ACD for Asterisk by Indosoft

Indosoft Inc. offers Q-Suite, an enterprise grade call center software for Asterisk, the leading hybrid VoIP/TDM telephony platform. Q-Suite comes with a unique, highly developed Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) to enable complex, yet highly efficient, call handling and routing. Queues can be setup with Service Priority and Skills to allow efficient use of Agents with appropriate skill sets and skill levels. Skills Based Routing and Queue Prioritization are the backbone of modern ACD, and in Q-Suite offers a unique and highly efficient ACD layer that functions on top of Asterisk. Q-Suite can be deployed for multi-tenant or single tenant installations that are either premise-based or hosted at datacenters, to deliver remote and distributed architecture with ease. Q-Suite for Asterisk provides the power, innovation and flexibility needed for your increasingly complex customer interactions.

Q-Suite ACD for Asterisk allows easy configuration and setup of ACD with sophisticated, yet incredibly easy to manage, tools for administering your IVRs, Queues, Skills and other routing logic. Because of Q-Suite’s robust ACD functionality and innovative administrative interface, defining and fine-tuning the rules for handling, routing and managing customer interactions has never been easier. Q-Suite ACD for Asterisk provides your organization with the greatest degree of flexibility and efficiency in meeting you business needs.

This page focuses on the details of Q-Suite’s ACD features and functions, which have been designed specifically for Asterisk. For a general overview of Q-Suite as a complete call center software, please see the main Indosoft page on this wiki, or view our website at www.indosoft.com.

Q-Suite ACD for Asterisk Features:

• Skills Based Routing (Agent Skill, Queue Skill)• IVR and Automation to Interface to Data Sources• Routing based on Time, Day, Week, Month etc.• Adapting to Different Call Models• Queue Prioritization, Queue Overflow Music On Hold, Service Level, Branching• Multiple DID/DNIS with Text Identification per Inbound Service• Continuous Status update for Calls/Channels• Notify Select or Notify All Queues• Transfers (Live, Assisted and Consultative)• Call Park, Retrieve and Conference• Detailed Cradle to Grave Reporting• CRM and Custom Application Integration with Script Builder• IP Phones, Soft Phones, POTS Phones• Call and Status Notifications• Web and Native Client Agent Interface• Built-in Quality Assurance and Recording• API for Computer Telephony Integration (.NET and Socket)

Q-Suite ACD supports different types of call models and is ideally suited for both high volume call centers where up-front automation and efficiency in handling calls is required, as well as lower volume, specialized call centers where agility and unique responses are needed.

Q-Suite supports Queue Prioritization for service differentiation, Skills Based Routing with agent skill levels for handling calls from skills based queues, as well as Unified Queues for skills association at call level.

Call Routing, Queuing, Agent Notification and Status Information are highly configurable to enable finely tuned handling of the customer interaction. Once a call is answered, Q-Suite ACD supports Blind, Conference and Consultative Transfers, as well as Call Park, Call Retrieve and Call Conference. With highly efficient channel monitors, all participants within the ACD have a very good view of live status to make quick decisions.
Dialplan Builder (IVR Builder)
Q-Suite ACD for Asterisk makes building complex IVRs and Asterisk Dialplans a simple task. An easy-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool with a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor allows easy-to-use drag and drop functionality when designing robust Dialplans for IVR and call routing in Asterisk.

All the standard IVR and Dialplans for Asterisk functions are available, including prompts that play voice files, caller option menus, DTMF key inputs, decision-making, and branching or call routing logic. Q-Suite also provides full database integrations, Voice Recognition, Voicemail and Queue Overflow for more sophisticated IVR development. Q-Suite’s unique administrative interface has greatly improved the ease of setting up and administering advanced IVRs and Asterisk Dialplans.

Q-Suite delivers advanced queue management to Asterisk. As with other enterprise-grade ACD, Q-Suite first routes incoming calls into Queues, which can be prioritized for service efficiency. While in queue, Q-Suite ACD holds call information, sorts calls based on defined prioritization rules, and then connects calls to the most appropriate agent based on skills or other business rules. Queues can be fully separate from one another, but configured to overflow based on conditions. There are no restrictions on the number of Queues you can setup.

Popular Queue features in Q-Suite include Music On Hold, Periodic Announcements, Queue Skills, Queue Priority, Queue Overflow, Voicemail and other Call Re-Routing options, as well as SLA and Call Abandonment settings.

Q-Suite’s provides enterprise-grade, efficient and highly effective Skills Based Routing with Queue Prioritization for Asterisk. Queue priority is dictated by the business case. Calls into a higher priority queue are handled ahead of calls from other queues. Once within the Queue, calls are handled based on the wait time. Queue skills determine which agents are qualified. Queue skills are defined when you setup your queues, and agents are assigned specific skills with skill levels at the time of setup. When a call comes into a Queue with multiple agents waiting and available to take the call, agent skills with skill levels apply.

To summarize, skills based routing is applied to route calls to the correct queue, skills of the individual agent to qualify all the agents who are available to take the call, and skill level to decide which agent should handle a call. Queue Prioritization is applied when an agent becomes available with multiple calls waiting in multiple queues. The skills determine if the agent is qualified to handle calls but Queue prioritization dictates the order. For an even distribution, the skill levels and the queue priority should be set to the same value so that the longest waiting call or agent is chosen to break the tie.

This feature is often referred to as the “Time of the Day Call Routing” and delivers the ability to change the way you handle calls based on the time of the day, day of the week, week of the month, after hours, holidays and breaks. Q-Suite provides a single, easy-to-use administrative interface for all scheduling management in order to provide you with the most efficient call handling based upon scheduling requirements. Q-Suite ACD supports a variety of architectures and delivers the full advantages of VoIP telephony. With Q-Suite you can setup a premise-based call center or a remote, distributed (hosted) call center, or a combination of both. Regardless of the architecture you chose, Q-Suite opens the door to remote or at-home agent utilization while providing a stable, secure solution to consolidating your call center infrastructure.

Q-Suite provides full support for On-Hook and Off-Hook agents, whether they be premise-based, remote or at-home. Other popular agent features available in Q-Suite include Free-Seating, Hot-Desking, Alert Before Call Hand-Off, and easy call transferring from the agent station.

Options with agent phones go hand in hand with agent location and notification options. Q-Suite ACD allows agent phones to be an extension within the PBX (phone system) of the call center ACD, or they can belong to an external phone system. Internal phones could be IP phones, softphones or regular POTS phones.

Q-Suite ACD can be setup in Fail safe mode with a built-in design to ensure that a single failure does not result in any loss of calls or conversation. Should there be any single point of failure, including software failure within the components of the system, the unique fail-safe call recovery feature within Q-Suite ACD prevents all ongoing calls from being dropped and allows new calls to continue coming. As a result, the two end point phone devices during a conversation will be able to continue the voice conversation after a failure without dropping the connection. Q-Suite delivers an industry leading Script Builder tool that provides powerful script development and management features, which are also managed from a single, easy to use GUI. Popular features of Q-Suite’s Script Builder include Custom Variables (Text, Number, LOV), Text Blocks with Embedded Variables, Post-to-URL, External Links with Command Line Parameters, URLs within an I-Frame or a Separate Window, Static Webpage Support, Conditional Display, Page Branching, Robust Voice Recording Start/Stop options, and quick transfer options. The open architecture system of Q-Suite allows easy integration to other software in the back-end for processing. All these features are readily available to evolved applications through an advanced set of APIs, which are discussed below. Q-Suite ACD can work under the hood, enabling vertical businesses to embed the ACD for Asterisk into its mature vertical domain. It comes with a sophisticated API to allow CTI interaction using .NET and socket interface, as well as an XML interface for database interaction. This creates an opportunity for business systems with legacy telephony to incorporate CTI for Asterisk and embed Q-Suite ACD into their evolved business domain. Because Q-Suite runs on the advanced Asterisk telephony platform, it comes complete with built-in call quality assurance features, including built-in Call Recording options, as well as Call Monitoring options, including Listen to Agents, Whisper, and Barge. Q-Suite offers a complete set of reports and an open database to integrate with other reporting engines. Cradle to Grave Reporting with granular details is available out of the box for all reports, including Agent Performance, ACD Performance, Queue Performance, Dispositions and Wrap-Ups, to name a few. Supervisor Dashboards and Wallboards provide call center administrators with a view of the call center performance broken down by agent, queue and ACD performances. Wallboards allow supervisors a bird-eye view of the floor performance. Since all these screens are Web reports, an across the board view is provided to management. Periodic and Historical Reporting can be scheduled and emailed automatically to any distribution list. Q-Suite delivers all the above-mentioned features in an incredibly flexible and versatile software bundle. Due to its utilization of Asterisk as its underlying telephony platform, Q-Suite delivers benefits inherent to its infrastructure; benefits unachievable from other popular call center software solutions. Stable remote agent support, distributed architecture, utilizing multiple trunks, and seamless integration of VoIP and SIP are just a few benefits inherent to Asterisk and Q-Suite. This unique combination of powerful software and telecommunications technology positions Q-Suite to meet the most demanding of call center requirements.