Call Recording - Remote User at Home 1

[Toni269]

I have a NICE Digital Logger 8.5 and I have a request to record calls for a person working from home. My first thought was to give them IP Agent and the Nice upgrade to record IP agents but that solution will cost us $100K. We just need to record one analog, IP Softphone or Cell Phone, for a person working from home. We thoght another solution was to have a person in house answer the call on the recorded line then conference in the person from home. Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this without spending a ton of $$$ ?

Thanks for your ideas and input!

(By the way: We are using external beep tone generators on all phone sets)

Toni

 

[ChrisLynch]

Hi Toni,

We currently have a solution in place that records calls for off site users...

We have a 30 channel trunk logger which is used to record calls off site - the way it works is that the call is sent to the agent's extension and when the extension is picked up there isa piece of CTI software on their PC that automatically conferences the call into the trunk logger.

The agent is aware of this as they hear the hold/conference music for a few seconds but the customer is not aware as the call is not transferred from the switch until the conference is complete.

I would think this would be possible if you were to have remote extension in your office somewhere - have them setup to automatically conference the home user AND the logger in - or if you have total recording on these in-house extensions then simply conferencing the home user in should suffice.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Chris Lynch
mailto:chris@chrislynch.net

 

[Toni269]

Chris,

Thanks for the information, I'm interested, do you have a ballpark on what this solution would cost?

Thanks again,

Toni

 

[ChrisLynch]

Toni, Hi -

It's pretty simple to set-up, say for example you have a 30 channel trunk logger and you know that there wont be any more than 30 concurrent calls to off site users... All you would have to do is route and OUTGOING calls from the extensions in your office/centre over the E1/T1/whatever trunk you have the logger set-up on - the calls would automatically be recorded if you are using Total Recording and the agent/auto-attendant in your centre would only have to conference in one call - the home user.

As for a ballpark figure, to buy a brand new NICELOG, as a rule of thumb we work on approximately £1000 per channel (british pounds) - however, it is fairly easy to pickup a second hand piece of kit from NICE or a reseller, such as a 7.x series E1 trunk logger - this would be a fraction of the cost, say 50-70% discount depending on the relationship you have with NICE / the vendor.

The only issues you might come accross are maintenance issues - you MAY find it difficult to get a support agreement on an older logger - but that said, these things are VERY robust and don't really screw up - but when they do, it's usually only a hard drive or a DAT drive that will fail - these parts are replaceable fairly cheaply.

As for the software that auto-conferences, I believe this was a simple CTI setup that was written on demand by our in-house developers - but I would say you could pick this up commercially fairly cheaply.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Chris Lynch
mailto:chris@chrislynch.net

 

[Toni269]

Chris,

(I thought that you worked directly for NICE or Avaya?)

Yes the information helps. We already have a Digital Logger and it is not connected to the T1, it is setup for Total Recording and hard wired to each extension individually. Are you saying that we need to purchase an additional logger available on the gray market as well as software? Do you think that the auto-conference software is available from Nice or Avaya? Our current logger is under maintenance and we do not plan to connecte it to a T1.

Thank you again for your time.

Toni

 

[ChrisLynch]

Toni,

No I do not work for NICE or Avaya, just have extensive experience with their products.

I wasn't aware you already had a logger - in that case there is no need to even talk about loggers, you're total recording piece will be fine, just need to ensure that the home users are conference into the calls rather then the calls being transferred to them.

As for the auto-conference, I don't know where you'd pick this up, I'm sure it will be available SOMEWHERE but I'll try to find out - let me make sure i fully understand this first though:

Calls come to your ACD
Call is routed to an extension (with Total Recording)
**
Home user is conferenced into the call

Where I have put the ** - this is where I am unsure, I can see 2 possible options.

a) You have 'live' agents at these extensions, these agents would conference the home users into the calls

b) You do not want 'live' agents on these extensions and you wish for the calls to be automatically conferenced ?

If you are going for option a) then I think the best thing to do, and the cheapest would be to have the agents simply hit their conference button and conference in the home user.

If you are looking at option b) which kinda makes more sense, then this is simply a piece of CTI that can either be set-up on your switch or can be set-up using a CTI server - assuming you are working in a CTI environment ?

The company I work for is one of, if not THE, world's largest outsourcing company and therefore we have the skills & experience in-house in order to build software like this on demand.

If you cannot find this type of thing available commercially, and do not have the in-house skills/experience to implement this then I am sure our organisation would be willing to help you out - but they usually dont do anything for free.

Regards,
Chris Lynch
mailto:chris@chrislynch.net

 

[Toni269]

Chris,

This is great information, you have answered all of my questions. I greatly appreciate your time and your knowledge!

Toni

 

[ChrisLynch]

No problem.


Regards,
Chris Lynch
mailto:chris@chrislynch.net