Record Telecommuter Agents

[pbxman]

Hi everyone,

Pretty simple question. We have a G3si V12 and we need to record agents working out of their houses using their analog home phone lines and controlling the on-screen softphones via VPN.

What can we do to record those calls? We have a Voiceprint call recording solution that is a station-side recording product. Any tricks of the trade?

Thanks.

pbxman
Systems Administrator

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[pbxman]

I should say currently we have to setup a separate station and record that, then the call gets routed off-net to the remote agent to their analog home phone. Is there a better way?

pbxman
Systems Administrator

Please let Tek-Tips members know their posts were helpful.

 

[Stinney]

Can you do trunk-side recording with your system? That's what we did at my last company.

- Stinney

Favorite all too common vendor responses: "We've never seen this issue before." AND "No one's ever wanted to use it like that before.

 

[pbxman]

Negative.


pbxman
Systems Administrator

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[wildcard100001]

If you have your remote agent control a physical onsite phone with a physical port. You should be able to record them. I've used this method with success. Station side system monitoring the physical phone with port. This worked in a Witness environment. It did not work with a x ported station that is remote controlled. I had 20 remote agents controlling 20 phones in a closet... worked like a charm. Waste of phones... but it worked.

Thanks,

Wildcard

 

[andi2121]

I was wondering how you set this up to have the remote agent control a physical phone onsite? We are in the process of researching this and we use station side recording as well and have run into issues with how we can record remote agents?

We have tried Avaya IP softphone and also the IP agent and assigning it a onsite extension assigned to a physical port however as soon as we sign into the softphone app or IP agent we get a warning that states "The extension to which you are trying to log in is associated with another station. Would you like to override that association?" If you click no it kicks you out but if you click yes the port changes to a virtual port and no recordings are picked up. Once you disconnect from softphone it then reverts back to the original assigned port for the physical phone.

We wouldn't mind having physical phones used for this as we will only ever have 12 remote agents for the night shift so having 12 phones stuffed in a closet would not be too bad compared to re-configuring the recording setup to trunk as we would lose our recordings of internal calls.

Our setup is s8700 server with communication manager 1.3 and we use NICE as our recording vendor.

Thanks

 

[wildcard100001]

If you do a list monitor xxxx (xxxx being the extension in question) do you see it monitored by the Nice CTI link? Without the softphone in play, does it successfully record?

I was using a G3Rv11 with Witness....with ASAI core and plus. I'd think it should work in any case.

check this out... somewhat related

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1263771&page=2

Thanks,

Wildcard

 

[andi2121]

Hi Wildcard,

I did a list monitor on the station and yes it is being monitored by the CTI link. It says CTI Link 1 and CRV 4926.

It is very strange. Without the softphone in play it does record O.K. I think it has to do with the port change that happens when we try to log into the IP Agent or Avaya IP Softphone. I walked over to the station that we are trying it with and the phone shows nothing on the display and when you try to dial a extension you get the turkey tone when connected remotly.

 

[andi2121]

Hi Wildcard,

Sorry to keep bothering you but I was wondering how your station side recording is wired? I see you use Witness and we use NICE. Our setup is wired to go from the patch panel through a nice punchdown block which then gets punched down to the actual port in the wire field.

Also, I was wondering when your agents are signed into the phone what do you see on the actual physical phone that is in that port?

Thanks again

 

[wildcard100001]

No problem at all... that's the difference and a big one.... We used lineside recording where the recording system actually dials the service observe FAC to start the recording. We did not do a hard wire tap such as in your setup.

When logged in via IP S or A... in the port field I get S00123 etc..

Thanks,

Wildcard

 

[Stinney]

What mode are you using when you tested IP Agent? Roadwarrior, Telecommuter, etc?

- Stinney

Favorite all too common vendor responses: "We've never seen this issue before." AND "No one's ever wanted to use it like that before.

 

[andi2121]

Hi Stinney,

We have tried both roadwarrior and telecommuter. Other than the recording issue we currently have we have found it works fairly well.

 

[andi2121]

Thanks for all of your help especially wildcard. We have found a way to do it through a backdoor method. I used your sugestion regarding the service observe. We have done some testing and we have a physical phone tapped into NICE that is always logged in and always service observing the remote IP agent. Since we have 100% inbound and outbound calling recording setup and we have station side that when this physical phone starts service observing the remote station that it also records the call. It is very unconventional but we get 100% recording which is what we are after!!

Thanks.

 

[wildcard100001]

Very cool, The service observe method I imagine taps the call at the "bus" level..

Thanks,

Wildcard