Summer '21 release

 Platform-wide feature

 Optional feature

Product Name Change Notice
These release notes were written prior to a Salesforce product name change. Where Service Cloud Voice is referenced in this page, the product is now called Salesforce Voice.
Please also note that the Vonage package name Vonage for Service Cloud Voice has not changed and remains the same throughout current documentation.

General Availability Features

Salesforce Service Cloud Voice 

Vonage for Service Cloud Voice integrates Vonage Contact Center (VCC) with Salesforce's Service Cloud Voice. For information about Service Cloud Voice and its benefits, see Service Cloud Voice (Salesforce help).

Vonage for Service Cloud Voice enables Salesforce to deliver these benefits using VCC. For example, when a customer calls in, Vonage's transcription capabilities turn the customer's and the agent's speech into text. The agent can view this text alongside customer data in the console. They can then deliver a personalized experience based on factors like the customer’s purchase history, warranty information, or past interactions across channels. With the call converted to text, Einstein AI provides recommended responses, knowledge articles, and next best actions to the agent.

You can use Service Cloud Voice with existing interaction plans, users, and contact numbers. However, you may need to change items like case pops. We recommend that you review your VCC implementation to understand what changes need to be made, if any, to take advantage of Service Cloud Voice.

Your existing integration between Salesforce and VCC will not change and continues to provide the existing benefits. Service Cloud Voice just provides a possible alternative to how Salesforce and VCC work together to provide benefit to your contact center.

Desk Phone Support 

Service Cloud Voice includes desk phone support. Alongside digital channels, agents can talk with customers using their chosen hardphone, such as a desk phone or a mobile phone. An agent can configure their desk phone number in the User Admin area of the Vonage Contact Center admin portal.

For more information about Vonage for Service Cloud Voice, see Vonage Premier for Salesforce Voice.

ContactPad

Contact List - Short Codes 

Contact center agents often need to make or transfer calls or consult with numbers off platform—this may be to a commonly dialed third party. To support that, supervisors configure short code extensions within VCC so that agents don’t need to remember the full dialable number. For example, agents can dial 123 to call +1(123) 4567-890.

Supervisors can configure a large number of short codes. Previously, these short codes weren't searchable within ContactPad. Agents needed to either remember the short codes, or more commonly, supervisors would need to create separate documents mapping the short code extensions to the commonly dialed numbers. One of our highest voted ideas on the community forum was to improve that experience.

With this release, supervisors can configure short codes to appear within the make call and consult dialogs of ContactPad. Agents can search for the short-code name for a quick and simple experience.

For more information about configuring short codes and using them in ContactPad, see Configuring short codes and Making and receiving calls in ContactPad.

Enforced Disposition Code for Multi-Interaction ContactPad

Enforced Disposition Codes ensures that agents log an outcome for all interactions..

Using multi-interaction ContactPad, agents were previously able to bypass logging a disposition code, impacting data integrity.

From Summer ‘21, agents using multi-interaction ContactPad can no longer bypass the 'Logging the Call' state from the ContactPad UI. Agents must log an outcome before making or receiving another call.

For more information about enforced disposition codes, see Disposition codes.

Detailed Problem Reporting 

Agents already have the capability to report audio problems directly from ContactPad. In the Summer' 21 release, we are extending that functionality to allow agents to report wider Vonage problems.

The 'exclamation' (report problem) button will be shown in place of the 'thumbs up' button (report audio problem only) today. The report problem feature allows agents to report either audio problems (when on a call) or general Vonage problems (at any point).

Clicking Send report will send Vonage diagnostic information from the agent’s browser. A trend of these will be used to alert engineers who are on call. If the issue persists, and a support case is raised, these detail reports will provide a record of the problem, complete with detailed logs. This will reduce the need for agents to join calls with the Vonage Engineering team to troubleshoot issues, ultimately leading to faster resolution times.

For more information about reporting problems in ContactPad, see Reporting problems in ContactPad in ContactPad.

Dashboards

Filter Interaction Details by Group 

In the Spring ‘21 release, we are adding support for outbound and internal interactions within the Interaction Details widget type in Dashboards. Traditionally, this widget was filtered by queues for inbound interactions; filtering by queues is not applicable to outbound interactions.

With this release, we have added a group filter to the Interaction Details widget type. Dashboard creators can build widgets showing all active interactions within their team or group.

The group filter is available on all existing and new Dashboards.

Threshold Notifications in Browser 

With Dashboards today, you can set thresholds to visualize changes in key metrics. Vonage indicates the move between threshold areas by changing the color of the value on screen.

This feature builds upon those thresholds, by allowing you to enable browser notifications for the same changes.

Available within the widget configuration screen, select the Thresholds tab. The new bell icon—

or

—indicates whether or not browser notifications have been enabled for the listed threshold changes.

When enabled, if a metric within that widget passes the configured threshold (in either direction) a notification appears.

On clicking this notification, the appropriate widget within the Dashboard comes into focus, and the value is highlighted. The notification will still trigger even if the browser window or tab is out of focus (but open).

For more information about threshold notifications, see Overview of Real-time Analytics.

WebRTC

WebRTC for VCC extension for Edge browser 

Vonage Contact Center WebRTC now officially supports the new Microsoft Edge browser. The browser extension required to use VCC WebRTC is available to install from the new Microsoft Edge Add-ons website. Go to Microsoft Edge Add-ons and search for 'WebRTC for Vonage CC'.

For information about the WebRTC for VCC extension for Edge, see ContactPad with WebRTC.

Cadence

Cadence for Microsoft Dynamics 

Cadence, designed to support outbound teams to reach their prospects or customers, is now available within Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With manual creation of lists in this first release, you will be able to populate prospect lists with any record type from within Dynamics to maximize your chances of connecting. 

Without leaving the MS Dynamics UI, reps will be able to click to start their outbound cadence. Cadence automatically prioritizes the rep's workload based on their configured prioritization and pop the record related to the prospect list. Cadence then allows the rep to click to dial from any number in that record.

For information about using Cadence in Microsoft Dynamics, see Working with prospects in ContactPad in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Enforced Disposition Code Support 

Business decisions or analysis can only be informed by good data. Enforced disposition codes is a feature used by a large percentage of our customer base in Salesforce to make sure outcomes were logged for calls; however this previously wasn’t supported by Cadence. When an agent logged the outcome of their cadence step, they needed to log their disposition code separately to be able to make or receive their next call.

Now agents logging the outcome of a cadence step will automatically log that outcome as a disposition code, allowing them to move onto their next interaction immediately, improving the user experience.

Cadence Working Hours 

Compliance regulations for outbound dialing are enforced in most geographies: ensuring compliance is paramount for all administrators. 

Now, supervisors managing the workload for outbound teams are now able to define the time zone and working hours for individual prospect lists. Supported across both Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, reps will only be automatically presented records within the configured window.

We know lists are likely to contain prospects across multiple time zones. To maintain compliance in these scenarios, you are able to define the time zone for individual prospects in either Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics so your window for connecting is relative to their time zone.

For information about working hours in Cadence, see Using Cadence as a supervisor.

Administration

User Admin Refresh 

As we consolidate our User Administration experience into one place, we have been working to improve the user experience. Within this release, we are refreshing the entire User Admin capability.

Improvements include:

• Improved skills, group and schedule navigation. Making updates to these objects is now more efficient.

• Dedicated bulk actions sidebar. Improves the user experience outside and inside of bulk.

• Improved URL navigation. Allows users to bookmark individual objects within User Admin.

• Support for password reset within User Admin.

The classic User Admin view will be available until the next release (Winter 22’).

For more information about User Admin, see User Admin.

Tracking of Last Login 

Within the Winter ‘21 release, we enabled a 'Last Login' column within the User Admin export. In this release, we are extending that offering by covering all login scenarios, including alternative single sign-on providers.

Any login to VCC will now be captured within the column, allowing administrators to identify both active and inactive users. Data within the column has been backfilled until April 2020.

Platform

Interaction Content Search Improvements 

Since the release of the Interaction Content page, we have been working on improving the user experience. Within this release, the filter capabilities has been improved to support the following additional features:

• Search across an unlimited time period, made possible by progressive loading of results.

• Improved date and time filtering component, offering relative time period options.

• Search based on the agent IDs of all agents that connected to the interaction, and not just the last (available for interactions that happen after the Summer ‘21 release).

• Improved search performance, providing results faster than ever before.

This page will now entirely replace the Call Recordings page. See the Call Recording Search - Retired section later in this page for more details.

For more information about Interaction Content Search, see Interaction Content.

Beta/Early Access Program

Our Beta/Early Access Program gives some customers access to VCC enhancements that are still under development. Incorporating feedback from customers during the program allows us to continue improving these features, which ensures that every feature fulfills its purpose in a range of different
environments. All customers using features in the Beta/Early Access Program must agree to participate in the feedback process.

If you are interested in gaining access to a feature in the Beta/Early Access Program, contact your Customer Success Manager or Account Manager. Participation in this pilot program is at the discretion of Product Management and not guaranteed.

Screen Recording Desktop Application (Beta) 

Screen Recording allows supervisors and quality managers to understand what agents were doing on their desktops during the call, and listen to the call. This improves quality management capabilities, making it easy to identify inefficiencies. This functionality has already been released and the Desktop Application is an enhancement.

Screen Recording will enable your business to achieve the following:

• Identify coaching opportunities to improve call efficiency

• Record one or two screens, not just browsers or applications

• Understand after-call work activities

• Synchronize desktop activity with audio recordings

• Enable playback of multiple screens at once

• Zoom into agents’ screens

• Download audio and video in a single file

• Easily identify which calls have just audio and/or transcription and/or screen recordings 

• Store screen recordings securely

• Set permissions on who can view screen recordings

• Provide central control of whose screens are recorded

• Link screen recordings to Conversation Analyzer

In this Beta program we will be offering a desktop application to record the screen(s) instead of a Chrome Plugin.

Analytics Dashboards (Limited Early Access)