Tag: May 2018

Oracle Service Cloud 18B release now available (Part II)

The 18B release of Oracle Service Cloud (OSvC) is now generally available and it brings some very interesting new features and enhancements, in particular to the Browser User Interface (BUI). I broke it down in separate posts. This is the second post (see the first here).

BUI – Chat Supervisor Monitoring

This functionality was available in the Dynamic Agent Desktop (DAD) or Console, and it is now also available in the BUI, allowing contact centre or team supervisors to monitor live chat sessions.

Similar to the functionality available in the DAD, supervisors can join or leave chat sessions, as well as send private messages to the agent. The functionality will be readily available if you have chat enabled, and you will be able to see a Monitor button is the following reports:

  • All Chats
  • Chat Supervisor Queue Snapshot
  • Chat Supervisor Snapshot
  • Current Chat Sessions
  • Chat Audit Report
  • Chat Supervisor Home Dashboard

osvc_chat_monitor

BUI – Chat Knowledge Foundation Integration

This new feature will allow agents, using the BUI, to attach knowledge base (Foundation) answers to a chat session, as they would do when using the DAD. Agents can add answers as a link (see screenshot below), or as text, and they also have the ability to preview and print answers.

osvc_chat_kb

BUI – Respond Using Alternative Email

Some of you may be familiar with the configuration setting that determines how email responses will be sent to the customer – OE_SVC_SENDMAIL_SINGLE_ADDRESS. If enabled (set to “Yes”) email responses will be sent to only one address for the contact associated with the incident. If disabled (set to “No”) email responses will be sent to all email addresses captured in that contact record.

If it is enabled, the agent is allowed to choose which email address to use, primary email or alternative email. The screenshot below shows how the “compose” area of the incident thread looked like before, and what it will look like in 18B when you enable the configuration setting.

osvc_bui_alt_email.png

BUI – Workspace Field Label Font Properties

In previous releases the BUI would ignore , and not render, any changes in field label font properties – which you have available in the DAD workspace designer:

  • Font Family
  • Font Size
  • Bold
  • Underline
  • Italicize
  • Strikethru

From release 18B onward, these are now available in the BUI. The screenshot below shows a BUI contact workspace, where you can see the “First Name” label which is set to Bold, Italic, Underline and Strikethru.

osvc_bui_workspace_label

BUI – HTML Format Type Support for Workspace Answer Control

I’m sure most of you are familiar with Workspace Controls, which can be used to add features to the workspace (e.g. buttons, text labels, reports, tables, tab sets). Controls are added to workspaces from the workspace designer – find it in “Insert Control” tab.

One of the controls available in the incident workspace is “Answer Display” which displays a knowledge base (foundation) answer on a workspace. Once you added the control, you must select the answer you want, by setting “Answer ID” on the “Design” tab.

In previous releases, if you set the control to display an answer that had been created with type HTML, the BUI would render a link that the agent would need to click to bring up a separate browser window with the answer.

In 18B release, the HTML-type answer will now display in the BUI itself, and won’t require the agent to click any link to view the contents of the Answer.

 

Oracle Service Cloud 18B release now available (Part I)

The 18B release of Oracle Service Cloud (OSvC) is now generally available and it brings some very interesting new features and enhancements. I will break them down in separate posts. This is the first post.

OSvC_VirtualAssistant_1

Chat – Virtual Assistant

One of those exciting enhancements is the launch of the Virtual Assistant (VA). Some of you may be asking “wasn’t the Virtual Assistant launched 5 years ago?“. Yes, back in Nov 2013 Oracle announced the VA which, at the time, was based on a separate product called Intent Guide and forced users to use a different application (login and user interface) to configure it.

The 18B release brings a much more integrated, seamless and powerful VA capability, which can be accessed, configured and fine tuned by OSvC administrators, using a VA editor in the OSvC interface. Nonetheless, it is still based on the aforementioned Oracle RightNow Intent Guide Cloud Service (find here the admin user guide).

This enhanced VA will hopefully be a step in the right direction and allow companies to not only decrease the volume of chat sessions that require an agent, but also improve the customer experience.

OSvC_VirtualAssistant_2

Simple questions with straightforward answers – aka high volume/low value queries – should be picked up and answered by the VA, using the information in the knowledge base. Making service more efficient and effective.

The new (or enhanced) OSvC VA allows you to configure escalation rules, that will route the chat session to the right queue and agent, when the VA cannot answer, as well as pass the conversation thread to the agent, for context.

OSvC_VirtualAssistant_4

Additionally it allows you to test scenarios and provides real-time dashboard so you can monitor performance and questions being asked, as well as identify new content that can be added to the VA and knowledgebase.

OSvC_VirtualAssistant_3

In order do use the VA you should ask Oracle (your account manager) to enable it and then perform the following steps:

  1. Assign the Virtual Assistant Edit permission to your profile (you will find this permission in Profile > Permissions > Administration tab)
  2. Add the Virtual Assistant editor to a navigation set (you will find this in Navigation Sets > Configuration > Components > Common)
  3. Create the VA profile and account (to define the VA name that will display to customers e.g. “Siri”), as well as the VA chat queue (which will handle incoming chats and escalation)
  4. Create chat rules to route virtual assistant chats and escalate virtual assistant chats to agents when necessary.

Note: You can have only one VA account and one VA queue. The VA profile, account, and queue cannot be deleted. However, account and queue names can be changed.