Softphone

Softphone enables your agents to make or receive calls through the conversation platform. It includes a variety of features that resemble an actual desk phone. For example, an agent can add more participants to the voice conversation or put other participants on hold.

Softphone also shows accurate conversation context to the agent, saving on average handle time. It works seamlessly with the conversations protocol, allowing seamless multiparticipant voice conversations.

Current flavors of softphone

• Independent softphone works as an independent entity. You can pair it with VNext if you want to use the benefits of the virtual agent assistant. The independent softphone can also be wired to plug into any web application.
• Softphone integrated inside VNext is the one agent tool with all channels integrated in a single app.
• Softphone integrated inside Salesforce enables you to reap the benefits of voice on platform even if you use Salesforce as your CRM tool. However, this integration does not come with the virtual agent assist integrated.

Softphone configurations within CCaaS

Here are a few of the most popular configuration options for your softphone instance available within CCaaS. This list is not exhaustive, and more are being added all the time.

• Active call wait (ACW) timeout is the time out for active call wait, in milliseconds.
• ACW timeout extension is the active call wait timeout extension, in milliseconds.
• Number of extensions allowed is the number of times an agent is allowed to extend their active call wait timeout, in numeric.
• Long hold notification lets an agent know they have put someone on hold for an extended period.
• Accept or reject calls lets an agent manually accept and reject calls. You can also set it to auto.
• Call ring duration sets the duration of the phone ring until it is considered rejected or unhandled, in numeric – IF call accept/reject is set to “Manual.”
• Call log retention determines the number of hours a call log should be retained, in numeric, to be shown on the softphone call log history.
• ACW enabled for inbound determines if an agent gets active call wait displayed on the softphone for an inbound call, in Boolean.
• ACW enabled for outbound determines if an agent gets active call wait displayed on the softphone for an outbound call, in Boolean.

Bring your own voice provider

If you choose to bring in your own CPaaS, the softphone architecture lets you plug in a CPaaS client SDK to make it your very own softphone.

Configuring a new voice provider is a 2-step process:

1. Create and register your voice adapter. You will need to create and register your provider-specific voice adapter with the platform. The voice adapter enables your provider to interact with the platform in a well-defined, uniform way. It helps translate the voice provider protocols to the platform conversation protocol.
2. Create and plug your provider client library. Once you create your voice adapter, you must create your voice provider client library to plug into softphone. The voice client library is used to make the softphone that is running on the browser. Then, it connects to your voice provider to enable inbound calls, outbound calls, and other voice-related actions.