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tephipps
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

We are always on the lookout for innovative features to add to Finesse and one area that has been highly intriguing over time is marquee messaging and agent-to-agent chat. We have known about the importance of this functionality long before we even released Finesse, but we were never able to find a good technology to be the basis for the implementation.  We knew that customers were going to want an API create messages, want it to work across Finesse instances, and have the messages be persistent.  We didn’t want to build something from scratch because that would be extremely time-consuming when off-the-shelf functionality would eventually exist to give us what we needed.  Despite strong opinions that we needed this feature in Finesse, we waited because we didn’t like any of the technical options available at the time.

As soon as Cisco Spark was released, we knew this would be the answer to our technical challenges.  Spark is perfect for Contact Center team collaboration.  Spark has a robust API enabling us to deliver the most optimal UX in Finesse.  Spark has a persistent message store and allows for easy collaboration inside and outside of the contact center. Most importantly, Spark is organized around rooms (instead of people) which dovetails nicely with contact centers (anonymous users organized around skill groups or attributes).

We are proud to announce our first modest offer in this space, the “Cisco Spark Team Announcements Gadget”.  The UI is elegant, simple, and powerful.  We have built a gadget that allows a group of agents to send and receive announcements in a single Spark Room.  Anyone who is a member of the room can post messages to the room.   Members can include agents who access the room via Cisco Finesse or other enterprise users (or bots!) who use the Spark Mobile App or other Spark clients.

Some detailed points to understand:

  • The gadget is designed to work with Finesse 10.6, 11.0, and 11.5
  • The gadget is free and will work with the Cisco Spark Free plan. See the Cisco Spark pricing plans for more details.
  • Each instance of the gadget can host a single Spark room but an agent can have multiple instances of the gadget in their Finesse layout if they need access to different rooms
  • Support will be provided out of DevNet on a best effort basis
  • Feel free to download the code and modify as you see fit

Please use the comments section below to tell us what you think.  Should we provide more gadgets that utilize Cisco Spark? Should we formally productize this gadget and include in our next Cisco Finesse release along with full TAC support?  As always, your feedback is important to us so tell us what you think!

Click to download here.

Sincerely,

Ted Phipps

CCE Product Line Manager

30 Comments
ivan.karagodine
Level 1
Level 1

Do I have to  make sure that each of my contact center agents individually registered with spark in order to enable them to see their team chat room  and be able to send messages?  I don't really see an easy way to do that. And if it is so, someone will have to manage team membership outside of UCCX to reflect agents retention and horizontal movements between teams. I am not sure that is something supervisors would like to do regularly.

dekwan
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Each contact center agent will need to register with spark in order to use this gadget.

michael.manea1
Level 1
Level 1

But how i can use Jabber instead of Spark?
Can you maybe give me some more details? pm me

jeremypng
Level 4
Level 4

What is the "finesse domain" referring to in the oauth.html and SparkTeamAnnouncements.js file?

The domain of the users logging in?

The base domain component of the UCCX server?
The FQDN of the UCCX server?

From the oauth and js file it looks like it is just an arbitrary entry to identify the cookie that is getting set. Is that correct?

Thanks!

dekwan
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

It is referring to the base domain of the UCCX server. So FQDN = <hostname>.<domain>, it is the <domain> part.

It is the format that Spark requires to know that you are successfully logged in.

masoodfarooq
Level 1
Level 1

You will have to develop your own chat gadget using Jabber Chat SDK.

Or you can simply go and buy a third-party gadget.

See this: http://www.expertflow.com/index.php/en/products/cisco-finesse-gadgets.html

I followed your Cisco Spark Team Announcements Gadget guide to test it out with Cisco Finesse,

but all I see is Loading... and nothing happens.

Any idea why ?

dekwan
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

I see that you posted this question in the forum so the conversation will continue there: Setting up Cisco Spark Team Announcement Gadget ?

sslominski
Level 4
Level 4

trying to get this up&running under UCCX 11.6, but keep getting HTTP Error 404 inside Finesse Agent/Supervisor.

Deployed the gadget on a single-node UCCX by uploading files to 3rdpartygadget filesystem.

When calling the SparkTeamAnnouncements.xml in browser (e.g. Chrome) I get an ERR_SSL_Protocol_Error.
I assume that has sth. to do with UCCX redirecting all HTTP traffic to HTTPS, but Finesse 3rdpartygadget container only provides HTTP.

Also tried to deploy gadget with external webserver, but I think there is a problem as this WAMP is only a demosystem and has no HTTPS access, only HTTP.

When calling the SparkTeamAnnouncements.xml in browser everything is fine...

Any ideas? Would be greatly appreciated!

Regards

Stefan

dekwan
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Hi Stefan,

What is the url you are putting into the gadget layout? And how do you have the file structure when you uploaded it to the 3rdpartygadget filesystem?

It should be something like this (depending on the path): <gadget>/3rdpartygadget/files/SparkTeamAnnouncements/SparkTeamAnnouncements.xml?gadgetTitle=Spark%20Team%20Announcements&sparkRoom=xxxxxxxxxx&maxMessages=10</gadget>

Thanx,

Denise

sslominski
Level 4
Level 4

Hi Denise,

yes, I am trying those URLs, none of which is working:

External webserver:

<gadget>http://<webserver>/SparkTeamAnnouncements/SparkTeamAnnouncements.xml?gadgetTitle=Spark%20Team%20Announcements&sparkRoom=xxx&maxMessages=20</gadget>

--> Calling this URL from browser is working fine, I can see the XML

--> Finesse Agent is loading, loading, loading... and finally failes

Finesse container:

<gadget>/3rdpartygadget/SparkTeamAnnouncements.xml?gadgetTitle=Spark%20Team%20Announcements&sparkRoom=xxx&maxMessages=20</gadget>

--> file permissions are double-checked to 644

--> Finesse tomcat restarted, UCCX rebooted

--> Calling this URL from browser (with FQDN of UCCX and Port 8082) is results in error-page with SSL_Prot_Error

--> Finesse Agent brings HTTP error 404

pretty strange...

Thank you for any ideas!

BR Stefan

sslominski
Level 4
Level 4

Regarding file structure:

I connect to UCCX via SFTP with 3rdpartygadget user and upload all files into "files" subdirectory...

also tried creating another subdir inside "files" and adjusted URL in layout, no success with that either

dekwan
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

UCCX is on https, therefore you need to call the url from the browser using https and 8445. For a further deep dive into your issue, please open a developer support ticket: https://developer.cisco.com/site/devnet/support/

I would need to know more details to assist.

Thanx,

Denise

Sarg .
Level 3
Level 3

Hello  all, 

 

Is Spark Team Announcement gadget still avaialble for download.  All the uls that seem to refer to it appear to be offline.   

 

Thanks 

jeremypng
Level 4
Level 4
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