This chapter covers the following topics:
Oracle Email Center is a complete solution for managing email interactions with customers, partners, suppliers, employees, and other entities that interact with an organization.
Topics include:
The Email Center Agent Console is an HTML application that allows agents to respond to inbound emails and compose outbound emails using a system of generated suggested responses and to compose original outbound email messages using standard templates.
The following features are available for agents to assist with the processing of email responses:
The Home page displays the email accounts assigned to the agent and the classifications for each of the accounts. The agent can then acquire the next email work item from any classification queue. Following the "First-In-First-Out" protocol, the oldest email in that queue will be delivered to the agent. The Inbox Summary section displays the number of emails fetched by the agent that have not yet been resolved. The Activity container provides a summary of transactions performed by the Agent for a selected duration (day, week or since the last login). The Break container enables the Agent to go on a break and notify the system of the reason.
Customer information is presented to the agent automatically. In the event that a matching customer is not found, Email Center provides the ability to search the customer database and select a customer to associate with the interaction.
Every action performed by the agent using the Agent Console is logged in the customer's unified Customer Interaction History.
The calendar tab exposes the Foundation calendar functionality.
The Email Center Agent Console also provides the ability to search for historical messages. These are either inbound messages that were replied to or deleted or outbound messages that were sent. Using the same functionality agents can also search their inboxes.
All interactions are now recorded by Email Center. When an agent is finished with a message, whether sending, deleting, or transferring, the interaction details (interactions, activities, media items, and media item lifecycle segments) and outcomes are recorded to Customer Interaction History.
The JTF Calendar functionality is also included in the Email Center Agent Console which allows agents to schedule reminders or lookup important dates.
Oracle Email Center considers an Auto Acknowledgement as a confirmation email that will be sent for every incoming email received by an email account. These emails simply confirm receipt of the incoming email and may provide some indication of when the customer can expect a response from an agent.
On the other hand, an Auto-Reply is an email that is sent automatically in response to a customer's inquiry.
Queue access is the ability of agents to see emails in an email queue and selectively pull those emails that they prefer to work on. They retain their ability to reroute or assign an email from the message component.
Administrators can define whether an email account is enabled for queue access. If an email account is marked as queue-access enabled, agents are able to pick from all the queues under that account. In addition, administrators can enable queue access at the agent level. Therefore, administrators can allow a certain group of agents to pick from a particular queue. This gives administrators granular access control over queue access for queues and agents.
The queue access functionality is enabled from the universal work queue access method in addition to the agent home page (HTML). As such, if the queue is marked as queue-access enabled, the agents can view the emails in the email queue by clicking the queue node.
Oracle Email Center can categorize or classify emails into different queues based on administrator defined rules. The administrator can create a rule using either a combination of provided keys or the output of a custom PL/SQL procedure. These keys pertain to the email, such as account name, senders name, intent, received date, and system information such as current day and time. Classifications enable the distribution of emails into multiple queues which could also relate to the prioritization of emails. When a Classification is associated with an email account, a folder bearing the name of the classification is created for that email account. By default an "Unclassified" folder is created for every account to hold emails that do not satisfy any classification rules.
Oracle Email Center has extended the search for matching customer records to include Parties of type Person, Organization, and Relationship.
Customers and Contacts created by the business application can be easily selected by the Email Center processing engine and/or agent console. Details of the specific Oracle Email Center changes relating to Customers are below:
Oracle Email Center Server Processing - Customer Lookup
The process for finding matching customers based on email address is initiated by the Oracle Email Center server processing. Matching customer records based on an email address can result in one of the three scenarios listed below:
Scenario 1 - A single matching customer record found
Scenario 2 - Multiple matching customer records found
Scenario 3 - No matching customer records found
An attempt is made to identify the customer and contact for each incoming email message. This attempt is performed using the email address and searches for the customer in the customer database. If the customer is identified, the customer and contact records are shown on the Reply page. If there are multiple customer records found for the address, a message with a link is displayed and by clicking the link you can identify which customer and contact to use for this interaction. If the email address was not found in the customer database, Email Center uses the default customer, but if there is sufficient information in the inbound message, you can use the Customer search to identify the customer. For all future interactions with the customer related to this thread, the customer and contact ID tags appended to the email message will be used to identify the customer rather than the email address.
Oracle Email Center Agent Console/Message Component - Customer Search
Oracle Email Center allows you to search for customers on the following criteria:
Customer name - Search only parties matching the customer name entered.
Last Name or First Name - Search only parties matching the last/first name entered.
Email Address - Search parties who have an "email" contact point that matches the email address entered.
Customer Number - Search parties whose customer number matches the number entered.
Customer ID - Search parties whose customer ID matches the ID number entered.
Note: Oracle Email Center only searches for "CONTACT_OF" or "EMPLOYEE_OF" type of relationships by default. To view other types of relationships, search for one of the parties involved and then navigate to the Overview page by clicking on the name of the selected party.
Tip: Utilizing textual searches, such as name or email address, is more effecient, since they can be matched partially.
Recording Interactions
The interaction is always recorded against the Customer. If the system processing could not find a matching customer, the agent is prompted to search for and select a customer for recording the interaction. However, if the agent wishes not to, then the "default" customer (created during the setup phase by the administrator) is selected. If an agent selects to use the default customer, the default customer information is not displayed on the Reply page.
To record an interaction, a customer must first be identified. In cases where the customer cannot be identified or does not exist, Oracle Email Center provides the concept of "default" customer. A default customer is a customer created by the Email Center administrator to be used in cases where no customer has been identified.
The Oracle Email Center Download Processor is a Java service that runs in the iAS tier and acts as an inbox processor. It polls the Inbox folder of "active" email accounts for new incoming emails and copies the new inbound emails into the Local Message Store. The Download Processor checks only for new emails in the inbox of active accounts on the email server.
Email tagging is the process of inserting a tag containing certain system data such as Interaction ID, Agent ID, Customer/Contact ID and other custom data into every outbound email and also extracting the same from the inbound email (customer's response).
Email Center uses the tag information extracted from incoming emails to perform certain automated functions such as route email to the same agent, thread or link the new interaction with the old one, and identify the customer. The custom tags are also available as keys for defining any processing rule.
Tagging will not work if the customer changes the subject line of the email when replying to the email. Doing this will remove the tags embedded in the subject line of the email.
Email threading links all of the emails associated with a particular issue in a single thread. When an agent views the email thread, the agent sees all the email interactions from both the customer and the agent relating to that issue. All the emails pertaining to the specific issue are captured and displayed to the agent in descending order of time. Email interactions appear similar to how they are displayed on the HTML Service Request page. The Thread tab of the message component provides access to this display.
Intent Analysis refers to the process that Oracle Email Center employs to identify the intent of the incoming email message or the broad area pertaining to the email. This process is primarily dependent on extracting keywords from the incoming email message. This is accomplished using the Oracle Text engine which is one of the core components of the Oracle Database. Oracle Text additionally has the option to derive related "themes" based on the "tokens" extracted from the incoming email message. For English language both theme and token processing is allowed. For all other language Oracle Text only uses only tokens.
These keywords (tokens or themes) are then matched against a set of keywords that were generated and stored in the Email Center schema as part of the configuration step of setting up "Intents". Based on this match, Email Center processing engine identifies one or more "Intents" related to the incoming email message.
For example, a hardware company would have the following intents: Accessories, Service, Product Information, Installation whereas a medical company will have very different intents, e.g. claims, insurance, and doctors.
Email Interaction Threading is the process of linking one email interaction to another such that a parent-child relationship is formed between the two interactions.
An "interaction" is created or generated when, an incoming email is received by the Email Center system or when an agent composes a new email. Linking the new interaction ID with the previous interaction ID is made possible by the feature called Email Tagging. This feature inserts a tag containing the interaction ID (along with other data) into every outbound email and also extracts the same from the inbound email (customer's response).
With interaction threading, each "parent" interaction can have more than one "child" interaction. However a "child" interaction can belong to one and only one parent interaction.
The email interactions in a thread are displayed in chronological order, with the oldest email interaction in the thread on top.
Email Thread Example:
An agent composes a new email for a customer. An interaction ID of 1234 is assigned to that interaction and included in the tag inserted in the outbound email. When the customer responds to that email, the interaction ID from the email tag is extracted and stored. When the agent responds to the customers reply, a fresh interaction is created (9876). This interaction is then related to 1234 using the JTF_IH_INTERACTION_INTERS table. Now the customer responds again and this time the agent fetches the email and deletes it. However, this is still recorded as an interaction, ID is 7268. Now this interaction will be related to 9876 and hence indirectly related to 1234, thus forming an (email) interaction thread as show below.
| Parent ID | Interaction ID | Activity | Media Item |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1234 | Email Composed | Copy of outbound email | |
| 1234 | 9876 | Email Responded | Inbound email |
| Email Sent | Copy of outbound email | ||
| 9876 | 7268 | Email Deleted | Inbound email |
As you work with email messages, you can use suggested response documents and email templates which have been stored in the knowledge base repositories set up for use by Oracle Email Center.
Email Center is integrated with two knowledge base repositories: Marketing Encyclopedia Systems (MES) and Knowledge Management (previously known as SMS). Although both of the repositories can be searched for probable responses to an incoming email, you can only publish documents into MES. Solution sets can be created in knowledge management only via Oracle iSupport. Agents can browse through all of the categories in MES or search for documents in both MES and Knowledge Management, which contain specific keywords. Either one or both of the above repositories are scanned for probable responses when processing an incoming message. This is based on the site level profile set by the administrator.
The Email Center Message Component is a module of Oracle Email Center that enables agents to view and reply to incoming emails as well as compose new outbound emails. This module also enables the integration of Email Center with other business applications by providing the above mentioned functionality to users of those integrated applications as well.
An agent can potentially work on multiple email interactions at the same time because a separate browser is launched every time the Email Center Message Component is invoked. The Message Component adds a new Responsibility "Email Center Message Component". The Email Center Message Component responsibility must be assigned to every agent who is required to view, respond to or compose emails using the Oracle Email Center Message Component.
The Message Component also provides access to the MES and Knowledge Management (formerly knows as SMS) repositories through the knowledge base tab. You can browse through the MES categories and search both Knowledge Management and MES for response documents and solution sets.
Outbound messages, whether original or replies can be created not only by inserting or attaching suggested responses or templates, but any document in the Knowledge Base. There is a search capability that allows agents to search for documents as well as the Marketing Encyclopedia System's (MES) category structure that can be browsed. The agent can also attach a document from the network or local file system using the Attachments link.
Agents can also use the rich-text editor to mark up documents with font changes, alignment, hyperlinks, and inline images.
"My Inbox" contains emails "owned" by an agent. The emails in the inbox could have either been acquired by the agent, automatically routed to the agent, assigned to the agent by the supervisor, or transferred to the agent by another agent. The emails remain in the inbox until the agent either responds to it, deletes it, reroutes it, or transfers it to another agent.
A message in your inbox cannot be accessed by other agents. If you want another agent to access a message you have fetched, you must transfer the message to the agent.
The My Inbox Summary container, on the Email Center Home tab, lists the accounts to which you are assigned to work and the count of the number of messages in your inbox account queues.
Email Center agents are provided with a menu of actions for handling email interactions. For example, an agent can compose/send a brand new email, transfer an inbound email to another agent, reply to an inbound email or simply delete an inbound email. In doing so, agents may want to record a justification or explanation of their actions and make this information available to other agents or to their supervisors who may work on or review the email interaction at a later time
Notes, also called annotations, provide agents with the ability to enter and review internal notes for any given email message. A note is related to a unique email message, whether or not the message spans across multiple interactions.
All notes associated to an email message are accessible for review via an Add Note hyperlink from the following pages:
Message Component - Reply Screen.
Message Component - View Message (Read Only) Screen* - this is the screen that is accessed by supervisor when s/he clicks on the e-mail subject in the Supervisor Console's message summary screen.
Customer's Interaction History - Customer Details screen.
Interaction Threads screen.
Notes may also be entered directly from the transfer, assign, and reroute pages. In these cases, no Internal Notes pop-window is needed. Instead, these pages include an optional Notes text field.
The note type is based on what page you are currently on or on what action you are taking.
Oracle Email Center now includes spell checking capability. The spell checking engine will enable agents to spell check their email responses or spell check any new emails they compose prior to sending it. The spell checking engine will also enable administrators and supervisors to check for spelling errors while creating a document/template using the editor provided within Oracle Email Center.
Dictionaries for the following languages are available:
American English
Brazilian Portuguese
British English
Canadian English
Danish
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
German
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Spanish
Swedish
Additionally, a site level custom dictionary is provided, where the administrator can add words that are specific to the company/business such as company name, address, product names, common acronyms, etc.
The spell checking functionality enables users to replace a single occurrence of an incorrectly spelled word or all occurrences of that incorrectly spelled word with the correct match from the dictionary or as manually typed entry. You will also be able to ignore spelling errors identified by the spelling checker engine if you desire.
The Email Center system determines the intent of the message and identifies suitable responses for the message. Email Center automatically lists a selection of the potentially appropriate responses in the Top Suggested Response Documents container on the Reply page. You can choose one or more of the suggested response documents listed and customize an email response using a full feature editor. You can quickly and efficiently respond to inbound email messages by using suggested response documents to compose your email responses.
Templates can be viewed as boiler plate building blocks used to compose a new email. Template documents normally consist of a header including company logo and a footer. Templates can also contain generic information that may not be related to any specific type of problem or inquiry.
Oracle Email Center provides you with two types of editors - a plain text editor and a rich-text editor. A rich text editor enables you to format the font of the email, and include an image or hyperlink in the email. You should use the "Rich Text" editor for all HTML documents. You, can switch from one editor to another by clicking on the link provided above the text box. By default the plain text editor will be displayed. However if the you want to make the "Rich Text" editor the default, you can do so by setting the corresponding "Message Preference" by clicking on the link below the text box.
As you process email messages, Email Center records the number of message transactions you have performed during selected time periods. On the Email Center Home tab, the Work Activity container lists the current count of the transactions you have performed for each type of message activity recorded by Email Center. The Work Activity container can be set for the following periods:
Today
This Week
Since Last Login
The message activities recorded are:
Fetched - Messages which you have fetched from the Queued Messages container.
Responded - Messages you have fetched or been transferred and to which you have responded.
Deleted - Messages which you have deleted.
Transferred - Messages which you have transferred to another agent.
Composed - Messages you have composed.
Rerouted - Messages that you have received, then placed back into the same queue or a different queue forwarded to another agent.
Opened - Messages that were assigned or transferred to an agent and have been read by the agent.
The Work Activity container also contains a Pending column. This column provides a count of the messages that have been finished by the agent and are currently queued for processing by the Outbox Processor.
Note: As these messages are processed by the Outbox Processor, the item count should drop to zero. If the count remains the same for an extended period of time, this may indicate an error.