Hi Community,
I have a requirement to perform database deep based on certain value in email's subject when agents pick/pull an activity from ECE. I have PCCE 12.6(2) integrated with ECE 12.6 and most of the agents work with pick/pull method.
To do this, I am thinking to use ECE Call Variables in ICM script, so whenever an activity is picked or pulled by an agent, ICM script will pass thru PickPull node and then I can trigger a VXML app with Call Variables that can do database deep. Now I see two ECE Call variables in ICM, configured as Expanded Call Variables in my system, activity_id and customer_name as user.ece.activity.id and user.ece.customer.name respectively. I see ECE has a call variable called "subject", so I added an Expanded Call Variable called "user.ece.subject" in CCE Admin, but that variable is not populated when activity hits the ICM script.
I have two questions:
1. How do I add ECE Call Variable "subject" in CCE Admin so it shows up in ICM when activity hits ICM script.
2. Is there a better way to handle my requirement then what I am thinking.
Thanks as always for any feedback that you can give.
CCE Admin Expanded call variable screenshot ("activity.id" and "customer.name" works, but "subject" doesnt):
ECE Call Variable screenshot:
Accepted Solutions
@piyush aghera wrote:
Have you tried using Data Adapter to connect to Database? If so, how does it work? I used it to connect to APIs in the past and that works fine.
This is a copy/paste I sent to eGain back in 2019
Business Needs: The customer would like to use ECE to retrieve data from Service Now. They would like this data plugged into custom attributes and displayed in the Agent UI. The expectation is that an email will enter ECE, and the subject line will have diCase:n, where n is the Case number generated by Service Now. An API call via the Data Link will be done and information on the Case number will be returned and plugged into custom attributes.
What I have done so far: I have created the Data Link Access and Data Link Usage and both test successfully. The API call is a URL and requires a dynamic value (the Case number). In the Data Link Usage, I’m specifying that the dynamic value will be populated by the subject of the email. If I send an email with only the Case number, the API call is successful, results return, and I see all the values in the Agent UI.
Problem I’m having: I need to modify the subject so that I’m extracting only the case number and having the data link use just the number, rather than diCase:n . I can successfully modify the subject using the Pattern type if I do not invoke the Data Link. If I modify the subject line AND try to retrieve the results to plug into custom attributes, the workflow fails and the email routes to the default exception queue.
So you can see, the big problem I ran into early on was parsing the subject line. My subject lines were not static, so I had to count for a lot of different scenarios. But the above is just the GET method, at some point, I needed to use POST method to create a Service Now ticket, but I couldn't even get past this point. We tried different things like using two Modify Object nodes, one to update the Subject line and the other to update the custom attributes using the data access links. Separating the two modify object nodes was a dead end for me. I even tried two separate workflows where one workflow modifies the subject and the other populates the custom attributes. So after some back and forth, eGain suggested the following:
Another thing that you can explore is:
- Create a custom attribute to just capture CaseID, say populateSub
- Use Modify Object Node to populate that custom attribute after parsing the case id:
- Create another data adapter to fetch this custom attribute using Interaction API (This should give you case ID):
ws/v12/interaction/activity/attributes?$attribute=custom
Details here: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/enterprise-chat-and-email/#!interaction-api-developer-guide
- Now call your Service Now link to populate the actual custom attributes that you want to populate in your use case.
I tried what they suggested above, and it still did not work. At this point, I had a couple Webex meetings with one of their Technical Architects. What we found is that once an email enters the department, the usage data link is invoked BEFORE the workflow, and yes, we're talking like microseconds, but that's the order of operations. The Architect seemed to think that it was a bug and said that ECE is looking for a pattern in the email content, even though it's not supposed to do that. If it finds the pattern in the content, the only thing changing is the subject, otherwise, the subject remains unchanged. At the end of all of it, eGain came back and said the following:
I do not see any other possible way to achieve it. The only way I think is, agent being manually inputting the case number and calling the API from agent console. Even, modifying the subject is not at all recommended as the case_id appended in the subject by the application is used in several other operations and actions. I have discussed this requirement with our architect as well, as we are not able to use the custom attribute while passing the input parameter to the API I do not see any way to do it without agent’s intervention. The main problem is application is not allowing any of the custom attribute to be passed to the link in real time to fetch the data hence we have to depend on the key attributes of activity.
This was on ECE 11.6 / eGain 15. I followed up with them when eGain 17 was released, but it was the same problem. The person I was working with said that he will make it an enhancement request. I will say though that the folks from eGain spent a lot of time with me to help me out and I appreciate them throwing a few resources my way.
Thanks Bill. Actually new ECC variable is showing up under ECCPayload, so that part is fine. But I just found out that ECC variable should be mapped to respective ECE Call Variable in ECE Admin's Queue configuration, like below:
It seems like this needs to be done for each individual ECE queue, if that is the case then its a cumbersome work when you have lots of queues, like I have. I will test this further and update this thread.
Thanks Omar for taking out time and write this up. This does sound like an overwhelming project.
What I am envisioning is that when activity hits ICM script, I can read Subject of the activity using ECE Call Variable "subject" which is mapped to ECC variable "user.ece.subject". Now using ICM functions, I can get customer reference number from the subject, which has a specific format. Next is the interesting part. Most of my agents use pick/pull method, so I am planning to insert Call Studio app at the place highlighted below, just before pick/pull node:
As you see, activities traverse thru that path, so theoretically, call studio app should trigger and I can pass customer reference number that I had extracted earlier from subject. Now all Call Studio app has to do is to use that customer reference number and do a data dip to get certain details and pass them back to ICM. I have no intention or need to pass entire activity to call studio app. I think it will work, but I am going to try all this starting Monday and see if it really works (fingers crossed).
Evenif all this works, I still have two challenges:
1. once I get information back from call studio to ICM, how do I pass that back to ECE and add into a reply template.
2. as I said, most of the activities go thru pick/pull node, but some get assigned directly from PQ to agent. how do I trigger call studio app for such activities.
I think answer to these two questions are "not possible" and I may have to look for some other way to do it.
@piyush aghera wrote:
Have you tried using Data Adapter to connect to Database? If so, how does it work? I used it to connect to APIs in the past and that works fine.
This is a copy/paste I sent to eGain back in 2019
Business Needs: The customer would like to use ECE to retrieve data from Service Now. They would like this data plugged into custom attributes and displayed in the Agent UI. The expectation is that an email will enter ECE, and the subject line will have diCase:n, where n is the Case number generated by Service Now. An API call via the Data Link will be done and information on the Case number will be returned and plugged into custom attributes.
What I have done so far: I have created the Data Link Access and Data Link Usage and both test successfully. The API call is a URL and requires a dynamic value (the Case number). In the Data Link Usage, I’m specifying that the dynamic value will be populated by the subject of the email. If I send an email with only the Case number, the API call is successful, results return, and I see all the values in the Agent UI.
Problem I’m having: I need to modify the subject so that I’m extracting only the case number and having the data link use just the number, rather than diCase:n . I can successfully modify the subject using the Pattern type if I do not invoke the Data Link. If I modify the subject line AND try to retrieve the results to plug into custom attributes, the workflow fails and the email routes to the default exception queue.
So you can see, the big problem I ran into early on was parsing the subject line. My subject lines were not static, so I had to count for a lot of different scenarios. But the above is just the GET method, at some point, I needed to use POST method to create a Service Now ticket, but I couldn't even get past this point. We tried different things like using two Modify Object nodes, one to update the Subject line and the other to update the custom attributes using the data access links. Separating the two modify object nodes was a dead end for me. I even tried two separate workflows where one workflow modifies the subject and the other populates the custom attributes. So after some back and forth, eGain suggested the following:
Another thing that you can explore is:
- Create a custom attribute to just capture CaseID, say populateSub
- Use Modify Object Node to populate that custom attribute after parsing the case id:
- Create another data adapter to fetch this custom attribute using Interaction API (This should give you case ID):
ws/v12/interaction/activity/attributes?$attribute=custom
Details here: https://developer.cisco.com/docs/enterprise-chat-and-email/#!interaction-api-developer-guide
- Now call your Service Now link to populate the actual custom attributes that you want to populate in your use case.
I tried what they suggested above, and it still did not work. At this point, I had a couple Webex meetings with one of their Technical Architects. What we found is that once an email enters the department, the usage data link is invoked BEFORE the workflow, and yes, we're talking like microseconds, but that's the order of operations. The Architect seemed to think that it was a bug and said that ECE is looking for a pattern in the email content, even though it's not supposed to do that. If it finds the pattern in the content, the only thing changing is the subject, otherwise, the subject remains unchanged. At the end of all of it, eGain came back and said the following:
I do not see any other possible way to achieve it. The only way I think is, agent being manually inputting the case number and calling the API from agent console. Even, modifying the subject is not at all recommended as the case_id appended in the subject by the application is used in several other operations and actions. I have discussed this requirement with our architect as well, as we are not able to use the custom attribute while passing the input parameter to the API I do not see any way to do it without agent’s intervention. The main problem is application is not allowing any of the custom attribute to be passed to the link in real time to fetch the data hence we have to depend on the key attributes of activity.
This was on ECE 11.6 / eGain 15. I followed up with them when eGain 17 was released, but it was the same problem. The person I was working with said that he will make it an enhancement request. I will say though that the folks from eGain spent a lot of time with me to help me out and I appreciate them throwing a few resources my way.
