Call Control for NICE CXone MAX 1.0

Jabra devices are designed with the agent in the center. Depending on your model, Jabra Devices enable agents to control calls with greater efficiency. Jabra Call Control for the NICE CXone MAX softphone is a web based solution, that allows the agents to take advantage of the full set of call control features of their Jabra headset when using MAX.

Setting NICE CXone MAX up with Jabra Call Control

The solution is set up as a custom workspace in MAX. This provides a seamless experience for the agents, that in most cases will be ready to take advantage of the integration without further configuration. Depending on your NICE CXone configuration custom workspaces are setup either by business unit or by team.

Do not Show the Custom Workspace

NICE CXone offers the option to not automatically open a custom workspace, when MAX is opened. The workspace will still be loaded, and can be still opened manually by the agent from the MAX glance view. Since the custom workspace is often only used for one time configuration, this is the recommended option. To set this up, the workspace endpoint URL should have the following query string parameter: ?icAgentCWHide=true.

Device Integration

The Jabra Call Control solution running in the browser, must have access to the Jabra devices plugged-in to the agent's machine. This can be facilitated in two ways: either using a standard called WebHID or using a browser extension. If the browser extension is not installed, WebHID will automatically be used.

WebHID is a browser standard. With WebHID no additional software needs to be installed on the agent's machine. When using WebHID, the agent must manually pair an attached Jabra device to make it available for call control in MAX. This is done by the press of a button on the configuration page. The pairing is a one time action, and the result is stored in the browser.

In some cases the WebHID solution may be insufficient. If the agent has multiple softphones running, the different softphones may all try to control the device, or the device may be sending commands to the wrong softphone. To solve this issue, Jabra has developed a SDK for JavaScript. It consists of a browser extension and a helper application that must be deployed to the agent's machine. With this solution all attached Jabra devices are directly available in MAX.

Configure NICE CXone

There are a few simple steps to set up the integration:

  • Identify the correct endpoint for the integration. This depends the chosen hosting and version of the integration.
  • Select a business unit or team in NICE CXone that should be using the integration.
  • Create a custom workspace with the integration endpoint identified above. Optionally add ?icAgentCWHide=true to the endpoint to avoid automatic loading of the workspace.
  • Optionally install the Jabra SDK for Browser, as described above, on the agent's machine.
  • Ask an agent of the relevant team to open the custom workspace and verify that a Jabra device can be selected for call control.

Using Jabra Call Control for NICE CXone MAX

Jabra Call Control for NICE CXone MAX is all about the calls. All the agent needs to do is to select what Jabra device should be used for call control. The Jabra Call Control workspace contains a simple configuration page. From here the active device can be selected. When MAX is first opened it will automatically select the first Jabra device it sees.

Select the device to use for call control

If WebHID is used, no devices will be available to the agent, unless they have been explicitly added. Adding a device is done simply by pressing the Add Device button, and then selecting the appropriate device from the list:

Connect to a device using WebHID by clicking Add Device

Hosting

Jabra hosts and supports all released versions of the integration. To ensure stable operations older versions will remain available, even when newer versions are released. This also allows your organization to roll out updates at your own pace per business unit or team.

The solution hosted by Jabra is easy to set up, it has high availability and updates are directly available. It is also a secure solution, and no data about your organization will be shared with Jabra. It is the recommended way of integrating Jabra devices with MAX. The solution can also be self-hosted. See below for details.

Privacy and Security

Connect to a device using WebHID by clicking Add Device

The integration is a JavaScript application and is served over a secure connection. It runs in the user's browser alongside MAX. When MAX is first loaded, it directs the browser to 

https://nice-cxone-max.jabra.com/{VERSION}/index.html

to download the integration. When the integration application has been loaded in the user's browser, every aspect of the integration runs locally on the user's own machine. The integration receives events from MAX and from the user's Jabra headset, and it sends commands the other way to keep the parts in sync. All this happens within the browser. The MAX client will send information about the call to the CXOne cloud, but no data will be sent back to the Jabra cloud.

The communication between the integration and the headset can either be done using standard WebHID or by using the Jabra browser extension. In both cases all communication between the integration and the device happens locally on the user's machine.

The integration is distributed by the Microsoft Azure CDN (Content Delivery Network). Azure CDN uses "points-of-presence" (POP) servers distributed all over the globe. Users will be directed to the best performing server, which is usually the closest one. For an overview of network server locations, see Azure CDN Coverage.

Self-hosted Integration

If the hosted Jabra Call Control solution doesn't meet the needs or requirements of your organization, it can also be hosted in your own infrastructure. The integration is a pure JavaScript front end application. It consists of static JavaScript and HTML files. It can be hosted by any webserver that can serve static files.

Each hosted version of the Jabra Call Control solution also contains a package that can be used for self hosting. It is available from a versioned URL similar to the integration itself: 

https://nice-cxone-max.jabra.com/{VERSION}/integration_{VERSION}.zip

It can also be downloaded directly from the Jabra Call Control for NICE CXone MAX page.

To host the solution, simply unpack the integration package and serve the contained files from your webserver. Make sure to update the NICE CXone configuration and point it to the index.html as described above.