The Nov 16 release of Oracle Service Cloud is now available and it brings some exciting and unexpected new functionality.

Live Chat – Sneak Preview

This new release of OSvC introduces a very cool feature for the Live Chat. It is called Sneak Preview and will allow agents to see what a customer is typing before they actually submit it. This could enable agents to preempt, prepare and respond quicker to the customer.

This feature, despite being something that some users and Oracle clients have been asking for, could be controversial. Nonetheless, it is definitely something that many will want to use and welcome.

Important Note: Sneak Preview will only work in CP framework version 3.5 or later.

Analytics – Visualisation

Visualisation is trending. It helps users make sense and have a quicker understanding of their data, and allows them to make better and easier decisions. The new release of OSvC introduces more visualisations for reports – like modern LED, horizontal, and circular-gauges – as well as new rendering options that will allow better rendering of charts and new, more modern, layout themes.

Additionally there is a new dashboard concept, called Infolets, which are available out-of-the-box. Infolets have single metric charts with real-time KPIs (e.g. open incidents by severity, SLA, FCR, new incidents by channel). And similar to reports, Infolets can be schedule and sent by email to key stakeholders.

Browser UI

Despite the power of the Dynamic Agent Desktop, and all the advantages of using a thick client, it is becoming more and more important to allow users to access OSvC on a browser-based UI. Oracle is responding to that with further developments to the OSvC Browser UI.

Significant enhancements were made to the Browser UI architecture, to allow high interactivity and a broad range of analytics capabilities, which were not possible thus far – like rollup, slicing, calculations, sorting, hiding, etc.

The Browser UI is now also backward compatible – which will enable customers with OSvC versions from May 2015 to take advantage of the latest Browser UI capabilities without having to undergo an upgrade of their entire implementation.

The theme was also updated, in order to be consistent with all other Oracle applications in the CX suite. And Live Chat is now a fully supported channel, with contacts automatically being matched and the contact and chat workspaces integrated.

Additionally, and on the knowledge side, content authors and knowledge managers can now use the Browser UI to create and edit knowledge base answers with a new HTML editor with HTML5 support.

Platform

Also very important to take into account are the changes or enhancements to the platform. The Nov 16 release of OSvC adds support to the following browsers, Operating Systems and .NET versions:

• End-User
  • Firefox v47 or greater
  • Chrome v51 or greater
  • Android v5.x through v6.x (Drop support for Android v4.x)
• Browser UI
  • Firefox v47 or greater
  • Chrome v51 or greater
  • Edge in Win 10
  • Android 5.x through v6.x (tablets only)
• Agent Desktop
  • Ensure compatibility with TLS 1.1 or TLS 1.2
  • i.e. must have .NET framework 4.5.2, 4.6, or 4.6.1

Integration

Following previous developments and integration efforts, Oracle has released another two accelerators to integrate OSvC with Oracle Marketing Cloud and IoT, using its Oracle Integration Cloud Service (ICS).

Oracle ICS has two new connectors to integrate OSvC and Oracle Marketing Cloud (Responsys and Eloqua). These integrations provide a two-way synchronisation between both databases and applications.

The biggest innovation in the Nov 16 release is the Internet of Things (IoT) Accelerator, which provides a two-way integration between OSvC and Oracle IoT Cloud Service. This integration also uses Oracle ICS. Watch this video to know more about it.