Call Hold and Mute
Softdial CallGem™ provides an agent-layer interface for hold and mute. This translates into telephony requests and responses at the telephony interface. Softdial CallGem™ maintains state information to validate hold/ mute requests. Behaviour of hold and mute is dependent on the implementation in the telephony layer. We would suggest telephony integrators adopt the following standards as best practice:
- Hold should
- put the call center agent on hold and play silence, or a hold sound, to the agent.
- put the respondent on hold and play either silence, hold music or a looped greeting appropriate to the campaign
The sound files played to the agent and respondent can be specified in the <agentHoldFile> and <customerHoldFile> settings of the Softdial Telephony Gateway™ STG Configuration file. By default, both are set to play pleasehold.wav
- Mute should
- play silence to the respondent, and should enable the agent to hear the respondent
Call Hold with more than one connection
Changes were made to the API and Script steps in versions 10.5.330 and 10.6.178 to support the following type of sequence :
- Agent talking to client but needs to check something with 3rd party.
- Agent puts client on hold
- Agent calls 3rd Party
- Agent puts 3rd Party on hold
- Agent speaks to client
- Agent puts client on hold
- Agent speaks to 3rd Party
- Agent puts 3rd Party on hold
- Agent speaks to client
- etc.
The following updates were introduced to support this requirement:
- A new parameter Modified Conference 2 (C5) is added to the Transfer Request [TR] message to indicate that this is a 3 party conference where the respondent (primary connection) is immediately put on hold.
- A new parameter Who (WH) has been added to the Request Hold [RH] message to identify the connection to be put on hold. The format of this parameter is a bit flag with the following settings:
Flag Function 0 Preserves backwards compatibility (default) 1 Indicates the Request Hold [RH] message is for the primary call connection 2 Indicates the Request Hold [RH] message is for the secondary call connection 4 Indicates the Request Hold [RH] message is for the main call connection 8 Used in conjunction with the ON parameter to invert the current Hold configuration. e.g. - RH\AN1\CNtest\WH8\ON
puts the secondary connection on hold and takes the primary connection off hold - RH\AN1\CNtest\WH8
puts the primary connection on hold and takes the secondary connection off hold.
- RH\AN1\CNtest\WH8\ON
- The Toggle Hold Scripter step has been updated to support the Who (WH) parameter allowing selection of the connection to be put on hold.
- The Transfer Call Scripter step has been updated top support the Modified Conference 2 (C5) parameter functionality described above.