Ask the Expert: Social Miner Implementation, deployment & troubleshoot with Contact Center

[Lisa Latour]

SocialMiner is a solution that can act as a standalone receiver for social media such as Facebook, Twitter. It also has the ability to integrate with the Unified Contact Center Space to provide Chat, Email and Courtesy Callback functions.
This session will provide an opportunity to learn and ask questions about the Social Miner application and its position in the Contact Center space.

SocialMiner is widely deployed with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (UCCX) for Web Chat and Agent Email. The Web Chat and Email provides non-voice contacts to agents with Cisco Finesse.

Ask questions from June 22, 2015 through July 3, 2015

Featured Expert

Arundeep Nagaraj is currently working at Cisco TAC (Technical Assistance Center) under the Contact Center Technology for the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express Team (UCCX). I have been supporting customers and partners with issues on UCCX, SocialMiner, Finesse, Mediasense and Cisco Unified Intelligence Center (CUIC). I currently hold the CCIE Voice Certification #40132 and also hold the CCIE Collaboration (Written only). I am current Red Hat Certified Expert (RHCE) and a VMWare Certified Professional (VCP). Within Cisco, I have been working with the UCCX team providing various trainings, developing internal knowledge and articles to help the engineers. I have been presenting on UCCX topics in Cisco Live local events and also a part of the Technical Solutions Clinic at Cisco Live San Diego 2015.

Find other  https://supportforums.cisco.com/expert-corner/events.

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[Sarah Staker]

Hello . What are the options for Web Chat with Cisco Finesse Next Generation Agent Desktop on Contact Center Express?

[Arundeep Nagaraj]

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for bringing this up.

Our options for WebChat with Contact Center Express would be to integrate UCCX with SocialMiner. SocialMiner offers the platform for enabling Chat as a Contact type with UCCX.

Web Chat is supported with both Cisco Agent Desktop-based deployment and Finesse-based deployment. Multisession is supported only with Cisco Finesse. As part of the Premium offering, Unified CCX agents can service incoming customer chat requests either by using the Agent Web Chat Application from the Cisco Agent Desktop or by using Cisco Finesse.

The deployment is very simple and all we need is the following:

UCCX

SocialMiner

Web Server - To host the web form to be used for chat

A sample deployment image is attached here. Social Miner is responsible for handling the new chat request and fire up a notification to the UCCX.

UCCX will route the new chat request to the agent and the reply templates are loaded for the agent.

With Cisco Finesse, we have the multi-session chat option introduced with Social Miner 10.5 which allows multiple chat sessions to an agent and up to a maximum of 5 sessions per agent.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Arundeep

[Chris Carlson]

I am concerned about security when deploying social miner   that potentially sensitive data could live in the DMZ  indefinitely.(when using the chat function) What type of security precautions can one take to make sure that data is secure. 

[Arundeep Nagaraj]

Chris,

Glad that you brought this up. This is really an important consideration with the SocialMiner deployments.

With SocialMiner, we have 2 deployment types:

Deployment Models

SocialMiner has a single-server, all-in-one, small or large deployment model. You cannot use a load-balancing, split data-center deployment. There is no replication. The solution is not redundant. The best availability solution for SocialMiner is to back it up at a second location using a scheduled backup. In the event of a site loss, you then restore into a new VM.

The server may be deployed inside or outside the corporate firewall in "Intranet" and "Internet" deployment models.

• The Intranet deployment model provides the additional security of corporate network firewalls to reduce the risk of an external party accessing the system. This deployment model is required if SocialMiner must access internal sites, such as an internal forum site. The disadvantage of the Intranet deployment model is that the SocialMiner system cannot be accessed by partners lacking VPN access. It is common for some public relations functions to be externally managed by an agency and offering easy access to the SocialMiner system is very useful. Also, the Intranet deployment model does not allow rendering of SocialMiner OpenSocial Gadgets in public Internet containers such as iGoogle. The Intranet deployment model complicates proxy configuration, however it simplifies directory integration.

• The Internet deployment model puts SocialMiner outside of a corporate firewall. This deployment model relies on the built-in security capabilities of the SocialMiner appliance. This may be acceptable from a security perspective depending on system use and corporate policies. For example, in some applications the SocialMiner system handles 100 percent public postings and there is no disclosure risk associated with a compromised SocialMiner system. The Internet deployment model may complicate directory integration.

SocialMiner can be deployed where some users access the server through a firewall or proxy. For the customer chat interface, the SocialMiner server can be deployed behind a proxy server or firewall to prevent it from being abused or for limiting access by those outside the firewall.

So in this case proxy could be used as mentioned above. Also we can limit the traffic into the DMZ/SocialMiner by opening on the required ports on the DMZ to INSIDE and from OUTSIDE to DMZ. The following link gives a list of the ports that we need for the SocialMiner:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/socialminer/socialminer_1061/user_guide/CUSM_BK_C651A23A_00_cisco-socialminer-user-guide-1061/CUSM_BK_C651A23A_00_cisco-socialminer-user-guide-1061_chapter_0110.html#CUSM_...

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Arundeep

[Chris Carlson]

https://supportforums.cisco.com/sites/default/files/attachments/discussion/social_miner_and_uccx_web_chat.png

Do you have a better picture than this for reference architecture/design  when deploying in the DMZ using a firewall. Adding things like exchange, Active directory etc. Things like this would definitely make it easier for deployment. All this for a firewall deployment :)?

Thanks,

[Arundeep Nagaraj]

Hi Chris,

Apologies for the delayed response as we were trying to figure out which diagram suits you the best:

The above diagram shows the Exchange location for Agent Email but it would be the same location if you are using Social Miner just for web chat as well.

The Social Miner would be placed in the DMZ separated by the enterprise firewall from the corporate network and the Exchange, Active Directory would be placed on the right side of the corporate network.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you need further information.

Also for more design questions you can reach out to PDI:

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/tools/pdita.html

As you can see is for :
*Design reviews
*Initial setup
*Proof of concept
*Migration planning
*Configuration and integration

Regards,

Arundeep

[Chris Carlson]

looks great thanks for your hard work!

[Mukesh Singh]

Hi Arundeep,

Can please put some light on Certificate required on UCCX and SM? I mean what kind of certificate we required for UCCX and SM to work with finesse? Does Internal certificate will work? If yes, pls share the steps for this and this will be very usefull for me.

Regards,

Mukesh

[Arundeep Nagaraj]

Hi Mukesh,

Thanks for the question. Certificates are key in integrating the Social Miner with UCCX for both WebChat and Email.

What we did sometime back is put together a one stop shop for UCCX Solution level certificates for UCCX, SocialMiner, Finesse and Mediasense.

This will explain in detail about the certificate requirements:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-express/118855-configure-uccx-00.html

To answer the last part of the question, yes we could use self signed certificates or certificate signed by a CA. The CA can be an internal Microsoft CA as well. So long as the browser trusts the CA and the other requirements for certificate upload done, we should be good with the integration.

Let me know if this helps!

Regards,

Arundeep

[Mukesh Singh]

Great Arundeep!!!

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/customer-collaboration/unified-contact-center-express/118855-configure-uccx-00.html

This is what I was looking for.

Regards,

Mukesh Singh

[BeyerFlorian]

Hi,

is the using of mobile devices (IPhone IOS with Safari or Android) supported to use the Social Miner Chat? I couldn't find any information about this.

Thanks and regards

Florian

[aphrodizia]

Hi Arundeep!!!

Thanks for the good work you have done here on the subject of socialminer, my questions regards chat with socialminer. i am in Africa and we don't usually host our websites we do this elsewhere probably servers in the Us or europe in any case i want to have this chat url snippet given uploaded to that domain. will this work if i can have the socialminer.mydomain have a public ip domain and have my users able to do the chat with socialminer apparently on my local network. or is it just a prerequisite to have both of them in the same internal network for the users to able to chat with the agents on our website

[snandi]

Hi

Cutting out all networking complexities, you are probably looking at the deployment as described here.

It is normal to host the website on public providers while the SocialMiner is in the DMZ. For web chat requests to be able to be serviced by SocialMiner, one just need to ensure that the firewall and proxy allow Http/s traffic.

This is similar to the website getting access to web services (and maybe databases and other resources) which are within the enterprise.

There is no requirement to have both the server(s) hosting the website and SocialMiner to be in the same internal network.

[aphrodizia]

Hi thank you so much i appreciate, the link you provided has helped solidify your guidance.