Cisco Finesse and Microsoft Teams

[lise.arsenault1]

I have a scenario and wondering if any members here are from a call centre environment who have had similar issues. 
My scenario is: 
Our softphone system is Cisco Jabber 
Our Agent call routing and dialer is Cisco Finesse
Our internal meetings and communications are Microsoft Teams
Our agents need to log into Cisco Jabber, then Cisco Finesse, then Microsoft Teams at the beginning of their shift. 

What we have been encountering for the past year is that Cisco Finesse will disconnect or give a connection failure to our agents intermittently during their shift. They would then have to re-login to Cisco Finesse. 
We've been investigating this issue for the past year. 
We've updated Chrome browser, had agents use finesse in it's own browser and not minimize, switch agent to the Firefox browser for Cisco Finesse only.  
The one thing we've tried that eliminated the disconnection is when we run Microsoft Teams on either a completely different computer (yes we supplied some agents with 2 computers for testing) or on their mobile phones. Once we eliminated Microsoft Teams from the same computer that Cisco Finesse was running on, they no longer had disconnect or connection failures. 

Is it possible that the 2 programs, because they are both audio based, are fighting to take over the agent's audio controls? When on a Teams meeting, Microsoft Teams will disconnect Cisco Finesse? 
Is there some type of add-on or connector that will allow for both programs to run together? 

[lise.arsenault1]

Hi Martin, 
The reason code in the report is "Connection failure". 

[Doug Johnstone]

Hi Lise,

did you manage to find a working solution for your problem?

Thanks

Doug

[Peter van der Vlies]

Since we implemented MS Teams the calling function was enabled. This caused some serious issues on our contact center users. When in a inbound ACD call and also a teams call stepped in the call was put on hold. etc... only drama.
But whats the most irritating issue is the phone failure/phone working state change on the agents.
We detected when you start Jabber en sign in to Finesse all goes well and the agent switch to ready. But as soon as Teams start there is the phone failure. We have a tool running to switch the agent to ready again on phone working, but in some situation the agent was on a break (not ready) and during the break the issue occured, and then he was set to ready. Not OK.
We do know that both Jabber and Teams claim the same audio device and I think there is the main issue. We changed a small group of contact center users to be disabled from Teams calling. At startup we still see the issue. But during the day there are no phone failures. At the moment we are testing this for the last 24 hours so we need more time to be 100% sure. But all indicates when we implemented MS Teams the problems started and that contact center agents should not get Teams calling!

According to Jabber log files, we see that VDI is disconnected(we are running Citrix), but on the network we don't see any issues. We also think the VDI an Teams have a hardware sharing issue or something. Cisco TAC told us we have a network issue! I think different.

Here below an example on logon.

[Peter van der Vlies]

We are now doing some test to go back to Jabber 12.9.7. As we don't see issues with this older version.

[bill.king1]

You may find this defect of interest, basically an enhancement request to allow users to be set to Not Ready vs. Logged out when Jabber/CIPC has an issue. I think it would make a big difference as an option.
https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCwe21651

[Ramamoorthy Shanmugam]

Hi Lise,

We also faced the same issue 30% of inbound calls were dropped due to the Jabber version. We have PCCE 12.5 with Jabber 14.x later we roll back to Jabber to 12.x then everything is normal.

Maybe try to rollback a few agent desktops Jabber clients and monitor.

[bill.king1]

Wow, that is a lot. Was there a defect that you hit, or a particular buld of version 14 that was more problematic?

[balitewiczp]

For what its worth.  I am running UCCE 12.6 and Jabber 14.   we have gone to the ucce agents only get Jabber to use with Finesse, and are not set up for MS Teams Calling.    

[piyush aghera]

We have PCCE 11.6, jabber 14.01 and Teams running and we didnot face this issue.  however we faced separate issue where either jabber or teams can use audio devices, meaning if agent takes a Teams call using headset then jabber's default goes to system speaker. so it is for sure that they fight for same resource. In this case, the login failures are because of "Connection failure" which is related to jabber.  So you should look at your jabber rather than finesse.

Regards, Piyush

BLOG

[Doug Johnstone]

Hi Piyush,

the issue you are referring to above has nothing to do with contact centre in any way. This happens due to the way that Microsft Teams controls the audio and video devices available on the users machine. If ever you have a different phoen system in play, i recommend that you disable the Teams calling function and this should prevent the audo sources being held onto by Micorosoft client.

[piyush aghera]

You're right.. I think that's what I wanted to highlight that Teams should not interfere with working of Finesse.. there should be something else as well to look at. By the way, our IT team figured a way to co-exist both Teams and Jabber for audio resources.

[lise.arsenault1]

What was the solution your IT team did?

[Peter van der Vlies]

After many test, and investigation, Our final setup in the UC service is now adjusted with the parameter SSO_Enabled = true and also STARTUP-AUTHENTIOCATION-REQUIRED = true We now have a stabel Jabber and Teams solution.

[bill.king1]

Thank you for posting the fix. Where are these settings that you mentioned enabled?

[Peter van der Vlies]

2 options, defined in Jabber-config.xml of if you are running UC service profiles on the call manager, go into user management, User Settings, and UC services. Adjust the created services.