an important part of how call center ACD is setup. If an agent is on-hook, it is like a phone extension with the system mapping it as belonging to the particular agent. This may be done by the agent logging in through the phone with a specific code. On-hook agents have to be "woken up" before every call. A typical no-answer is 3 rings, roughly 18 seconds. With Indosoft Q-Suite ACD, you can concurrently hand out calls to on-hook agents but the ring-time is still an overhead for the call center. With an off-hook agent, the system sends a beep before handing out the call. It is possible to provide a screen-pop with a time-out within set seconds (like 5 seconds) before handing over the call. This is useful if you have remote and at home agents.

CDR is critical to getting granular reports for your contact center. The UUID keeps track of the call as it progresses from cradle to grave. This allows detailed reporting for any call center ACD.

X-lite default setting hangs-up the phone if you are silent

2010-01-06T11:54:00.013-04:00

We have clients using our call center software Q-Suite with a variety of IP-phones and softphones. One of the popular softphones is X-lite and its licensed version eyeBeam. There are times when it takes considerable investigation of a problem to identify the cause. Recently we came across one which warrants a mention.We were investigating complaints about calls being dropped. Generally with VoIP and SIP, this raises all sorts of alarm and as always, we started a detailed investigation to determine cause of the connection drop between the softphone and the our contact center platform. Many of our customers are hosted multi-tenant contact center service providers and the usual suspect is the infrastructure. In this case, the debug log did not point to anything suspicious until we noticed a pattern of agents being silent before the the softphone sending a 'BYE'. This was happening without any agent action. The SIP user-agent (X-lite) was hanging up. It did not take very long to determine the culprit within the X-lite settings. You have the screen-shot with the red arrow pointing to the checkbox.

X-lite seems to by default, check the 'Call Inactivity' check box and inflict considerable headache any to contact center technical staff who relies on default settings. We noticed it when the call center agents were waiting on one end listening to the interaction between their customer and an automated third party verification IVR. The more sophisticated the call center software suite, the more you will have to button down all the setting carefully. Silence suppression is an option not supported by Asterisk.

VoIP - Bandwidth, Codec and Voice Quality

2009-12-27T10:23:00.007-04:00

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has established itself as a dominant force in telecommunications. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is the application layer for creating and controlling the calls and the voice is governed by RTP (Real Time Transport). When we are setting up a contact center or converting to VoIP, we want to know how to take advantage of the VoIP without getting into the pit falls of the technology.

In the digital world, your voice conversation needs to be sampled every 125 micro-second (8000 times within a second). On the receiving end, such samples can be re-assembled and converted to analog for you to hear the voice again. If it is sampled any less, the voice will not sound less like the original sound. They are encoded and decoded in both ends by CODEC. Let us look at the most common codec G 711 and its bandwidth requirements.

Each sample represented by 1 byte (8 bits) results in 64 Kbps often referred to as PCM or Pulse Code Modulation (u-Law U. S. A. and A-Law in Europe are the two flavors). These samples will be wrapped with address and other decoding details before transmission over the network. G711 typically is set to package 160 samples (20 ms worth of sampled voice data) to minimize the amount of header data and thereby conserve bandwidth. There is an upper limit of 30 ms, above which the encoding delay will start impacting voice quality.

With all the overheads taken into account, the bandwidth required for the single voice conversation in G711 is around 85Kbps both up and down. There is the time delay for the voice to reach from one end to the other. Any delay over 100 millisecond may be noticeable and make conversations difficult. This is the overall time taken for the voice conversation to reach the other end.

There are other reasons for the delay as well. In the realm of VoIP, the RTP uses UDP to send packets. There is no guarantee packets will reach the other end or arrive in the same order as they are sent. The receiving end cannot endlessly wait till all packets are received. There will be loss of packets. There are some well developed tricks including the concept of Jitter and Jitter buffers to manage this. Jitter is the measure of the difference in time to transport packets. Ideally we would want them to be equal and manageable. A Jitter buffer will allow the packets to be held back to the maximum delay so that all packets delayed equally.

Asterisk supports G711 and within you call center you can setup every agent use SIP. The issues of bandwidth and delay are not an issue. A sample layout is provided in the Indosoft blog site. At Indosoft, we have been deploying our call center software Q-Suite from 2003.

Configuring large contact centers with Asterisk

2009-12-26T17:27:00.013-04:00

The precise extent of Asterisk usage for PBX and call centers may be unknown but one can safely say that it is omnipresent. The clear give away is when you call an office and hear the default prompts that come with standard Asterisk installation when someone's extension goes to voice-mail.

We started migration of our contact center software to Asterisk in 2003 and it has been a great experience. Now we offer a high end call center software which works with Asterisk PBX and delivers almost all features right out of the box. It is a multi-tenant contact center software which provides inbound, outbound and blended options. It also comes with a powerful API for .NET integration to native clients.

There is a lot of interest in determining how to scale Asterisk and setup large contact centers. Here I have a laid out a basic contact center using Q-Suite, the Indosoft call center software.

I have made some assumptions on the infrastructure and usage of the contact center. We will use hardware servers with a Quad core and 8GB of RAM. Voice recording will be turned on for all calls. Since Indosoft contact center software comes with a feature rich agent interface that leverages our amazing Script-builder, we will assume that the Agents are using web browsers (Mozilla Firefox) to access the screens with a SIP phone like x-lite for voice. The Script-builder not only creates on demand custom variables in agent scripts, it can also get and post data through web services and embed your web enabled applications like CRM. I have also moved the gateway to a separate server. This could be SIP or PRI (T1/E1). Let us take the case of predictive dialing which is a lot more load intensive than the load generated by the operations of an inbound contact center.

If you are using 2 physical hardware servers, one with MySQL and Apache and the other with Asterisk and Indosoft call center software Q-suite, a conservative estimate of 45 to 50 concurrent agents can all work in predictive dialing mode. The same setup for inbound should allow 100 to 150 concurrent calls. The number of agents in an inbound contact center is determined by the service levels. I would assume that when the load is 150 calls, you will require 100 agents or more, assuming the calls are short duration.

An added server hardware can increase the server capacity in a significant way. With our contact center software, the agent interaction through Apache is very high with AJAX keeping all the statuses in sync. The separation of MySQL and Apache into their own servers allows the doubling of the contact capacity. I have seen 140 agents working concurrently on a three server deployment, all in predictive dialing mode. This is the point where the hardware on Asterisk server reaches its limit and we will have to add additional Asterisk servers to Q-Suite to scale further.

Practical limits on predictive dialing algorithm

2009-12-20T19:54:00.019-04:00

Predictive dialing is used by outbound contact centers to improve the talk-time of their agents. A good predictive dialer algorithm will pace its dialing based on the hit-rate and the number of agents waiting to receive live calls. Hit-rate is the percentage of live connects. Dial rate of a predictive dialer is limited by the drop rate allowed in the country of operation. Drop rate is the ratio of calls dropped to the total calls answered by a live person at the other end. F.T.C. in U.S.A. limits it to 3%. Any call that goes off-hook (picked up by a liver person) needs to be connected to a live agent within 2 seconds.

Predictive dialing is more complicated than call progress analysis. The biggest factor in call progress detection is the no-answer duration. Typically for United States or Canada, it is at least 18 seconds which would equal 3 rings on a phone. A good call progress analyzer can try to determine if the call will be answered or if it will be a no-answer. With digital signaling available for both TDM and VoIP, all other types of call terminations like busy, bad number, disconnect and other types are known instantaneously. A predictive dialer algorithm has to be a lot smarter than statistical call progress analysis. It has to keep the average wait time of every agent between live calls to a minimum without exceeding the drop-rate set by regulatory authorities.

There are also other challenges for predictive dialers. When the outbound dialing market gets saturated, it results in poor hit-rate. The dialer just cannot increase its dial-rate to compensate for the poor hit-rate since there are unwritten rules in the telecommunication industry regarding the number of call setup per second. Anything in excess will result in telecom carriers throttling the setup calls by signaling network congestion. In scenarios where the dialer is already dialing at the rate of allowable call setups per second, there is little value for any statistical call progress analysis on calls in progress. With years of production experience, Indosoft call center software Q-Suite has a predictive dialer that is finely tuned to pace well and perform effectively. We introduced our call center solution for Asterisk in 2003 and have been improving it ever since then.

There is also a trend in using warm leads to increase hit-rate. Here the number of leads tend to be less and the predictive dialer needs to be efficient. With warm leads, the agents generally are talking longer and the dialer needs to work well for the smaller number of agents waiting for live connects. Indosoft call center software Q-Suite has a compliant dialer optimized to handle all these cases effectively.

Skype for Asterisk, another wonderful development for Asterisk users

2009-11-01T11:06:00.006-04:00

In 2003, when Indosoft started migrating its call center software to Asterisk, we knew it was the right move because we had switched over to Linux in 1999 and seen its benefits. We were not quite sure of the magnitude of change unleashed by Asterisk and its impact on the PBX market. After all, we were selling contact center solutions and were looking to get more control of the costs associated with development and support. When we look at Asterisk, it is from this narrow perspective of call center requirements even though we realize that Asterisk serves a very large community with a broader range of requirements.

Skype has been another bright spot in the world of IP telephony. Today most of Indosoft's recurring telecom costs are spent on Skype and we are extremely impressed. The incumbent controls the last mile and we still may good money to them for the remaining PSTN lines. The low bandwidth usage and the higher voice quality makes Skype an outstanding carrier. The fact that they can connect to existing PSTN as well as provide incoming DID makes them extremely relevant for business users.

Skype for Asterisk is like icing on a cake. It is a one time license fee that allows Asterisk servers to use Skype network. There are great benefits. Skype provides Business Control Panel to manage the Skype accounts. We see some great potential benefits by using Skype for Asterisk in our contact center solution deployments. The two obvious advantages are the low long distance tariff without the need for long term contracts and the use of Skype to Skype user connections. Asterisk world is expanding and this is an assertion of the domination of Asterisk in the PBX domain.

Mitigating risks while deploying contact center solutions

2009-10-30T06:37:00.005-03:00

Contact centers are situated everywhere around the Globe and words like BPO and back-office a permanent part of our vocabulary. In 2000, I remember us taking more than a month to install and cut-over a call center solution for a 60 seat contact center. We were unique in one sense, we had switched over to Linux and could do lot things remote. Today it is a completely different world and we almost all of our contact center installations, remote, whether it be Nigeria, Botswana or Europe. We can install a full feature call center software and solution in 2 days once the hardware and infrastructure ready and the network access and bandwidth are made available. The operating system install with flavors like Ubuntu make it so easy that we don't think about the complexities too much. The telecommunication infrastructure has become extremely versatile and complicated at the same time. You may have agents sitting in Philippines, infrastructure in U. S. A. or Europe and handling calls for various geographic domains.

The risk of issues cropping during a contact center installation has increased manifold. There are too many moving parts. The server hardware, the Linux OS versions, Asterisk, Our call center software Q-Suite and VoIP. It is not easy and the demands are a lot higher. Components like Apache, MySQL and modules of different programs and framework add to the complexity. It is not possible to sit on a stable version of your software as the underlying structure is changing. Every major commercial software vendor applies patches periodically. Once upon a time, there was the concept of carrier grade equipment and it applied to the software with the equipment. The availability and capability of Asterisk has made it easy for small operators to get into the business of reselling terminations without investing on the kind of redundancy and fail-over protections.

It is all for the good in the long run and points to the need for good project management while deploying call center solutions.

Queue Prioritization and Skills based routing for contact centers using Asterisk

2009-10-15T13:00:00.007-03:00

Inbound contact centers demand sophistication in managing the call routing. Skills based routing, queue prioritization and balanced queues are a few key requirements for every call center software.

In new generation Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) design, the call center software has the ability to setup many queues, each of which will require one or many skills to handle the incoming calls. The contact center management would identify and rate each agent for the skill-sets. Typically the skill level variation is recorded numerically by of a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 5, where 1 might indicate top skill and 5 or 10 might indicate the lowest skill level. When an agent logs into the call center software, it will associate the agent with all the queues for which the agent has the required skill-set. Inbound calls are routed by the dialed DID/DNIS numbers setup for each inbound service. The calls in the queue will be routed to the agent with the highest rating or priority for the group of skills associated with the queue. This is skills based routing. Queue prioritization is when one queue has priority over other queues. There are circumstances when two queues may require the same skill-sets but one queue might have to be answered ahead of the other queue.

Let us review how inbound calls get routed by the ACD of a call center software with skills based routing and queue prioritization.

Scenario 1: If calls are waiting in queues and an agent gets free, the ACD will route the oldest call from the queue where the agent has higher skill level. If the agent has same skill level for all queues, the ACD will route the longest waiting call to the agent.

Scenario 2: If multiple agents are waiting and a call comes into a queue, the ACD will route the call to the agent with the higher skill level on the queue. If the agent skill levels are same, the agent waiting the longest will get the call from the ACD. The queue prioritization can impact this. Any queue with higher priority will impact the way ACD will route the calls. Calls in a queue with higher priority will get to the agents ahead of the calls in other queues. Here the skills based routing and queue prioritization can be adjusted to achieve the required call routing rules.

.NET library integrates Call Center Software for Asterisk with Native Windows Client

2009-09-27T22:12:00.006-03:00

As we call know, Microsoft Windows dominates the desktop world. When we built our call center software for Asterisk on Linux, we initially settled on Mozilla Firefox as the standard web browser for interface. As our product gained market acceptance, we realized that there were a lot of application written in native windows environment which are used within the realm of a call center application. We always had a socket interface API to our call center software Q-suite which we were able to wrap within an OCX interface. As a natural progression, we now have a .NET API to the call center software which is a ideal fit for the native Windows clients.

For applications used by contact centers, there is a great advantage to using a .NET interface. Organizations having invested considerable time and effort in developing custom Windows application can easily integrate their application to our call center software suite for Asterisk. With Asterisk being the dominant platform for call center telephony and Microsoft Windows being the dominant platform for native client custom applications, it makes a lot of sense to integrate the CTI (Computer Telephony Interface) aspect of our call center suite for Asterisk using .NET interface.

With this approach, the computer telephony integration can be selective about the call center functionality. A perfect example is the call flow interaction often referred to as the "scripting". Many organizations have created tools which are optimized to their business and would not want to migrate out of it to adapt to an ACD for inbound or a Dialer for outbound. A .NET integration into their custom application will give them the required call center application for both inbound, outbound and blended mode. Our call center software is content to work behind the scene. This allows organizations to benefit from the use of Asterisk PBX.

Yeah, everybody uses Asterisk for call centers, now!

2009-09-25T09:45:00.017-03:00

Indosoft has been in the business of selling CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) and call center software for 9 years. I have been handling all sales related inquiries and technical demos. for most of the period. I was astonished when one of my inquires and future client made this comment "Yeah, everybody uses Asterisk for call centers, now". He runs a Microsoft shop and is extremely technically savvy and when he started the conversation, I was expecting him to give me a third degree once he realized that the Indosoft call center software Q-Suite runs on top of Asterisk PBX.

Asterisk is a phenomenon like Linux and it came at the right time to revolutionize telephony. Back in late 2002 when we were using Pika for CTI, Asterisk for a great temptation. There was some apprehension about VoIP and QOS. SIP was evolving but Jim Dixon's Zapata TDM board and the Digium hardware compensated adequately to make Asterisk usable. We took the tentative steps in 2003 and started porting our call center software suite to Asterisk. It has been an unrelenting march for Indosoft and its migration to Asterisk platform. Today we have matured our call center software suite for Asterisk with a full feature enterprise grade contact center software. It has been an amazing evolution.

Our multi-tenant call center software (Q-suite) development along with the prolific evolution of Asterisk and Linux has moved us very close to a the goal of having "contact center software in a box". With VoIP starting to dominate the telecom termination market, this will dramatically reduce the cost of setting up an enterprise grade contact center with ACD and skills based routing using the inbound call center software.

Datapoints for contact center software reporting

2009-06-25T07:02:00.012-03:00

Generating meaningful detailed reports on the daily operations of a contact center is essential for every call center manager. The software for running and managing the call center operation should collect correlated information from the inception of the call till its termination. These data points generate adhoc and historical reports.

In an inbound call center, an ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) manages the call grouping based on DID/DNIS and takes care of routing the calls. If we take the example of the Indosoft call center software Q-Suite, the call center software feeds the DID/DNIS information it receives from the Asterisk PBX to the ACD. A true ACD will allow the call to be processed and managed before routing to a skills based queue. Depending on the nature of the inbound contact center operation, many calls may be routed through an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) before being handed over to a Queue. Based on the skills required, the call will eventually flow into one of the many queues created with different skill requirements to handle the inbound calls efficiently. A well designed skills based routing will enhance the efficiency of the call center. With skills based routing, the first available agent with the required skill-set and the highest skill-level will handle the incoming call in each Queue.

Let us examine at all the datapoints for such an inbound contact center. An ACD summary report should provide a summary of all the inbound calls broken down by DNIS/DID and Queue. It should provide information on the time durations associated with the calls as well as abandons.

An agent time profile should associate the time spent by the agent while handling calls in an inbound contact center setup with skills based queues. This can be extended to link the queue data with agent data.

Some contact centers may also like to measure agent performance using the wrap-codes as a measure of productivity.

iHost PBX is multi-tenant and scalable to multiple Asterisk servers

2009-06-06T09:49:00.012-03:00

Paradigm shifts happen once in a while and telephony is no exception. The rapid evolution of technology resulting in internet and VoIP is changing the face of communications. One of the most significant paradigm shift in the realm of business phone system and call centers has been unleased by the coolest of hybrid IP-PBX, Asterisk. There is a worldwide abundance in the use of Asterisk for PBX and call center applications. This has generated a significant demand for applications.

We developed iHostPBX for Asterisk to be deployed as a multi-tenant PBX which can be on a hosted platform. Our call center software Q-Suite has always been multi-tenant. With this, we have a scalable interface capable for managing mulitple Asterisk servers on a mulit-tenant PBX deployment.

Scaling Asterisk for larger call center deployments

2009-04-12T11:58:00.013-03:00

Asterisk is an incredible hybrid-IP PBX conceived by Mark Spencer and now, an ever expanding open source project. His creative brilliance and the collective effort of volunteer programmers have permanently changed the world of telephony for good. This revolution coincided with the growth of IP and internet world. Today, Asterisk quietly fulfills the communication needs of thousands of office phone systems. The ever increasing presence and use of Asterisk in call centers is due to the tremendous growth of online internet commerce and the need for customer service and support. A good call center software with ACD is essential to setup a proper inbound call center.

Typical Asterisk runs on x86 Linux machine, with voice channels from SIP, IAX and TDM. Its ability to seamlessly interpolate SIP trunks and ISDN PRI (T1/E1) makes it invaluable. The VoIP options for telecom connectivity have become increasing attractive due to improvement in quality and pricing. The phones from Polycom, SNOM and a host of CPE manufacturers come with a variety of features taking advantage of VoIP. There are many quality softphone options like X-lite and Eyebeam for use in call centers. Different applications within Asterisk like the 'Dialplan', the 'Queue' and the 'Conferencing' provide extremely powerful call processing, call routing and call management.

There is a keen interest in scaling Asterisk for deployment in large enterprise call centers. There are a number of factors that limit the total number of concurrent phone conversations in a single Asterisk telephony server. These limiting factors originate from the limitation of the processing capacity and the resource availability of the hardware. Factors like CODEC conversion, Voice recording, compression and disk I/O are known to diminish this capacity.

Call center software for Asterisk makes selective use of the underlying PBX functionality. Scaling Asterisk for call centers would result in very large queue size with the ability to allow skills based routing across agents logged into multiple Asterisk servers. In the latest release of Indosoft call center software Q-Suite, adding additional Asterisk telephony servers allows for easy expansion of the call center capacity. Indosoft Q-Suite has a customizable web interface for agents with powerful administrative tools, open database, self-pacing predictive dialer and a sophisticated ACD capable of providing call distribution with skills based routing.

Our new kettle will give you nightmares

2009-01-14T15:54:00.003-04:00

The kettle in the lunchroom broke so we got a new one, this is what it looks like:

The Top 5 Worst Uses of RAID

2008-12-04T15:44:00.001-04:00

5. RAID-0: Why is is called RAID-0? That's exactly how many working filesystems you'll have when just one of the drives fails. This is only useful for scratch space that you don't really care about. Some people use it for online network backup, but that had better not be your only backup!

4. RAID-10: Sure, disks are cheap, but why waste them? The only time this is useful is if you created an array and got RAID-0 and RAID-1 mixed up and need a fast way to mirror the array.

3. Not monitoring the drive status. Yeah, RAID-5 is great, but if one of the drives fails, you'll need to replace it ASAP because all you have now is a RAID-0 array. Use the server's management tools and check them! Otherwise, just go with software RAID and monitor that.

2. Putting the root filesystem on a RAID-5 array. This works great, until one of the drives fails. Will your recovery tools be able to find the critical files needed for the system to boot? Really? Are you that sure? Just take the 50% size hit and make it a 2+1 spare RAID-1 array.

1. Windows software mirroring. Wow, adding mirrors is really easy with dynamic disks! It's too bad that for a mirrored drive set, you need both images present in order for the OS to boot. Oh, and many recovery tools, including the "Repair system" option on the install CD won't work with dynamic disks. Spend the extra $$$ and get a proper RAID controller, or best yet, don't use Windows as a server.

Asterisk based Inbound Call Centers for business communications

2008-10-13T18:34:00.023-03:00

Asterisk is playing a dominant role in IP-based call centers. Intel processors have become less expensive and more powerful and a quad-core motherboard is able to offer over hundred concurrent calls with significant processing load from voice recording and transcoding. This has unleashed a powerful change with Asterisk based inbound call center solutions knocking at the last bastion of business phone systems based on closed proprietary ACD (automatic call distribution) technology from players and brands like Avaya, Cisco, ShoreTel, and Nortel Norstar and BCM.

Asterisk provides an IP-enabled platform with converged voice and data solution that is ideally suited for small to medium-sized businesses. It seems to have tremendous feature and cost advantage over any existing infrastructure in Meridian, Norstar, and other communication servers from Avaya and Cisco. As existing installs come due for replacement either due to age or service contracts, Asterisk offers an attractive alternative for PBX telephony, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) as well as call routing for Inbound ACD platforms.

At Indosoft, we have built an ACD to provide a feature rich inbound functionality with superior skills based routing for Asterisk. This call center software suite comes with an easy to use setup wizard tool that simplifies the task of setting up and managing enterprise grade inbound call centers. It is designed as a multi-customer platform with extensive call processing and routing capability based on incoming DNIS. An integrated Dialplan builder will allow for processing calls using IVR before handing them to queues. The IVR setup will handle dips to the database for any automated processing required by the business process of the organization.

With the versatility of Asterisk and the Indosoft Inbound ACD, these inbound call centers can offer flexible solutions that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

The SPITstorm is upon us already

2008-08-08T15:37:00.007-03:00

Ideally, every VoIP provider should allow open access to incoming calls over the Internet. Yet, few of them do. They know that as soon as they open it up, their subscribers will be inundated with SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony). SPIT is worse than traditional telemarketing because all calls are automated, they come at all hours of the night and 100% of them are scams. This causes the next generation phone networks to be closed and is actually stalling true VoIP acceptance.

Today, the problem is no longer exclusive to VoIP subscribers. We are already seeing SPIT being received on traditional phone lines. Instead of going to open SIP ports, they are going to VoIP gateway providers sending calls to regular telephones. Have you ever received a call telling you to press 1 to lower your credit card bills? That's SPIT. They use low cost VoIP providers with stolen credit cards and BotNets to initiate the calls. Many of them are completely automated and collect the credit card numbers without having to talk to an agent.

This is only going to get worse in the near future. Unfortunately, there isn't much that traditional telcos can do to deal with it. They don't have the luxury of knowing the originating IP. They may be able to strong-arm the VoIP provider into cutting off customers that are sending SPIT, but that can be tricky and there will need to be some major changes to how telcos work and communicate with each other for this to actually happen.

If you have a true VoIP service which includes an open SIP port, the solution to this is fairly simple. Create a method to distinguish legitimate callers from SPIT. This can be a combination of several things including vocal captchas, a database of IP addresses (known good or known bad), access codes, and a method for users to report SPIT.

A "vocal captcha" would be a string of numbers that the caller will have to enter. It can even include some basic math: "Johnny has 3 apples and 5 oranges, take away 2 apples and 3 oranges, how many apples does he have left?"
Once a caller has passed the captcha, their IP will be entered into the IP address whitelist. The next time they call, they won't be presented with a captcha. If they fail the captcha repeadedly, they would go into a blacklist. These can be shared in a similar manner to how spam blacklists are maintained today.
Access codes can be given to individual callers so they can bypass the captcha. These would be unique and revocable.
If all of the above fails and a user still gets a SPIT call, they will enter a star code to report it. They will also have an option in their voicemail prompts to report SPIT.

The sooner we get this done, the sooner we'll be able to use VoIP properly, without having to rely on traditional phone companies. At Indosoft, we're working on implementing some of these features into our products. Many of them (like the captchas) may be difficult for users to accept, but it won't be long before they're easier to accept than the SPITstorm. We're spending a fair amount of time for R&D on this and we suspect many other VoIP product companies are as well. We expect there will be a competitive advantage to providers (business and residential) who offer this service as it is unlikely that tradtional telcos will be able or willing to offer this level of SPIT protection.

FreeSwitch Attempts To Punctuate Asterisk!

2008-08-07T10:55:00.002-03:00

FreeSwitch Attempts To Punctuate Asterisk!

Posted using ShareThis

Bonded T1 – Will it hurt TDM PRI board sales?

2008-07-31T14:02:00.006-03:00

I notice a trend with businesses using Asterisk PBX. They are starting to opt for exclusive bonded T1 from their ISPs (or IPSPs) with SIP terminations for voice. This is in conjunction with separate bandwidth for data. Being in the same back plane of the termination provider and captive bandwidth to the termination provider does help VoIP call quality. The price of the bonded T1 does not seem any cheaper than ISDN PRI T1. The bonded T1 approach to SIP trunking dispenses the use of Digium or Sangoma TDM boards. Will this trend pose a serious problem to the volume of board sales in future? I hope this is not the case. After all, these TDM boards are what made Asterisk shine in the early days.

The March of IP telephony - Part 1

2008-07-30T22:30:00.004-03:00

As we all know, this march of IP telephony is purely from my perspective and fairly narrow, reflecting how I think Indosoft migrated to IP Telephony. This started in early 2003 and the world of CTI (Computer Telephony Interface) was still very TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) and dominated by the likes of Dialogic, Pika Technologies and NMS Communications. We had entered into the CTI space by chance in 1999 and had a slim product line. As we grew, we realized that the closed, proprietary drivers from board manufacturers made our product evolution difficult and tedious. From a customer service perspective, the demands of the call center service industry were getting harder to handle. We were looking around for a more cost effective solution with greater flexibility and control. There was this buzz in the open source community about the Asterisk PBX. Pioneers like Asterisk creator Mark Spencer and Jim Dixon of the Zapata Telephony project had created the perfect opportunity for us to look at using Asterisk on the commercial realm. Jim Dixon’s T1 interface TDM board made it possible to use the Asterisk PBX without using VoIP terminations.

This scale of change was challenging to comprehend. A PC motherboard had to be capable of processing the load for voice, doing away with expensive DSP boards and handling both voice and data on Ethernet. With standards like H100 and MVIP working well, this was a major shift. By late 2003 we did manage to try Asterisk on a small scale in one of our products on commercial installations. Today we do everything using Asterisk. This has been quite a journey.

More to follow...

Super-fast Camera Review: Canon PowerShot A720 IS

2008-07-30T15:47:00.003-03:00

Overall it's a great camera with excellent image quality and some SLR-ish features.

Pros:

Cheap ($200)
Compact, lens only sticks out when powered on
6x Optical Zoom
Face detection
Feels good in the hand
Uses AA batteries
Uses a standard USB mini B cable
Image stabilization so your indoor non flash shots don't look fuzzy (up to 1/8 shutter speed)
Hackable: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK
Movie quality is great (640x480 30fps progressive MJPEG)

Cons:

Burns through batteries quickly
Face detection doesn't work on babies
Your SLR owning friends will sneer at you for not having a "real" camera