Q3 '24 release

 Platform-wide feature

 Paid-for feature

 Enhancement to paid-for feature

Important updates

Launch of the new web address for VCC — vonage.com

In the Q3 2024 release, we are delighted to be introducing new regional URLs for all Vonage Contact Center products and services. This update is part of our ongoing efforts to enhance brand consistency and respond to customer feedback regarding the discontinuation of the NewVoiceMedia brand.
We’ve introduced new cc.vonage.com domains, which will eventually replace the old newvoicemedia.com domains for all our regional services. This change aims to reduce confusion and provide consistency.

Single Sign-On URLs and email links have also been updated to reflect the new URLs. While we encourage the use of our new URLs, the existing newvoicemedia.com URLs will continue to function to ensure no disruption to your service. Links sent within email notifications will begin using the cc.vonage.com domain.

These URLs will be available following the Q3 2024 release. Users are advised to update their bookmarks and any stored links to the new URLs as soon as possible. We believe these changes will provide all users with a more seamless and cohesive experience. For any questions or additional support, please contact our support team.

Historical Analytics: License rightsizing for beta customers

During the Historical Analytics beta phase, all customers who joined the early access program could assign unlimited Historical Analytics viewer and creator licenses.

Over the next three months, we will be rolling out the Historical Analytics default license model to all beta customers. This change means that any accounts using more licenses than the default model allows will need to purchase additional licenses or remove any excess Historical Analytics licenses. For more information on the Historical Analytics default license model, see Historical Analytics licenses and access.

CRM Admin updates

We are updating the Salesforce page within the Business Apps section of the VCC portal, starting with renaming it to CRM Admin. Additionally, we are adding the ability to link Microsoft Dynamics, Zendesk, and Google organizations to the VCC.

General Availability Features

Vonage Premier for Service Cloud Voice

Automatic enforced disposition codes 

We're excited to introduce enforced automatic disposition codes for Vonage Premier for Service Cloud Voice. With this feature, interactions will automatically be assigned a disposition code relating to what happened — the call was not connected or a contact left a voicemail, for example. The feature prevents Vonage Contact Center from assigning the next interaction to an agent until a code for their previous interaction is provided. The disposition code will be seamlessly integrated into the standard Salesforce voice call record.

Visual Engagement

Invite mechanism now supports email 

Agents will soon have the ability to send video session invitations via email with Visual Engagement, replacing the previous SMS method. Agents will be able to simply enter the recipient’s email address in ContactPad and send an email with a link to join the video session. This new option provides participants with greater flexibility, allowing them to join video sessions easily from a computer or a mobile device.

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Conversation Analyzer

Sentiment analysis — now generally available 

We’re pleased to announce that sentiment analysis will be generally available. This feature will display the sentiment trend throughout a call for both agents and customers. Sentiment trends range from very negative, through neutral, to very positive, represented by red, amber, and green respectively. The data will be available in Salesforce and through our APIs, enabling users to create insightful conversational analyses. For example, users will be able to identify which calls, and thus which agents, exhibit the most (or least) positive (or negative) sentiment, and track sentiment changes throughout the call. Users will be able to uncover calls that started well and ended poorly from a sentiment perspective. Sentiment analysis will be available only in English.

In the following image, you can see that the call started well but deteriorated, recovered a little, and deteriorated again in the middle, and then got better at the end.

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Summarization — now generally available 

After the Q3 2024 release, supervisors will be able to generate summaries by clicking the new Conversation summary tab, located next to the existing Conversation transcription tab. Summaries will be generated upon request using the Google Vertex AI engine and include key topics and follow-up actions. This feature will be available in English only.

Please note that due to legal agreements, rather than technical constraints, the current summary feature is not suitable for HIPAA customers. Further, the creation of the summary is processed in the U.S.

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Custom object records for subcategories in Salesforce 

Currently, Conversation Analyzer creates reportable insights in Salesforce, but this requires a field to be created for each category and subcategory on the Call Summary object. This approach has the benefit of integrating the data into existing call objects, avoiding additional storage usage.

With our upcoming feature, Conversation Analyzer will create a new record in Salesforce for each identified subcategory. While this new method uses additional Salesforce storage, it significantly reduces administration tasks and simplifies reporting. This feature is optional, allowing you to enable it based on your preference and needs. If you choose not to use this new approach, your current setup will remain unchanged.

The following images show the new data structure and an example report.

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Agent Experience

ContactPad: My call history feature 

We’re excited to announce enhancements to the personal and outbound call history feature in ContactPad. Agents will now be able to view the history of all calls made or received and copy the interaction ID of past interactions for easier reference and follow-up.

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Please note that when using ContactPad embedded within Salesforce, the Copy ID button will not be available due to Salesforce restrictions. However, the interaction IDs will still be visible for manual copying to ensure functionality is not compromised.

Administration

Two-factor authentication via email — now generally available 

We are delighted to announce that two-factor authentication (2FA) via email will be generally available in our upcoming release. This marks a significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to fortifying the security of Vonage products.

With this feature, once 2FA is enabled on your account, administrators will be able to enforce mandatory two-factor authentication for selected users. Upon activation, users will receive a one-time code sent directly to their email during login. This code will be essential to complete the authentication process, providing an added layer of security. After successful verification, users will enjoy a seven-day trust period before needing to re-authenticate with 2FA, unless their IP address changes or they use a different browser.

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This feature builds on the early access program introduced in our Q3 2023 release and continues our efforts to enhance security across the VCC platform.

Contact your Vonage Account Manager or Customer Success Manager if you want to enable two-factor authentication via email in your account.

New permission control for skill and group deletion 

We are introducing a significant enhancement to our permissions system, providing greater control over who can manage groups and skills within the platform. Previously, only platform administrators could delete groups and skills, and this permission was automatically enabled for all administrators.

With this update, a new specific permission will be introduced to control who can perform these actions. Account admins will now be able to decide and control who can delete groups and skills. It will be possible to remove this permission from specific admins, ensuring that only selected individuals have access to this action. By default, administrators will have this permission enabled.

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This enhancement to our permissions system empowers our customers with greater control over their portal activities, particularly for such critical actions as deleting groups and skills. We believe this update will provide a more secure and customizable user experience.

Insights

Insights Stats API: Interaction outcome insights 

Introducing a powerful enhancement to the Insights Stats API: the new outcome parameter. This parameter aims to simplify interaction reporting, making it easier to analyze and understand the results of your interactions.

Outcome will provide a high-level, automatic description of the interaction conclusion. If the interaction is still ongoing, the outcome will be null. An interaction may have multiple possible values, but the one with the highest level of importance will be returned. The examples of interaction outcome can be:

• Callback not connected. An outbound call from an agent to an external contact was started, but the external contact did not answer. The outbound call was initiated due to a callback request being routed to the agent.

• Outbound connected. An outbound interaction from an agent to an external contact was started and the external contact accepted. 

• Handled by agent. An inbound interaction from an external contact was connected to at least one agent.

• Abandoned in queue. An external contact on an inbound interaction ended the interaction while waiting in a queue.

A list of all possible interaction outcomes, provided in order of importance, can be found in the Insights Stats API documentation

Historical Analytics: Interaction summary dataset — now generally available 

We are pleased to announce the global availability of the Interaction Summary data within Historical Analytics. This dataset includes over 90 new dimensions and measures that aggregate and report at the level of individual interactions. It is ideal for reporting in scale on overall interactions without focusing on individual interaction events, for which the Interaction Events dataset can be used.

With Interaction Summary, users will be able to report on metrics such as average handle time, average interaction duration, talk time, customer hold time, or agent alerting time. Users will be able to easily report on call volume distribution by the hour, or get the interaction count by the outcome, among other capabilities.

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To get the list of all available dimensions and measures, see Historical Analytics reference Interaction summary fields.

Team Monitoring and Real-time Analytics: Compact view enhancement 

In Q3 2024, we are introducing a significant new Team Monitoring and Real-time Analytics feature: the compact view. This enhancement will enable users to display more information and data on the screen, improving efficiency and user experience.

Users will be able to achieve a more than 60% increase in the amount of information displayed on the screen at once. In our testing, an HD screen resolution increased the number of agents shown from 14 to 23 in Team Monitoring and from 19 to 29 in Real-Time Analytics.

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This update is part of our ongoing commitment to delivering improvements that enhance your experience with Team Monitoring and Real-time Analytics. The introduction of the compact view will address the common concern of reduced data display capacity in the new Team Monitoring platform.

Real-time Analytics: Agent side panel upgrade 

We’re delighted to share news about an upgrade to the agent side panel. Users managed within a Team Monitoring dashboard will have clickable links within embedded Real-time Analytics dashboards. This functionality will provide supervisors with quick access for changing an agent's presence or monitoring a call when viewing Real-time Analytics.

All agents who are members of a team will be clickable; when clicked, the agent side panel will appear over the top of the Real-time dashboard. The user must click the agent name to open the side panel. Clicking the remainder of the row will open the existing Inspect agent dialog.

Any agents not linked to the Team’s dashboard will not be rendered with links.

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This feature will be present for supervisors or administrators viewing a Real-time Analytics dashboard only when embedded within a Team Monitoring dashboard.

Real-time Analytics: User experience improvements 

Within the Q3 2024 release, we’re introducing several user experience improvements to Real-time Analytics.

Inspect agents and interactions within the Explore view

When supervisors explore an Interaction Details or Agents widget, they will be able to click any row and enter the Inspect agent or Inspect interaction view. This enhancement will improve the overall usability of monitoring dashboards, especially for accounts with lots of interactions in their lists.

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Filter icons

Another enhancement we’re introducing to the Real-time Analytics applies to the filters section. Users frequently were confused as to what filters were applied to the widget. They had to open and check each available filter group within the widget. With this change, a filter icon will appear next to any active filter group within the widget. This small tweak will bring significant usability improvement, helping users to easily notice that a filter has been applied to the widget.

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Agent state metric

The agent state metric visible in Team Monitoring will soon be available within Real-Time Analytics. This metric provides a composite view of the overall agent state, across both their presence and assigned interactions.