Context Services and Composer

Starting with 8.1.440.18, Composer adds support for Context Services 8.5. See Context Services 8.5 and Composer.

You can use Composer's Context Services blocks for:

1. Service personalization. You can create callflows/workflows that alter the customer experience based on information known about the customer.
2. Offer personalization. When managing conversations, routing workflows can use the results of previous offers made to the customer to decide whether a new offer should be presented.
3. Service resumption. Workflows can leverage service state/task information to continue a customer service that was not completed in an earlier interaction.
4. Enhanced reporting.

A Context Services Project template is included with this release.

You can access Context Services attributes through Expression Builder.

Customer Profile Core

As described in the Context Services User's Guide, the customer profile contains a core set of customer characteristics available "out-of-the-box" from Context Services. Use the Query Customer block to request (and assign to variables) the following types of customer profile information:

• Last agent used. Allows an application to route an interaction to the agent that last processed the last interaction for this customer.
• Language preference. Allows an application to use the customer’s preferred language when communicating with them. This can be used in a voice Self-Service dialog, in e-mail responses, or in routing to an agent that speaks the language.
• Preferred agent.  Allows an application to route to the customer's preferred agent if available.
• Contact media preference.  Allows the application to use the customer preferred media when sending notifications or initiating any outbound contact with the customer. For example, use e-mail first, home phone next, commonly used web pages, and so on.

Customer Extension Data

You can extend customer profile core data with specific types of data that your business wants to include (Create Profile Extension message). For example, assume your business introduces an automated newsletter. You then might wish to add a profile extension to record customer preferences for receiving the newsletter, along with the preferred e-mail format (text or html).

Use the Update Customer Block block to update customer profile extension data.

In order for extension data to be available for selection in Composer, the data must already be defined for UCS Context Services using its HTTP interface.

Note: Composer supports multi-valued extensions starting with Universal Contact Server 8.0.2.

Identification Keys

One of the core features of the Context Services API is the ability to identify customers based on one or more attributes of the customer, known as Identification Keys. Each identification key consists of one or more attributes of the core customer profile, or of any defined extension. An attribute must be specified as an Identification Key to be usable in customer identification.

Authentication Support

Composer supports username/password authentication for VXML and SCXML-generated applications.

For Orchestration applications, username and password values are configured in the EnhancedRouting ScriptConfiguration Server object: (ApplicationParms/context_management_services_password and  ApplicationParms/context_management_services_username).

For design-time access to Context Services, you can specify these values in Context Services Preferences. Composer can then use them to authenticate with Context Services when it connects to Context Services for retrieving profile objects, extensions, etc. Composer updates values specified in these preferences when diagrams are published to Configuration Server.

For voice applications, username and password values are configured in the Voice Platform IVRProfile Configuration Server object (gvp.service-parameters/voicexml.cms_username and gvp.service-parameters voicexml.cms_password).

Note: Service parameter values must be prefixed with fixed, undefined or default. Else, Resource Manager throws an invalid error. For example, voicexml.cms_username=fixed,cs.

Also see Business Rules Block Runtime Configuration.