Announcing First Customer Shipment for Customer Collaboration Software Release 10.5

[pmilliga]

Cisco is pleased to announce that Release 10.5 of the Customer Collaboration product portfolio has reached First Customer Shipment (FCS).

The Customer Collaboration 10.5 release continues to advance consistency across the portfolio, expands our efforts to simplify the contact center for improved total cost of ownership (TCO), and highlights continuous innovation and an on-going investment in product quality. Release 10.5 includes enhancements to the following products:

• Unified Contact Center Express (Unified CCX);
• Unified Workforce Optimization (Unified WFO);
• Unified Contact Center Enterprise (Unified CCE);
• Packaged Contact Center Enterprise (Packaged CCE);
• Unified Customer Voice Portal (Unified CVP);
• Unified Intelligence Center;
• Cisco Finesse;
• Cisco MediaSense. 

What’s New in Release 10.5?

Key new features and enhancements include:

Unified CCX delivers several new features including the addition of multi-session web chat supported by SocialMiner 10.5, predictive outbound dialing, and new gadgets for the Finesse desktop to support chat, outbound dialing, multi-line support and real-time queue statistics for agents. These enhancements offer added channels for customers to reach out to the contact center and enable agents to handle contacts more efficiently. In addition, Unified CCX 10.5 supports Cisco Prime Collaboration for deployment, offering a unified view of the IP infrastructure and providing easier remote installation and upgrades. For complete details, review the 10.5 release notes here.

Unified Workforce Optimization for Unified CCX adds a number of new features for Quality Management and Workforce Management.  Quality management adds Finesse desktop gadgets for MediaSense recording control that allow you to play, pause, resume, and delete recordings right from the desktop. Also new is live voice and screen monitoring, which allows supervisors to monitor both voice and agent desktop actions in real time. Workforce management adds multichannel forecasting that includes an algorithm to forecast staffing needs for non-real-time contacts such as email. Also, support for an iCalendar feed allows agents to subscribe and publish their schedule to the calendaring application of their choice.  For complete details on these and other new features, review the 10.5 release notes here.

Unified CCE includes enhancements for precision routing, including the option to skip a step in a precision queue to reduce wait times, and dynamic precision queue variables that allow the routing script to evaluate designated queue parameters before sending calls to it. Precision queues can now have up to 10 attributes, increasing the flexibility for routing and adding more granularity to reporting. Precision queue steps per system have increased to 10,000 steps, while the number of precision queues per system have increased from 2000 to 4000 queues.  Also in release 10.5, Unified CCE supports Prime Collaboration Contact Center Assurance for monitoring and diagnostics to help reduce costly downtime and promote agent productivity.  Unified CCE administration now allows supervisors to reskill and reattribute agents from a single web-based user interface. Unified CCE supports Jabber for Windows and IP Phone models 88xx, allowing agents and customers to share video for a more enhanced experience. For complete details, review the 10.5 release notes here.

Packaged CCE includes all the same precision routing enhancements as Unified CCE with the exception of increased number of precision queue steps. Additional new features for Packaged CCE 10.5 include Live Data Queue Status on the agent's Finesse desktop for more efficient contact handling, improved log collection and simplified trace management for easier troubleshooting, and advanced system health status to more easily identify and resolve issues. For complete details, review the release notes here.

Unified CVP offers several new enhancements to the Studio service creation environment, including: Support for Eclipse version 3.7.2 (Indigo release); debug tool integration with Microsoft's Speech API for an enhanced debugging experience with speech applications; introduction of debugging break points, which can suspend the debug flow at designated nodes to verify inputs and outputs, and navigate through call flows using debug commands; support for sub-flows, which enables the creation of reusable modules across applications and gives application writers the flexibility of independent module development; and event handlers in CVP Studio applications to handle VoiceXML events and Java exceptions at the most appropriate place within the call flow.  For complete details, review the release notes here.

Unified Intelligence Center adds new capabilities across the entire portfolio. For Unified CCE and Packaged CCE, Unified Intelligence Center adds support for 25,000 characters in report definition SQL queries to allow users to create larger SQL queries and custom reports; MS SQL 2008 JDBC Driver support for enhanced custom reporting; and enhancements to the Real-Time Monitoring Tool (RTMT), enabling users to get an assessment of the load on the Unified Intelligence Center server. For Unified CCX, new historical and Live Data reports have been added to support reporting for outbound dialing. For complete details, review the release notes here.

Cisco Finesse adds a number of new features for both Unified CCX and CCE, including enhancements to the supervisor team performance gadget to allow supervisors a deeper view into agent activities.  Also new is scheduled call back that allows agents working on outbound campaigns to schedule a call back at a later date if the customer so wishes.  For Unified CCE, Finesse adds optional wrap-up codes.  For complete details, review the release notes here.

Cisco MediaSense delivers video conversation recording by using the media forking capability of Cisco Unified Border Element to record up to two video and two audio tracks per conversation.  Video can be recorded up to 1080p resolution, and recorded video and audio tracks can be played back using MediaSense or exported to other systems. Using capabilities in Cisco Unified Communications Manager release 10.0 (and later), Cisco MediaSense can record calls between CUCM-registered endpoints, regardless of the devices or their locations.  This allows use of a convenient, centralized recording policy.  For complete details, review the 10.5 release notes here.

Availability, Upgrades, and Ordering

The 10.5 software releases of Unified CCX, Unified WFO, Packaged CCE, Unified CCE, Unified CVP, Unified Intelligence Center, Cisco Finesse, Cisco MediaSense and Cisco SocialMiner are available immediately.

Ordering information can be found in the Ordering Guide: http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/partner/WWChannels/technology/ipc/downloads/CCBU_ordering_guide.pdf

For Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise, Unified Contact Center Express, and Unified Customer Voice Portal, new customers may use Cisco Commerce Workspace for new orders.  Existing customers with a valid service contract and Cisco Unified Communication Software Subscription can order upgrades by using the Product Upgrade Tool.

For more information, visit the Cisco Ordering Home Page: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/ordering/index.shtml. 

Product Literature and Documentation

For complete product literature including data sheets, release notes, and documentation please visit the following links:

Cisco Unified Contact Center Express www.cisco.com/go/uccx

Cisco Unified Workforce Optimization http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/customer-collaboration/unified-workforce-optimization/index.html

Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise: www.cisco.com/go/ipcc

Packaged CCE http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps12586/tsd_products_support_series_home.html

Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal www.cisco.com/go/cvp

Cisco Unified Intelligence Center www.cisco.com/go/ccreporting

Cisco Finesse: www.cisco.com/go/finesse

Cisco MediaSense: www.cisco.com/go/mediasense

Cisco SocialMiner: www.cisco.com/go/socialminer