CCXML Draft 2002011

Dear reader,

As an "end user" we have been investigating in how far we could standardize interfaces in a  contact center environment.

(A contact center for us is environment where call center agents have to handle calls but also other activities like "email", background tasks etc. on their desktops.
All these different activities are "work items", scheduled by a "CTI middleware".)

The CCXML draft is currently oriented towards a "self service" concept used together with VOICE XML  and to me looks like a sound approach.

However when talking call control I see also a need for this to standardize the interface between CTI middleware and desktop applications.

In this area we have been looking into the products of  3 major venders in the contact center scenario and we have found at least 12 different packages to interface to the desktop. ( desktop can be standalone, CRM package , user application etc)

For a "contact center" environment CCXML  could be the "event" mechanism. Events could be directly related  to call control but also other type of events to handle other "work items". In such an environment the VOICE XML would not be needed since voice follows an other channel for contact center agents.

The "CC XML" draft seems have a lot of the required functionality to accomplish this. What I see as missing is "blind redirect" and "consultative redirect".  Also agent state handling is missing.

Are there plans in your group to add functionality described above?

Regards

Jan van Damme.
ING Contact Center
jan.van-damme@bbl.be