Understanding CTI

Oracle's PeopleSoft CTI Integration for Oracle's PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an integration application to third-party middleware solutions. This solution provides full CTI functions for unified, screen-based telephony and population of PeopleSoft application pages, and works with leading contact center switching platforms.

PeopleSoft CTI Integration enables the system to open application pages based on information a caller enters into an interactive voice response (IVR) system. PeopleTools MultiChannel Framework integrates with third-party middleware to provide the CTI framework, and PeopleSoft CRM configuration pages enable you to map transaction IDs to specific CRM components. After you configure PeopleSoft PeopleTools, your middleware, and PeopleSoft CRM, the CTI workflow process is as follows:

1. A customer enters information using the IVR system.

2. The private branch exchange (PBX) system's automatic call distributor (ACD) routes the call to the third-party CTI middleware.

3. The middleware converts the customer's entries into key fields and passes them to the PeopleSoft CTI application.

4. An agent accepts the call from the Multichannel Toolbar.

5. The PeopleSoft CTI application looks at your CRM configuration to match the transaction ID to a target page, and then it uses an iScript to open that target page and pre-populate it with the caller's data.

   Target pages can be in the PeopleSoft CRM database or another database.

Image: CTI solution process flow for accepting customer calls and displaying corresponding target transaction pages, where a target page can be mapped via CRM configuration to a page in CRM database or in another database

The following graphic illustrates the CTI process flow, which includes accepting external customer calls from the IVR system, mapping call data to CRM transactions, and displaying corresponding application pages for agents to handle customer requests:

For a list of partners that offer CTI middleware integrations, refer to the link in the See Also section.

See Oracle Validated Application Integrations - Find a Partner Solution.

To set up CTI for your site, you must:

1. Set up your third-party middleware.

   See Your third-party middleware documentation.

2. Configure PeopleSoft CTI.

   See PeopleTools: PeopleSoft MultiChannel Framework

3. Program the IVR and your middleware to ensure that the transaction number and other required parameters are populated.

   See The documentation for your IVR and middleware systems.

4. Map CTI transactions to application pages.

   Identify the target page for each transaction, and determine the key fields that the IVR system will populate.

See the product documentation for PeopleTools: PeopleSoft MultiChannel Framework.

The Multichannel Toolbar console is the interface that agents use to perform all CTI-related actions. We discuss this toolbar in the documentation about using the Unified Agent Desktop.

PeopleSoft CRM supports the integration with third-party CTI vendor products through configuration that is performed on the CRM system. Administrators can create CTI vendor definitions on the CRM system, configure Javascript functions and parameters for them, and activate one to be used at any given time. All the configuration procedures can be done on the CRM system without the need to modify existing applications and PeopleCode.

The IVR assigns questions and their responses to a transaction number that is passed to the PeopleSoft CTI application. By mapping the transaction ID to a target page, you enable the system to route the call appropriately.

For example, if transaction 2 is mapped to the Case page for PeopleSoft Support, the IVR system captures the transaction number and the case number, and the CTI system displays the Case page for the case that the caller entered.

Mapping transactions involves two tasks:

• Enter transaction-level information.

  Associate each transaction ID to a page, and identify the field data that the system can expect to receive from the IVR for that transaction.

• Enter database-level information.

  Each database you use (for example, the PeopleSoft CRM database and the PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management databases) is registered as a content provider in PeopleSoft Applications Portal. For each content provider, even if you have only one, you must identify the associated transactions.