Note	Cisco Finesse has undergone a user experience refresh in release 12.0(1).

After you sign in, you can change your status to Ready to make yourself available for calls. The buttons in the call control area change depending on the situation.

For example, the following buttons are available in the described situations:

Note	Finesse agent desktop controls should be preferred over the agent phone device for call control operations for a more robust and efficient experience for the agent.

Finesse provides a separate state control for chat and email. If you handle chat and email contacts, you must change your status to Ready on the Chat and Email Control gadget.

The Finesse agent desktop provides the following out of the box functionality:

• Basic call control: Answer, hold, retrieve, end, and make calls.

• Advanced call control: Make a consult call and transfer or conference the call after the consultation.

• Agent state and call timers: The agent state timer indicates the duration in Ready or Not Ready state. The call timer indicates total call time, hold time, and wrap-up time.

• Schedule a callback: Schedule a callback for an Outbound Dialer call to call a customer back at a more convenient time.

• Preview Outbound Personal Callback calls: After you preview a personal callback call, you can choose to accept or reject the contact.

• Direct Preview Outbound calls: Preview the customer information for the call before you choose to accept, reject, or close the contact.

• Reclassify a Direct Preview Outbound call: If you do not reach the customer, you can reclassify the call as Answering Machine, Fax/Modem, Busy, or Invalid Number.

• Send DTMF digits: Send DTMF digits to interact with an IVR system.

• Not Ready and Sign Out reasons: Reasons to indicate why you are changing your status to Not Ready or Sign Out (your administrator defines these reasons).

• Phonebooks: List of contacts from which you can select one to call. Your administrator defines the contacts that are listed in your phonebook.

• Workflows: Your administrator can define workflows that are triggered by call and digital channels events (for example, your administrator may create a workflow that causes a browser pop on your desktop when a call arrives).

• Live Data reports

• Web Chat: Accept, interact, end chat sessions, and other chat enhancements discussed in detail in the respective sections in this guide.

• Email: View, reply to customer email messages, and other email enhancements discussed in detail in the respective sections in this guide.

• Direct Transfer: You can directly transfer the calls to another agent without any consult.

• System Reason Codes: Due to system generated events, your state may change to either Not Ready or Sign Out with system generated reason codes. In this case, agent state is displayed in yellow.

• Desktop Chat: You can chat with other agents, supervisor, or with other Subject Matter Experts in the organization.

• Making a Call: You can make a call from the dialpad, by either entering the number or using the one-click option in the phone book.

• Team Message: Teams can view the messages sent by their repective supervisors and take necessary action.

• Agent Device Selection: Agents can select the telephony device when logging into Cisco Finesse desktop.

The functionality available to you depends on what your administrator has configured. For example, if your administrator did not define Wrap-Up Reasons, you cannot choose a wrap-up reason.

Note	Cisco Finesse has undergone a user experience refresh in release 12.0(1).

Finesse Supervisor Desktop provides call control functionality and the following:

• Team Performance gadget

• Live Data gadget

• Team Message

Note	To ensure all features of the Finesse supervisor desktop work properly, you must disable pop-up blockers.

Team Performance Gadget

On the Team Performance gadget, you can select a team from a list of teams assigned to you. You can view the agents on that team, their current state, the time in state, their recent call history, and state history and their extension. Click the column headers to sort the information by Agent Name, State, Time in State, or Extension.

The Time in State field refreshes every 10 seconds. When an agent's state changes, the Finesse server sends out an agent state notification and the timer resets to 0. An agent state change includes changing from Not Ready with a reason code to Not Ready with a new reason code.

Note

For the logged out agent, the Time in State field shows the total duration since the agent has logged out. For the time in the logged out state to be displayed, the agent must have logged in or changed the state at least once via Finesse desktop or through other applications post Finesse server restart. If not, this field displays a blank value.

Team Performance gadget also provides the following functionality:

• Silent monitoring: Silently monitor an agent's call.

• Force state change: Force an agent into Ready or Not Ready state or sign out an agent.

When you silently monitor an agent, the Barge In button appears in the call control area. Click this button to barge in to a call between the agent and customer. After you barge in, you can choose to intercept the call by dropping the agent.

Team Message

Supervisors can broadcast messages to their teams. Teams can view the messages sent by their respective supervisors and take necessary action. This is a one-way communication from supervisors to their teams.

The agent state timer appears next to the agent state drop-down when you are in Not Ready or Ready state. This timer updates every second and the format is mm:ss. If you are in any state for more than one hour, the format changes to hh:mm:ss (for example, 05:25 or 01:10:25).

When you change state (for example, from Not Ready to Ready or change the reason code of Not Ready), the timer resets to 00:00.

Finesse provides a separate state control for chat and email. This state control does not have a timer.

The Finesse desktop provides call timers in the Call Control gadget (in the format mm:ss). The call timers provide the following information:

• Total Call Time: Indicates the duration of your current call.

• Hold Time: Indicates the total call on hold time. When you place a call on hold, this timer shows the hold time, followed by the total call time in parentheses.

• Wrap-Up Time: Indicates the duration that you have been in wrap-up state. If wrap-up is enabled, you transition to wrap-up state when you end the call. Depending on the configuration done by the administrator, the timer can either countdown or count up the time.

If the call exceeds one hour, the timer still displays in minutes and seconds. For example, at one hour and 15 seconds, the timer displays 1:00:15.

Note	If the Finesse server cannot accurately calculate the state time or the call time (such as under certain failover conditions), the timer displays in the format "- -:- -"

For chat contacts, a timer appears in the Manage Chat and Email gadget that indicates the duration of the chat session. For email contacts, a timestamp appears in the Manage Chat and Email gadget that indicates the time that the system received the email contact.

If the Cisco Finesse desktop is not the active window and one of the following events occurs, the Finesse desktop either becomes the active window or flashes in the taskbar:

• You receive an incoming call on the desktop.

• You are signed out due to failover or inactivity.

• Your Supervisor signs you out.

The Cisco Finesse desktop behavior varies based on the browser and the number of tabs opened.

Toaster Notification

When there is an incoming call, chat or email and the Cisco Finesse desktop window or tab is inactive, Finesse displays a notification with the call, chat or email details. Click the notification to restore the Finesse desktop.

The Operating System controls the position of the notification and might display it at any one of the four corners of your computer screen.

Toaster notifications fade out time for chat can be configured through Subsystems > Chat and Email > Channel Parameters > No Answer Timeout submenu option from the Unified CCX Administration menu bar.

In a contact center deployment, Cisco Finesse is installed on two nodes. If the Finesse server that you are currently signed in goes out of service, a banner appears at the top of the desktop notifying that the desktop has lost connection to the server.

The Finesse desktop checks if the current Finesse server state is recovered and if the alternate Finesse server is available.

If the current Finesse server recovers, the desktop is reconnected. If it does not recover and the alternate server is available, your desktop redirects to the alternate server and automatically signs you in.

If the desktop fails over or reconnects and the last state you selected prior to the failover was Ready, Finesse attempts to preserve that state. When Finesse recovers, the desktop attempts to send a request to put you back in Ready state.

Note

When the desktop tries to connect to the alternate server, you may see the following pop-up message: Following certificates should be accepted before using Cisco Finesse Desktop..... If you are unable to accept the security certificates, and keep seeing the message to accept the certificates, close the pop-up and continue to sign in.

Note

The Cisco Finesse desktop can only preserve Ready states that were selected on the same desktop. The following exceptions apply: If you are in Wrap-Up state when the desktop recovers, Cisco Finesse does not send a request because that would automatically end your wrap-up session. After the wrap-up timer expires, your state is determined by Unified Communications Manager and may depend on the type of failover that occurred. If your state was changed to Not Ready (either by your supervisor or by the system (for example, Ring No Answer), your selection of Ready is not preserved. Unsolicited state changes are not taken into account. For example, if a supervisor changes your state to Ready (you did not select Ready), your Ready state may not be preserved. If your last selection was Ready and the system attempts to change your state to Ready (such as for Ring No Answer), your selection of Ready is preserved.

Finesse has the following agent session behavior:

• Finesse does not support agents simultaneously sign in to Finesse desktop and Finesse IPPA. Agents must sign in to Finesse desktop or Finesse IPPA.

• Finesse can support a mix of agents where some agents use Finesse IPPA and other agents use Finesse desktop (license permitting).

• When agents are signed in to the Finesse desktop or Finesse IPPA, they can also simultaneously sign in to a third-party application using the Finesse API. (This setup is considered a custom development. Similar to other Finesse customizations, the customer or partner is responsible for proper development and testing of this custom setup.)

The Finesse desktop supports features that improve accessibility for low-vision and vision-impaired users. The following table shows how to navigate the Finesse desktop using the accessibility features.

Note	If you are using Mac keyboard, then press Option instead of Alt. For example, for Language Selector Drop-Down press Option–Down Arrow.

Screen Reader Support

Cisco Finesse also supports JAWS screen reading software for the following elements.

For more information on the supported JAWS version, see Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates (VPAT) report for Contact Center at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/about/accessibility/voluntary-product-accessibility-templates.html.