On July 30th, 2024, we held our iPECS Insights forum. This month’s session was hosted by Ericsson-LG Enterprise Product Managers, Minsoo Park, Mingon Kim and Keunsup Choi, and was titled, ‘2024 PM meeting follow-up & Unified update.’

Hyoungmin Lee welcomed attendees and introduced the focus of the forum, based on two parts: sharing the follow up on questions and discussions from the last PM meeting and delivering further details on the Unified update.

Cloud P8

The first topic of focus, Cloud P8, was led by Minsoo Park who went over the details of the various questions and proposals regarding the platform and Cloud P8.

Minsoo covered a range of questions on the platform and Cloud P8, addressing some of the following key questions and discussion points:

  • Why doesn’t ONE API support transfer, consultation, reconnect, call and pick up? A third-party solution supports these features. Minsoo confirmed that the ONE client API does not support this but the presented API (CTI API) is different from the ONE client API.

The CTI API is used for controlling the Ericsson-LG Enterprise endpoint by third party application servers and the ONE client API is used by third party client applications for communicating with the ONE server. The reason for CTI API not supporting transfer, consultation, reconnect, call, and pick up was because the ONE web client needs more SIP protocol development between the ONE server and UCM.

  • Why doesn’t CTI API support multi-client mode? The CTI API was designed to monitor single-end points for given extension numbers so that accurate statistics can be accumulated. As a result, it can become overly complicated to maintain which is why the single client mode has been maintained for this feature.
  • Is it possible to use Cloud-Unified hybrid deployment for other markets than the hospitality market? This is possible. Hybrid deployment can be used in other markets and correct CID will be presented to UCP users.
  • Is end-to-end voice encryption possible? SIP trunk encryption requires cooperation from local carriers. Considering this, it will be reviewed in Cloud P8 planning.

Next, Minsoo covered areas such as country code presets for international SIP trunk features, desk phone flex key enhancements, and time to migrate to AWS.

iPECS ONE

The next part of the forum was led by Mingon Kim who covered a range of points on iPECS ONE. Questions and topics included:

  • Can iPECS ONE also be set to do not disturb when MS Teams is in a ‘busy’ in call presence? It was confirmed that when Teams displays a ‘busy in a call,’ iPECS ONE presence will switch to do not disturb.
  • What is the use scenario and advantage of the Chrome extension? The Chrome extension utilizes space on a Windows screen. When the launcher is started, users will receive a call even if the browser is closed.

Features that will be looked into in phase 6 included the ‘Click to Dial’ feature, where users click the number to call. This will be supported on the web client. Also being reviewed/looked into in phase 6 is the signal/network indicator that will show call quality, biometric authentication and Android Auto and iOS CarPlay.

MS Teams add- in

Mingon Kim also reported on the MS Teams add-ins topics including, video and chat integration, presence synchronization between iPECS ONE and Teams, fax and SMS support, user experience when Teams is offline, call recording, voicemail, and licensing.

Things to note and highlight were:

  • The schedule of the launch of Teams add-in was shared.
  • If Teams is offline, it is possible to still receive incoming calls. Users need to install the iPECS ONE MS add-in application in MS market and install ONE native application from iPECS Cloud site.
  • Only a ONE license plus the Office365 E1 license is needed for the MS Teams add-in.
  • iPECS ONE MS add-in is supported with iPECS Cloud.
  • iPECS ONE call recording is supported when the MS Teams add-in concept involves using iPECS ONE within Teams.

Analytics

KS Choi then led the follow up for Analytics. KS covered many points about Analytics and the main points were:

 ‘My Stats,’ the agent performance reporting tool for agent own use to provide KPIs for the agent and assigned groups, is visible in a single interface to an ACD agent which provides a link within iPECS ONE for easier access.

Clarification was provided for the demo tool, highlighting that up to 50 sessions are supported simultaneously. Also, the reporting API has been highlighted as a big opportunity particularly in the UK, the next steps is to review the API framework and a list of Analytics APIs in the highest priority in P6.

Further points clarified included the request to change terms such as ‘forwarded to VM’ to ‘missed,’ expanding selectable KPIs on historical reports and dashboards, account code reports, Google sign in consistency, improving dashboard customization and adding more filters. All of which will be reviewed in the next phase.

Call center upgrade

When looking at call center upgrades, KS highlighted the general feedback on the Al adoption trend and questions that had been asked.

It was noted that to be truly omni-channel, having only web chat is not enough. It needs to support most major digital channels like WhatsApp, SNS, SMS, and so on.

Before moving onto the Unified updates, partners were reminded to review the priority for the following major items.

  1. Digital channel (web chat as a first priority)
  2. Gen AI chatbot integration
  3. Voice flow design, graphic base

Ericsson-LG Enterprise is in the process of collecting feedback on strategic priority for these items.

Unified updates 2024

The last part of today’s forum looked at the updates for Unified. The main points to note were the addition of two more releases to Unified SW. Due to mandatory changes from Google and Microsoft, two more releases were required, one in May and the other due in September. May saw updates to Google FCM HTTP v1 and voice networking name display with MD110 and September will see an increase in password length for station SMTP accounts. The final update of the year, 6.2.y will come in December. KS touched upon the Unified V6.2.1 features – MS Hyper-V support plus other features including, net forced disconnect and intrusion and net reroute for failed or channel saturated. The latest version of information for SMTP basic authentication was also presented to Partners.

Soyoung Lim concluded today’s forum, we hope that attendees have found the latest updates and information helpful. Thank you all for joining this month’s Insights webinar. We look forward to next month’s session.

 

iPECS insights is a forum where we can collaborate, share ideas and learn best practices to drive success and growth of the iPECS brand and portfolio globally. We will invite subject matter experts to lead each of the iPECS insights sessions which will last for approximately an hour and cover a range of technical and marketing focus areas.