Symposium exporting real-time data to external application

[fltr]

I am currently tasked with developing a call centre info system based on plasma screens. As part of the job, we need to hook up to symposium to analyse traffic going through the call centre and show key information like the number of calls taken say in an hour and show this clearly on screen. I know the system can output real time data screens but they are too busy and we really only need key figures.

I'm not familiar with Symposium, but was wondering... is there any IP addresses we can ping or databases we can hook up in to? Or alternatively is there a format the software can export to periodically (say every 5 mins or so) so that our developed software can lift data from this??

Any help would be muchly appreciated!

 

[Sympology]

You should have a piece of software called GRTD. This may actually do the job you require. You can choose what you need it to show in real time. No of calls waiting, totals, agents logged in etc.
Install it on a pc and see if it give you what you need.

Stu..

Oh course I'll come back at lunchtime. When is it? Oh thats a shame, so's mine.

 

[fltr]

Stu...

Thanks mate. I have heard of this before (I am by no means an expert in Symposium) but was under the impression that this is a fairly in-depth reporting system. We've actually developed a messaging system and it would be great if we can access the raw data to import into our own screens. Basically they have scrolling messages and updates, and the number of fielded calls etc would be intermixed with all of this.

Any way we can get right into the guts of the system??

 

[rory1]

You could link directly into the database but that would mean your application needing to do an amount of calculating to get the stats you may require.

May be possible to link into the multicast stream of real time stats which will give you alot of the generic stuff and may include what you're looking for.

The other straight forward option is to schedule a report output for every ?? and then have your application parse out the data you want to display.

Rory

 

[fltr]

Rory...

Cheers for your info. Yeah, calcs are not a problem. Effectively all we're needing are the key figures that we'd parse as variables for those calcs.

How does the multicast stream work. Is if effectively like a broadcast IP address?? How is the database/set of tables set up... it it a standard format and would it be similar to looking up an SQL DB by query for instance.

 

[brewerdude]

You can use ODBC to query the tables in the Sybase database - any table with an "i" in front is an interval table and will give you updates every 15 minutes. To get true real time data you could always use a "desktop readerboard" application like Symon that can pull out the stats you need.

SymonView is the very basic version of Symon that is bundled with Symposium, though probably isn't very helpful. Also, if you find the Real-Time Displays too busy, they can be customized to give you just the stats you're looking for.

 

[rory1]

fltr,

The database is bog standard SQL using Sybase ODBC.

Multicast streams is not something I have attempted yet, however, there is stuff on Microsoft site regarding how to do it in general terms.

Rory

 

[i92magge]

fltr,

there is a Nortel real time API toolkit for SCCS, called RTD (Real Time Data). We use it for our Workforce Management solution

http://www.nortelnetworks.com/prd/dpp/collateral/symposium_interfaces.pdf

/Magnus Geverts, Teleopti

 

[oruvan]

Can you please tell me where to get the real time API toolkit for SCCS (RTD).

It is basically the the below 4 files supposed to be the Symposium Server CD.

\iccmsdk\WNT\RTD\EN\include\nirtdyp.h
\iccmsdk\WNT\RTD\EN\include\nirtdapi.h
\iccmsdk\WNT\RTD\EN\include\AGTSTATE.h
\iccmsdk\WNT\RTD\EN\include\nirtd.lib

 

[LeighRiffel]

The API may be the best way to do it. I was unaware that an API existed when we upgraded to Symposium a few months ago.

What we did is setup the free Symon Server included with Symposium to receive Symposiums realtime packets and re-broadcast it's own packets. These Symon Server packets could then be read both by the Symonview applications used by agents in the call center and by an in-house application I wrote to read the packet information into our Oracle database. Each packet contains a skillset name along with the number of agents, agents not ready, calls waiting, and how long the longest call has been waiting. Not necessarily as much information as I would like, but sufficient for our purpose of giving Edify IVR hold time information to callers.

Perhaps you could do something similar. Our call center is talking about adding screens of some sort and even if they decide to waste a bunch of money on the full version of Symon, I still think we will eventually hook into this original Oracle information from a web page or perhaps another in-house application.

 

[brewerdude]

I thought that the "free" SymonView was discontinued. Nortel is now utilizing the Symposium Agent which is bundled in 5.0

 

[LeighRiffel]

True enough, unfortunatly for reasons unknown to me we only installed Symposium 4. Perhaps we will need to re-examine things when we need to upgrade.

 

[brewerdude]

I hope you've at least got 4.2. Symposium 4.0 (for the M1) goes EOL on 12/31/04.

Check out Bulletin: MD-2003-0239-Global

 

[LeighRiffel]

Yes, I beleive it is. The Symposium server is actually handled by our Telecommunications department while I am responsible for our Edify IVR. I had to do some integration with Symposium to get hold time information because our old solution of reading it programatically from DWC keys no longer works with Symposium.

By the way do you know of a web address where I can find EOL information for various versions of Symposium?

 

[brewerdude]

If you can give me an email addy, I can send it to you.

However, all Nortel docs can be found at

http://www.nortelnetworks.com

 

[LeighRiffel]

Thanks.