MCC - Multimedia Contact Center Versions 6.X and earlier

INFORMATION

MCC (Multimedia Contact Center) allows users to route E-mails, Chats, Faxes, and SMS to queues which deliver these messages to agents running Outlook 2003 or 2007.  You can run reports on these queues just like you would for voice queues, showing performance stats such as messages handled, abandoned, and average handle times.

NOTE: Outlook 2010 is not supported.  Due to changes in the Ad-In framework in Outlook 2010 the prairieFyre MCC Ad-In will not function.



Services

• prairieFyre MCC Exchange Objects (formerly prairieFyre MCC Exchange Router) resides on the Exchange Server.  This service controls the day to day communications between prairieFyre and Exchange.  Without it the Enterprise Server will not be able to establish connections to Exchange, and queues will not route.
• prairieFyre MCC Exchange Setup (formerly prairieFyre MCC Exchange Diagnostics) resides on the Exchange Server.  This service controls the actual creation of queues/agents and the corresponding email addresses and public folders in Exchange.  Because of this the Exchange Setup service must be run under a username that is:  Local Administrator, Full Domain Administrator, and Exchange Administrator.
• prairieFyre 6150 CyberChat Server resides on the Web Server (can be on the Enterprise Server, or a remote node).  This service controls day to day communications between the Enterprise Server, Web Chat, and Exchange.  Without this chats won't be routed to queues or delivered to agents.
• prairieFyre Updater Service resides on Exchange and Web Server any time they are not co-located with the Enterprise Server.  It ensures that the remote servers remain up to date with the software version of the Enterprise Server.

How it Works...

When you create a multimedia queue in Contact Center Management it will be associated to the associated media server (e-mail, chat, etc.).  Once this is created in the prairieFyre configuration the prairieFyre MCC Exchange Setup service will check in with the Enterprise server and create the corresponding public folders and e-mail addresses needed in Exchange.

The process for an item being delivered is similar for all MCC media types.

• Step 1: Customer sends an e-mail to your organization, either directly to the email address for the queue or to another address which forwards to this address (ie. sales@customer.com forwards to internal.sales@customer.com ). The e-mail address assigned to the queue should have been created by the prairieFyre MCC Exchange Setup service when you added the queue to Contact Center Management.
• Step 2: Exchange delivers the e-mail to the mail enabled public folder. These first two steps are completely handled by Microsoft Exchange and our software is not yet involved except for creating the public folders.
• Step 3: The prairieFyre MCC Exchange Objects service sees that an e-mail has arrived and assigns it a ticket and case number
• Step 4: The prairieFyre MCC Exchange Objects asks the prairieFyre Enterprise Service (running on the CCM server) who the longest idle agent is for that queue
• Step 5: The prairieFyre MCC Exchange Objects moves the mail item to the agent’s inbox public folder
• Step 6: The Outlook plugin on the agent’s PC sees that there is a mail item in that agent’s inbox public folder and ‘rings’ the agent. Outlook is brought to front (showing the inbox public folder) and a beep is heard (this can be changed through Tools -> Options -> Multimedia Contact Center in Outlook).
• Step 7: The agent handles the email as they normally would by hitting reply or reply all. They can also use the MCC controls to mark the e-mail as ‘no reply needed’, ‘junk mail’ or they can transfer the e-mail.
• Step 8: The agent sends the reply. The Outlook plugin moves the mail item to the agent’s outbox folder and tells the Exchange Router what it’s done.
• Step 9: The prairieFyre MCC Exchange Objects tells Exchange to send that mail item using Microsoft Collaborative Data Objects (CDO).
• Step 10: Exchange sends the e-mail, and the prairieFyre Exchange Router makes a copy of the original e-mail and sends it to the Repository public folder. It also makes a copy of the reply and puts it in the Replies public folder and the agent’s sent items public folder.

The prairieFyre Exchange Setup/Diagnostics service is responsible for maintaining and creating the public folders. It does this by checking with the prairieFyre Enterprise Service on the CCM server to ensure that the public folders match what is defined in the CCMWeb configuration for MCC. Web Chat works in the exact same way, except there’s a further initial step. When the customer hits the ‘request chat’ button, it creates a mail item which goes to the web chat queue’s public folder. We then ticket and route the mail item the same way, except when it arrives at the agent PC the Outlook plugin knows it’s a chat and opens the Chat window instead of the e-mail reply window.  Fax requires an extra third party application to convert the fax to a digital medium deliverable by Outlook.  SMS uses a MultiModem iSMS modem to receive the SMS and pass them along to Exchange.  In all four cases, Exchange receives the item and routes it to the corresponding public folder for the queue.

We no not make use of SMTP, IMAP or any other similar concept at this time. We will eventually be replacing our current system of public folders and dedicated prairieFyre Exchange services installed on the Exchange server with a system that lets you use POP, SMTP and IMAP. This will be in the new version of MCC being released with Atlantic which is expected around the mid-2013.

TROUBLESHOOTING

There is a lot of great information about MCC in the knowledgebase.  The Multimedia Contact Center Installation Guide covers pre-requisites, installation procedures and initial setup.  The Contact Center Management User Guide has step-by-step instructions for setting up new media servers, agents, and queues.  Below we have the more common articles for versions 5.7 through 6.0.

General Information and Configuration

• Understanding Multimedia SMDR (All versions)
• Migrating Multimedia Enterprise Server (All versions)
• KB41351: 5.7 sp1 Rollup of Hotfixes (5.7 SP1)
• Co-locating Contact Center Management and Exchange 2007 SP3 (6.0)
• Multimedia Setup failure on MSMQ queue (All versions)
• How To: Enable MCC Quick Audits (All versions)
• MCC Agent Priority / Preferred Agent Option (All versions)
• How to change or remove the default "pfCase / pfTicket" tags in MCC email messages (All versions)
• MCC auto-acknowledgement and sender auto-reply causes emails to bounce back and forth (All versions)
• How to disable the MCC 6150 Outlook plugin (All versions)

General Errors and Failures

• MCC Exchange Setup service won't start on remote node (6.0)
• MCC ExchangeRouter is failing to start (6.0)
• MCC Exchange Diagnostics service terminates unexpectedly (5.7)
• ActiveX error 429 and operation failed Outlook errors when using MCC plug-in (All versions)
• Errorhandler message when trying to edit MCC Agents in CCMWeb (5.8)
• Multimedia email messages not routing to agents (All versions)
• MCC client errors after removing Make Busy codes from the configuration (5.7 SP1)
• MCC - Outlook Plugin does not load (5.7 SP1)

E-Mail Troubleshooting

• MCC - Emails ticketing but not routing to queues (5.X and 6.0)
• Multimedia emails not routing or getting ticketed; MSMQ access denied errors (All versions)
• MCC - Replies are not going out, remain in Agent's outbox (5.X and 6.0)
• MCC Emails arriving in public folder as Posts instead of Emails (Notes) (All versions)

CyberChat Troubleshooting

• Troubleshooting Multimedia Web Chat (All versions)
• MCC - CyberAED folder is not being created (All versions)
• Webchat stuck connecting to server and does not route (All versions)
• MCC - Webchats not sent to public folders / Not Routing to agents (5.7 SP1)
• Webchat Not Working with Microsoft URL Scan in IIS (All versions)
• MCC - ChatForm Ignores Business Hours/Agent Availability (5.7 SP1)

APPLIES TO

MCC All versions 6.X and below