External Routing

The process for enabling external routing is as follows.

1. In Softdial Repository™ Campaigns & Queues tab, any queues that require external routing should have the Allow app to determine route option checked.

   

   Fig. 2 - Repository - Queue editor

2. For outbound calls, the Open Campaign [OC] message must contain the X2 parameter to specify that predictive calls should be passed to an external router.
3. The external service will establish an SDMP connection to CallGem and send a Register External Router [RX] message, identifying itself as a router for either
   1. all tenants
   2. a specific tenant
   3. a specific campaign.

   The message may include an IB parameter (to register for inbound)

   For DNC screening, omit the IB parameter.

   Any other enumeration messages required for information-gathering should also be sent at this time.

4. When a routing decision is required, CallGem will send an ExternalRouterDecision [XL] message to one of the established routers (using the priority value set in the Register External Router [RX] message, Call Priority (CP) parameter) with the details about the request. In terms of dequeuing a call, this will either be information about
   1. the agent (Agent Identifier (AN) or Agent Unique Id (YA)) and a list of calls to choose from (as an XML/JSON object in the Data (DT) parameter), or
   2. the call (Session Identifier (SI) or Session UUID (YS)) and a list of agents to choose from (as an XML/JSON object in the Data (DT) parameter)

   (depending on which of the two lists has a surplus at the time).

   1. When a routing decision is required, Softdial CallGem™ will send an ExternalRouterDecision [XL] message to one of the established routers (using the priority value set in the Register External Router [RX] message, Call Priority (CP) parameter) with the details about the request. In terms of dequeuing a call, this will either be information about
      1. the agent (Agent Identifier (AN) or Agent Unique Id (YA)) and a list of calls to choose from (as an XML/JSON object in the Data (DT) parameter), or
      2. the call (Session Identifier (SI) or Session UUID (YS)) and a list of agents to choose from (as an XML/JSON object in the Data (DT) parameter)

      (depending on which of the two lists has a surplus at the time).

      This request will timeout after the duration specified by the App Route Timeout setting for the queue in Repository. See Campaigns & Queues. See Fig. 2

      If the request times out or returns an invalid selection, or connection between Softdial CallGem™ and the external service is lost, Softdial CallGem™ will route the call according to its own internal logic.

   2. The service should then respond with an External Router Decision [XR] message. In the case of dequeuing a call, this will contain the call session (Session Identifier (SI)) and either the agent (Agent Identifier (AN)) or the queue (Group Address (GA)) to which the session should be routed.
   3. By default, if there is only one call and one agent available, Softdial CallGem™ will route the call automatically without contacting the service. For inbound calls, this behaviour can be bypassed by setting the following registry key (REG_DWORD) to a nonzero value:

      HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Sytel/Dialer/ExternalHobsonsChoice

   If the request times out or returns an invalid selection, or connection between CallGem and the external service is lost, CallGem will route the call according to its own internal logic.

5. The service should then respond with an External Router Decision [XR] message. In the case of dequeuing a call, this will contain the call session (Session Identifier (SI)) and either the agent (Agent Identifier (AN)) or the queue (Group Address (GA)) to which the session should be routed.
6. By default, if there is only one call and one agent available, CallGem will route the call automatically without contacting the service. For inbound calls, this behaviour can be bypassed by setting the following registry key (REG_DWORD) to a nonzero value:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Sytel/Dialer/ExternalHobsonsChoice

Any external routing application that performs call screening for outbound must cache the data required to make decisions in memory and deliver an immediate response. Having the application perform a database lookup will be too slow.

To put this into context, a predictive dialer campaign with 200 agents making short duration calls may generate 35 call screening requests every second. Performing database-based screening is not an option.

Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) offers an Afiniti Bridge, to enable the routing decisions to be made by the Afiniti call routing system for inbound calls.

The route request sent from Softdial CallGem™ to the Bridge is similar to Afiniti’s own requests - one agent is described alongside a list of potential calls, or one call is described alongside a list of potential agents. Some initial information in the request is supplemented by Softdial CallGem™’s enumeration functions (agent/ session data, etc.), which is then converted to the appropriate format and supplied to the Afiniti server as a RouteRequest. Upon receipt of a RouteSelect message from Afiniti, the bridge then decodes the pairing(s) and sends the selection responses to Softdial CallGem™ (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 - External Routing via Afiniti

Failure handling

If for whatever reason Softdial CallGem™ loses connection to the Bridge service (networking errors, or the service crashing/ shutting down) it will continue to use its own built-in dequeue code; when the bridge is restarted and/or the connection issues are fixed the bridge should reconnect automatically and resume operation.

If the bridge should lose connection to the Afiniti server, it will still listen for requests but be unable to get a response; the timeout for routing requests will be reached and Softdial CallGem™ will default to its own method. As before, once Afiniti reconnects to the bridge normal operation should resume automatically.