Q2 '22 release

 Platform-wide feature

 Optional feature

General Availability Features

Service Cloud Voice

Call Transfer 

Call Transfer is a core part of the Vonage Contact Center platform. This capability has been added to our Service Cloud Voice integration. The transfer feature allows you to do a warm transfer to an SCV agent or a cold transfer to an interaction plan. The configuration for these transfer use cases is the same as the
core Vonage Contact Center platform. The Service Cloud Voice Omni-Channel widget allows you to filter for agents and interaction plans and also see the agent’s status. In the first image you can see the agent’s presence and a button to call an available agent. In the second image you can see a filter of “ma” has been used to search transfer destinations and an agent can see a combination of interaction plans and agents.

Conferencing/Merge 

Conferencing is a core part of the Vonage Contact Center platform. This capability has been added to our Service Cloud Voice integration. It is known as Merge using Service Cloud Voice terminology. The conference/merge feature is an extension of the transfer feature. The configuration for the conference use case is the same as the core Vonage Contact Center platform. The Service Cloud Voice Omni-Channel widget allows you to filter for SCV agents to conference with and also see the agent’s status. In the image you can see that two other parties are connected to the current agent.

External Routing for Service Cloud Voice — Transfer to Agents and Salesforce Queues 

With External Routing for Service Cloud Voice, we have extended the transfer options which are available to an agent. This means as well as transferring to a queue, an agent can also transfer to another agent, or a queue which is routed by Salesforce.

This means agents now have more transfer options available to them, allowing them to pass interactions to more destinations whether that be a specific agent or Salesforce queue.

Presence Status Mapping from Service Cloud Voice to VCC 

We now have the ability for presence status changes within Service Cloud Voice to be mapped to a presence status within VCC. This means when an agent changes their presence within Salesforce, the corresponding presence status is automatically updated within VCC. This ensures that VCC is kept up to date of any changes made within Salesforce, which is beneficial for scenarios where a WFM tool is integrated with VCC.

VCC and Microsoft Teams Integration (GA) 

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Microsoft Teams continues to grow and dominate the desktop UC market and more. Contact centers are now adopting Teams for their telephony.

VCC can now integrate with Teams in the following ways:

• Microsoft Teams Direct Routing for Agent Connect (GA)
• Microsoft 365 Single-Sign-On (SSO) (GA)
• New: Microsoft corporate directory included in the VCC address book (GA)
  Local Microsoft Teams users who are in the corporate directory and can receive calls from VCC on Microsoft Teams (either over the PSTN or through Direct Routing) are shown in the VCC address book.
  This feature makes it easy for agents to click to call or consult with a Microsoft Teams user without having to know (and enter) their phone number each time.
• New: Microsoft Teams user availability in the VCC address book (GA)
  Microsoft Teams users shown in the VCC address book have their availability (presence) displayed in the VCC address book.
  This feature helps an agent decide which Microsoft Teams user (for example, a subject-matter expert in the back-office) to call or consult with by showing whether the user is likely to be able to receive a call or not.
• New: Microsoft Teams user and VCC agent presence synchronization (GA)
  Synchronizing VCC agent and Teams user availability and presence helps avoid all of the problems listed below. When an agent is unavailable in one application they are unavailable in the other too. When an agent becomes available in one place they become available in the other as well.
  • If a VCC agent is able to take calls in VCC but not able to take calls in Microsoft Teams, then VCC may choose to send a call to the user in Teams which will then fail. This can either place the agent into a failure state where they will no longer receive VCC calls, or result in the caller being sent to Microsoft Teams Voicemail.
  • If a VCC agent is busy in the VCC (but not in a call in Teams) another Teams user may contact them and distract them from a time critical task.
  • When agents have to set themselves as available or away in multiple applications they will often miss one.

ContactPad Anywhere (GA) 

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Vonage Contact Center offers integrations with a range of market leading CRMs. Most of these CRMs have purpose-built adapters to support CTI, however market research shows a significant percentage of contact centers are using web based applications such as CRM, CDP, or DB without this.

The Vonage Integration Suite browser extension gives customers the fundamentals of a typical telephony integration:

• The extension inspects the page for recognized telephone numbers based on your country-based settings and support click to dial.
• Interaction Plans Architect can construct bespoke URLs which can then be screenpopped to agents on delivery; either in a new browser tab or the existing window.

Administration

Analytics (view-only access for Administrators) 

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Deep reporting capabilities provide a detailed overview of what’s happening in your contact center, helping to track performance, optimize processes, and adapt to business needs. It’s a key factor when making data-driven decisions.

In the Q2 ‘22 Release, as part of the base offering we introduced a new product — Analytics. Analytics reports on the historical data from your VCC account activity. Within the first rollout phase (Analytics view-only), all administrator users from your account can view reports in Analytics. You can get insights from default dashboards provided by Vonage and answer the most common questions when running a contact center. By default, all administrator users are enabled with view access to Analytics, there’s no special configuration needed. Analytics now reports on the data starting from April 2022. Access to historical data will be subject to later releases.

Analytics rollout is taking place across the whole of Q2, as we will be enabling VCC accounts in batches. You will be informed by your Account Manager when Analytics will be available in your VCC account. If you would like to have Analytics enabled sooner, please contact your Account Manager.

During Q2 ‘22, there’s the possibility to join the Analytics Early Access program, providing the ability to assign to users view and create licenses (they will be available to assign to Supervisors and Admins). Thanks to ‘create’ license, you are able to create custom dashboards tailored to your needs and answer specific use cases. To learn more about Analytics Early Access, see the Analytics Early/Beta for Create access section later in this page.

User Admin Improvements 

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During 2022 Vonage released several performance improvements to User Admin. For large accounts, this improved load times by up to 80%.

In addition, the new User Admin interface can support bulk updates of Queue and Line permissions. This provides parity with Classic User Admin, which is deprecated following this release.

Web APIs

Explore Vonage Contact Center APIs Using Postman 

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The Vonage Contact Center Developer Portal now has the ability to run the APIs in Postman. This public collection allows you to try out all the APIs within minutes.

The APIs available allow you to programmatically manage users, skills, groups, and interaction content, as well as download statistics and much more. Try it out!

Interaction Content API handles voicemails 

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Personal voicemails are now available over the Interaction Content API, allowing for users to programmatically download or delete voicemails. Rather than delete an interaction and all of its content, the new delete interaction content endpoint allows users to delete specific content. For example, this allows users to delete a screen recording, but retain the call recording.

curl -L -X DELETE
“https://***.api.newvoicemedia.com/interaction-content/interactions/{guid}
/content/{contentKey}” \
-H “Accept: application/vnd.newvoicemedia.v3+json” \
-H “Authorization: Bearer <ACCESS_TOKEN>”

Standardization of Agent Messages 

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Since the Q2 '22 release, all ContactPad messages appear at the top of the screen. The message tab shown below has been removed. This provides a standardized experience across all messages.

For customers not making use of the Call history in ContactPad feature, the number of tabs within ContactPad has reduced to three.

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, please contact your Customer Success Manager or Account Manager. Participation in this pilot program is at the discretion of Product Management and not guaranteed.

Analytics Early/Beta for Create access 

In the ‘22 Release, as part of the base offering we introduced a new product — Analytics. In the first rollout phase, Analytics is offered in view-only mode only. By default, all administrator users are enabled with view access (ability to view and use default dashboards prepared by Vonage).

To get full product capability — view and create access — you can join the Analytics Early Access Program. When approved, you will have the ability to assign viewer and creator Analytics licenses to your administrator and supervisor users in User Admin. Create access will give you the ability to create
custom reporting tailored to your needs to address your specific use cases. If you’re interested in taking part in the Analytics Early Access Program, contact your Customer Success Manager or Account Manager.

Important Announcements

IVR Data is Subject to 30 Day Retention

Data collected and available within the IVR Data Collector is now subject to a 30-day retention policy.

This policy covers data collected by the applets:

• IVR Collect Audio
• IVR Collect Digit
• IVR Collect Digit String

Since the Q2 ‘22 release, data collected by these applets has become unavailable, 30 days after collection.

After the Q3 ‘22 release, data collected more than 30 days ago will be permanently deleted.

New Interaction Data Source

We have created a new data source to identify when the interaction started in UTC. This data source is called ‘Interaction Start Time’. This data source can be found using the standard $ search within Interaction Architect under $(InteractionStartTime).

Voicemails are now Interaction Content

With effect from April 1, 2022, voicemails are considered Interaction Content, and are managed in accordance with the Service Description for Vonage Contact Center Data Retention policy. Voicemails older than an account’s data retention settings will be automatically deleted from May 20, 2022. For more information, please see the FAQ in this article.

Feature Retirement

Along with the exciting new functionality added to the product with every release, we are also working to retire older parts of the product. The removal of functionality within our product is completed in these stages:

For a full list of deprecated features, see Vonage Contact Center feature retirement.

Applet Retirement

As part of an ongoing simplification project within VCC we are retiring the below applets. These applets have been superseded by newer and more comprehensive applets.

• Queue - In Network applet - Retired
• Router - Stored Preference - Retired
• Set Stored Preference - Retired
• VoiceXML - Remote App - Retired
• Transfer to PCI - Retired

User Admin API, Version 2 - Deprecated

The launch of version 4 of the User Admin API replaces version 2. Version 2 is now formally deprecated and users must migrate to version 4 without delay.

Projected Retirement date: First half 2023.

Classic User Admin - Deprecated

The User Admin improvements launched in this release provide parity with Classic User Admin. Classic User Admin is now formally deprecated.

Projected Retirement date: Q3, 2022.

Subset of User Access functionality - Retired

User Admin provides many of the same capabilities as User Access. Therefore, the following capabilities within User Access will be gradually retired between May 2022 and July 2022:

• Create user
• Edit users:
  • Name
  • Email
  • SSO External ID
  • Reset Password
  • User Type 

Salesforce Managed Packages

The following packages and earlier versions will be deprecated.

* These packages will be retired after the Q4 2022 release