External Routing

The process for enabling external routing is as follows.

1. In Namespace Web Console, Campaigns and Queues tab, any queues that require external routing should have the Allow application routing option checked.

   

   Fig. 2 - Namespace - Queue editor

2. For outbound calls, the Open Campaign [OC] message must contain the X2 parameter to specify that predictive calls should be passed to an external router.
3. The external service will establish an SDMP connection to CallGem and send a Register External Router [RX] message, identifying itself as a router for either
   1. all tenants
   2. a specific tenant
   3. a specific campaign.

   The message may include either

   1. IB parameter (to register for inbound) or
   2. OB parameter (to register for outbound)

   For DNC screening, do not specify either IB or OB.

   Any other enumeration messages required for information-gathering should also be sent at this time.

4. When a routing decision is required, CallGem will send an ExternalRouterDecision [XL] message to one of the established routers (using the priority value set in the Register External Router [RX] message, Call Priority (CP) parameter) with the details about the request. In terms of dequeuing a call, this will either be information about
   1. the agent (Agent Identifier (AN) or Agent Unique Id (YA)) and a list of calls to choose from (as an XML/JSON object in the Data (DT) parameter), or
   2. the call (Session Identifier (SI) or Session UUID (YS)) and a list of agents to choose from (as an XML/JSON object in the Data (DT) parameter)

   (depending on which of the two lists has a surplus at the time).

   This request will timeout

   • For outbound calls, after 0.5 secs (not changeable), to keep within compliance limits
   • For inbound calls, after the duration specified by the App Route Timeout setting for the queue in Namespace Web Console. See Fig. 2

   If the request times out or returns an invalid selection, or connection between CallGem and the external service is lost, CallGem will route the call according to its own internal logic.

5. The service should then respond with an External Router Decision [XR] message. In the case of dequeuing a call, this will contain the call session (Session Identifier (SI)) and either the agent (Agent Identifier (AN)) or the queue (Group Address (GA)) to which the session should be routed.
6. By default, if there is only one call and one agent available, CallGem will route the call automatically without contacting the service. For inbound calls, this behaviour can be bypassed by setting the following registry key (REG_DWORD) to a nonzero value:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Sytel/Dialer/ExternalHobsonsChoice

Any external routing application that performs call screening for outbound must cache the data required to make decisions in memory and deliver an immediate response. Having the application perform a database lookup will be too slow.

To put this into context, a predictive dialer campaign with 200 agents making short duration calls may generate 35 call screening requests every second. Performing database-based screening is not an option.