ACE Release 27

New features in ACE Video

File sharing and file viewing in video chat

When providing technical support, managing an issue, or helping a caretaker, it can greatly facilitate and bring value to the conversation if files can be exchanged in both directions. The file may be an instruction, an image, a contract, an exercise program or something entirely else.

Therefore, file sharing is added to ACE Video 27. Both the agent and the person at the other end can upload a file to share in the conversation. Files are available in a common area where they can be opened, viewed and browsed (for multipage files) together in the conversation. Shared files can also be downloaded by either party. Uploaded files are virus scanned before they are displayed. When the session ends, files are deleted. The file area is hosted in Telia’s sovereign cloud together with the rest of the ACE Video production environment.

For security reasons, the file types that are possible to upload are limited to: Word documents, pdf files, Excel, PowerPoint presentations and common image file formats like .png and .jpg.

Snapshot of video

A related feature launched with ACE Video 27 is the possibility for agents to take a snapshot image of the video or screen sharing. A typical scenario would be an insurance case manager taking a snapshot of a dented car that the customer shows with his mobile phone camera. The snapshot is saved in the session file sharing area where it can be downloaded and kept for documentation.

Draw on files and snapshots

To further enhance the usability of the file sharing and snapshot features (above), it is also possible for both parties in the conversation to draw on images or files. For example, the agent may circle a specific input field in a screenshot of a web form or highlight a button or port on a technical device. Another use may be a patient indicating exactly where the knee hurts in a video consultancy call with their physiotherapist.

Background blurring in ACE Video

Background blurring is an established feature in video conferencing, and it helps to minimize distractions and keep conversations focused. Background blurring is introduced in ACE 27 and switched on by default for both parties. If needed, it is easy to switch off in video controls.

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Updates to ACE Coach – user friendly administration in your browser

ACE Coach 27 is launched with a number of new features for the administrator and for the team coach. Features that bring it even further towards being the complete browser-based tool for day-to-day management of the Telia ACE-powered contact center.

Manage campaigns in ACE Coach

A campaign lets your agents make any number of outgoing calls and log them in a structured manner. Typically, it can be used for sales offers to new and existing customers or for doing interview surveys.
Campaigns can either run by letting agents receive campaign records from a queue, select records from a waiting list (called preview in ACE) or use a dialer. A dialer serves to save time and improve efficiency by calling numbers from campaign records automatically “in advance” and routing them to an agent only when the call is picked up. ACE Coach 27 lets the administrator start, stop and pause campaigns as well as fine tune many aspects of campaign behaviour and logic.

Given the appropriate access rights a user can:

• View, filter and search existing campaigns in a customizable table
• Create new campaigns
• Start, stop, archive and limit (only call personal records) campaigns
• Delete campaigns
• Edit campaign settings (schedules, dialer settings, agent requirements, how to treat personal records and more)
• Edit feedback outcomes (used for automatic or agent-controlled detailed logging)
• Edit feedback rules (for determining automatic next actions for records based on feedback)

All this makes it possible to set up, manage and execute your campaigns efficiently and systematically.

Search and edit campaign records, one by one or in bulk

As a compliment to managing entire campaigns (above), it is also possible to work with the actual records in ACE Coach 27. There is a powerful search and filter function to let you fetch records from a specific campaign or across different campaigns that meet the criteria you specify. The criteria are highly configurable to get exactly the records you need.

Once fetched, the records can be viewed and edited, one by one or in bulk. When editing in bulk, existing values from the selected records are presented as a drop down, or you can add something new. This way you can ensure consistent data in your records.

Manage schedules and exceptions for dialogue flows

To further develop ACE Coach into the primary everyday administration tool for ACE, and lower dependency on installed clients for regular tasks, it is now possible to manage IVR schedules, including template days and exceptions. This allows the Coach user with the correct access rights to control all timing aspects of dialogue flows.

The user can:

• Search and filter among existing schedules
• Create new schedules and delete existing
• Choose to work specifically with global (without area affiliation) schedules or set area affiliation
• Edit regular hours
• Manage exception days based on template days
• Create and manage template days and view their usage
• Import public holidays and set different hours for those days (the system provides holidays for Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and lets the user choose)
• View dialogue flow usage

Manage custom work levels

Work levels are a way to package contact types, queues/waiting lists and distribution into ready-made “contact combinations” that agents can choose to work with in ACE Interact. The selected work level controls which contacts that will be routed to the agent. Time spent in custom work levels is also visible in statistics and can be used in reports.
In ACE Coach 27 the administrator or coach can create and edit custom work levels to meet the needs of the operations.

Assign team membership to users

In Telia ACE 27, a new concept of Team is introduced. Team membership can be used in statistics and for controlling access to stored interactions like recordings. In ACE Coach 27 coaches and administrators working with user management can assign team membership together with subareas when creating or editing user accounts.

Set default service level thresholds

Service levels are used to follow up, in real time or in reports, that incoming contacts are answered as fast as you want them to be. Telia ACE uses two service levels for good and acceptable answer times, indicated by green and yellow in status views. Anything longer than the second threshold is out of service level, indicated by red.

In ACE Coach 27 target service levels can be set individually per queue or waiting list when editing them. Also new is that you can set system defaults for different contact types. These defaults apply for contacts in queues and waiting lists without specifically configured service levels.

Manage storage times for interactions

The time that an interaction and its’ associated media are stored in the Interaction view database is dictated by storage rules. Rules are applied by storage class (set by the system at creation of the contact, or by the agent during the interaction), by task type or by contact type in the organization defaults. These three rule types can now be easily set and edited in ACE Coach 27.

Upload call flow audio phrases in .wav and .mp3 format

A small but useful update, greatly simplifying administration of phrases in call flows is that it is now possible to upload audio files in user friendly wav and mp3 format. These formats also open for higher quality audio in your call flow menus and applications.

Note that using the new file formats requires that your organization are using IVR G2.

UX enhancements in ACE Coach

ACE Coach is designed from the ground up to be easy to use and work with. Version 27 has an updated design for tabs that make them more clearly visible, with a more distinct indication of which tab is active. This version also introduces a new UX-feature, the “adjustable content divider”. This lets the user drag a divider to adjust the relative width of two main areas on the screen, for example a table on the left and settings for the selected item on the right. This feature is first introduced in the new campaign administration screen. It can be controlled both using mouse and by using keyboard.

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ACE Interact – handle contacts and manage everyday tasks in your browser

Manage callback records in ACE Interact

Calling a customer, or maybe a caretaker, back at a booked, selected or suggested time is an established and useful way of providing a good end user experience. To maintain quality and service it may at times be necessary to inspect and adjust callback records. A new feature in ACE Interact 27 lets an agent or coach with the proper access rights do just that.

For example, if you already talked to the customer, ahead of a scheduled callback, you may want to add that to the comment field, or cancel the callback altogether if the issue was handled.

The new Callback records card in the work area lets you filter and search in the database of callback records (open, closed, paused and active records). Search can combine time interval and up to three additional criteria. From the list of search hits, it is then possible to select and edit a record to adjust status, time, number to call, add or edit comment and more.

Manage address books in ACE Interact

In ACE Interact 27 it is possible for users (with the required access function in their role) to search, add, edit and remove entries in address books in Telia ACE. A user always has access to their personal address book. Adding this feature eliminates the need for a special application for this common task and puts it in the hands of the staff that use it the most, creating efficient workflows.

In the new card Administrate address book, address books and child folders are presented in a tree view in the left pane. Actual entries are presented in a table that can be sorted by clicking column headers. Double clicking an entry will open the edit view.

A user can also create new address books and add folders and entries to them. Creating new address books outside of personal scope requires access function for this purpose.

New layout for the Search/Call card

In the constant effort to make ACE Interact the most user friendly and efficient agent tool, the Search/Call card is tweaked in ACE Interact 27. Now, instead of presenting search results as expandable snippets, available actions (place call, send sms or email etc) for a highlighted search hit are directly available at the bottom of the search/call card. This makes for a smoother workflow either when using keyboard or mouse. It is also part of the preparations for upcoming operator functionality in ACE Interact.
Links in search results are now clickable.

Control access in Interaction view on team level

Telia ACE 27 introduces a new concept, Team. Team membership can be used to control access to stored interactions in Interaction view in ACE Interact. When set up, an agent can search, view and access media like call recordings or email content for interactions only tagged with their team.

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News in ACE Business Intelligence 27

ACE Business Intelligence is the statistics and analytics tool for Telia ACE. Dig into data all the way from the big picture and trends down to individual interactions. Use one of the many built-in sheets with dashboards and views or create your own.

System wide statistics

With ACE Business Intelligence 27 you get the possibility to view aggregated statistics for the system as a whole. This allows for better overview of total volumes across all entrances and queues. It also makes it possible to view and assess contact volumes outside of opening hours. This could for example be very useful in a scenario where an organization considers adjusting their opening hours.

The data is made available in six new sheets to cover system wide statistics for different contact types.

Agent statistics by service

Services in ACE are defined as a contact type (for example chat or call), a direction (in- or outbound) and distribution form (queue, waiting list, inquiry or dialer). To provide both overview and details about the work in an ACE-powered contact center ACE Business Intelligence 27 lets you analyze data based on service. For example, you can see total agent time spent logged in to different services for all agents, agents of a team or for individual agents.
The data is available in a new view, Agent statistics service, in the Agent details sheet.

Stats by team

The new Team concept in Telia ACE 27 also opens up for statistics and data presentation on the team level. Team can be used both for controlling access to data, for filtering out data that relates to a team and for comparing team performance or workload.

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News in ACE Recording G2

ACE Recording G2 is the next generation recording solution developed as a fully integrated component in Telia ACE. Stored recordings are available together with all other interactions in the Interaction View database and access is controlled in detail.

Record outgoing external calls

New with the release of ACE 27 is that it is possible to record outbound external calls, for example when an agent calls a client to follow up on a previous contact (without it being a scheduled callback as those are already possible to record).

As these calls don’t get a task type assigned like IVR calls or callbacks, there is a new concept, Team, and corresponding access function to limit access to these recordings. This should be implemented before activating recording of taskless outbound external calls. See more below.

A new access function to control who can listen to recordings

ACE 27 provides a new level of access control with the introduction of Team. The primary use case for this feature is to enable flexible access control to stored interactions, including listening to recorded calls.

Contacts handled by a member of a team will get a corresponding team tag when stored as interactions in the Interaction View database. This team tag can then be used to limit access to that specific interaction (including listening to any recordings) only to team members.

Agents can only be member of one team at a time. Team assignment needs to be done per agent after upgrading to ACE 27 if you plan to use the feature for access control. It is possible to let for example coaches for many teams have access to interactions from all “their” teams by assigning multiple access areas.

Export of recordings from AWS and Network Cloud

With ACE 27 it is possible to export recordings and associated metadata, both from the AWS and from the Telia Network Cloud (sovereign cloud) production environments. The primary destination for exports are a customer specified S3 bucket in AWS or Telia’s dedicated export buckets in AWS or in Telia Network Cloud. From there it is possible to access the files for further processing or long-term storage.

For organizations using Nexidia Interaction Analytics provided by Telia, there are integrations in place to ingest recordings from both AWS and Telia Network Cloud S3 buckets.

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Updates to ACE telephony

Support for phrases in .mp3 and .wav file format in ACE IVRs

For added user friendliness and flexibility it is now possible to upload phrase files in the commonly used .wav and .mp3 file formats. Upload to dialogue flows using ACE Admin 27 or to call flows using ACE Coach 27. These file formats are easy to work with in readily available software and provide high quality audio.

To take advantage of this update, your organization must run ACE om Service Node G2 and IVR G2.

Personal greeting phrase with IVR G2

With ACE 27 it is possible to configure personal greeting phrases for each agent. These are played automatically when the call is routed to an agent to save time for the agent and ensure a consistent tone of voice and positive customer experience at each contact.

As with all releases of Telia ACE, there are a number of small updates and fine tuning made available in ACE 27. Some, but not all are presented below. As usual please refer to sub-product release notes for complete lists of updates.

Accessing emails in Interaction View logged to audit trail

The ACE audit trail is a security feature that stores information on activities in and changes to the system. The events logged to the ACE audit trail is now extended to include access to emails stored in the interaction view database.

Web SDK (chat) running when 3rd party cookies are blocked

For privacy reasons, users or organization may want to limit the use of cookies on websites or in web applications. ACE Web SDK 27 takes this into account and is updated so that chat works, even when third party cookies are disabled (with reduction of some advanced functionality like session persisting if navigating between different domains).
This may also be considered futureproofing as we are moving towards a cookie-free web in 2024.

Additional data points sent from Telia ACE to Calabrio WFM

For organizations that use Calabrio Workforce Management integrated with Telia ACE, the exchange of data is extended with ACE 27. More detailed contact data is sent and mapped to Calabrio WFM concepts to provide even more accurate and powerful workforce management.

Extended PII anonymization for Nordic countries in ACE conversational solutions

To comply with GDPR and other privacy regulations, potential PII (Personal Identifiable Information) data that is entered into ACE conversational platforms like chatbots may need to be anonymized. Typically, it can be names, vehicle license plates, phone number, email addresses and so on. Before release of ACE 27 the algorithms that are used for this were enhanced to better match the Telia geographic footprint in the Nordics. More matching criteria for what data to hide were added and rules were made language-agnostic.

Category descriptions for contact method selector in ACE One Widget

This feature gives organizations more control over how their contact methods are presented and makes it easier for their users to choose the right one. There are teo new input fields in the Knowledge Admin interface when editing categories for contact methods. One is for the publically visible description and one internal.

Please refer to Release Notes for Telia ACE 27 and Release Notes for individual sub products for detailed technical information, requirements and considerations. These documents are available on request from your Telia contact.

Compatibility Telia ACE 27

• ACE Admin versions 22 or newer are supported.
• ACE Coach: only version 27 is supported.
• ACE Report versions 12.0.0 or newer are supported (). • ACE Agent versions 12.0.0 or newer are supported ().
• ACE Pulse versions 12.0.0 or newer are supported (). • () Note that, if single sign-on is used, ACE Agent 21.0 or newer, ACE Pulse 21.0 or newer and ACE Report 21.0 or newer are supported; older versions are thus not supported.
• ACE Interact versions 20.0.0 or newer are supported.
• ACE Monitor versions 21.0.0 or newer are supported.
• When upgrading ACE Database to 27.0.0, all users of ACE Coach, ACE Interact and ACE Monitor will automatically start using the new version at next login after upgrade:
  • ACE Coach: when upgrading, the system parameters governing the primary version of ACE Coach will automatically be changed to 27.0.0. o ACE Interact: the system parameter governing the primary version of ACE Interact will automatically be changed to 27.0.0.
  • ACE Monitor: when upgrading from a version older than 24, the system parameter governing the primary version of ACE Monitor will automatically be changed to 24.0.0.
  • System parameters governing the secondary version for the different clients may also be updated; check configuration for details if needed.
• If upgrading from a version older than ACE 26, it is strongly recommended to read release notes for all intermediate versions. For instance, if upgrading from ACE 22.0 to ACE 27.0, ACE23ReleaseNotes, ACE24ReleaseNotes, ACE25ReleaseNotes and ACE26ReleaseNotes should be read in addition to latest Release Notes.