CRM Integration Guide

Many

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customers who operatecall centers or contact centers are interested in ways to connect their

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phone system with their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This guide discusses the various ways to integrate with external systems, and what tools and resources to use for each type of integration.

Initiate outbound calls from another application

Click-to-Call

This functionality should not be confused with a predictive dialer. It’s not intended to be used for a telemarketing application, or for applications where many phone numbers are dialed automatically in a sequence. It’s intended to be used to streamline efficiency, and allow the initiation of a call without reading and keying in a phone number.

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software includes a feature called Click-to-Call which allows you to make your phone numbers hyperlinked in your web based CRM applications so that when you click the phone number, it originates an outbound call from the logged in extension.

Programs like Outlook that use a standard TAPI interface will be able to initiate calls using your

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system.

TAPI

To initiate a call from a

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IP phone from an instruction on a Windows-based PC, our TAPI interface can be used. This is useful if a CRM application running on a desktop PC would like to place a call through the

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system to the associated employee's desk phone.

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systems purchased with HUD do include a TAPI driver for Windows XP called HUDTAPI. It was developed in order to give the Microsoft dialer built into numerous tools (Including Microsoft Outlook) access to place calls through HUD. Compatibility with other TAPI compliant software is likely, but not guaranteed. We do not currently provide technical support at this time without an ICB retainer agreement with a particular customer. That means that without a written agreement with us use of HUDTAPI is allowed, but not supported by our technical support team. Inquiries for support for related troubleshooting will be politely declined.

HUDTAPI is a TAPI driver installed into the Windows XP OS that will show up as a TAPI "line". It will be available in the "Connect using line" setting along side "IPCONF LINE" and "H323 Line". This section can be found in the Microsoft "Phone Dialer" application under "Dialing Options" -> "Connect Using Line". You can also verify the installation of HUDTAPI using Start->Control Panel->Phone and Modem Options->Advanced and check for "HUDTAPI Telephone Service Provider".

To establish a service contract for HUDTAPI, we will require:

1. Direct access to contact software developers writing or integrating the TAPI application.

2. Unrestricted remote access to a customer provided test environment that houses both the customer's application and a system with HUDTAPI installed.

3. Support will be restricted to only tested Windows versions and service packs.

4. Support hours will be coordinated in advance by appointment only. It's developer support, not a call center.

This is a way for a serious software vendor to get the product integrated with limited assistance from Fonality if needed. If no assistance is required from Fonality, you may proceed without our involvement using one of the following two approaches:

• Purchase a small non-refundable system from Fonality for the purpose of testing the integration.

• Download and install a Trixbox system, and install the free HUDlite application, which also includes HUDTAPI. If they can integrate with that, then they will be able to come back and purchase a

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  system knowing that it will be compatible, as the HUDTAPI service provider is the same on both platforms.

Using HUD Web Launcher

NOTE: This functionality requires the "Agent" version of HUD.

Open a URL on receiving an inbound call

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systems may include an optional software program named HUD Agent that is used to identify inbound calls by Caller-ID information, among many other things. One of the features of HUD is a setting called “Web Launcher” that will allow you to open up a custom configured URL automatically in a web browser window when a call comes in. You can pass the Caller-ID number to your web application in a variable to allow you to look up your customer information by Caller-ID information. Also available, along with caller-ID number information, is the caller-ID name and the extension number of the extension receiving the call.

To configure HUD for Web Launching, within HUD, go to File-> Settings-> Web Launcher. Check the box next to "View URL on incoming call", and in the text box below, enter the URL of the web application, with the appropriate parameters, and close.

You can configure the URL to match the URL needed to integrate with your web-based CRM application. We know of customers using this to pull up customer/opportunity records in SugarCRM and Salesforce.com CRM systems using this feature.

Please note that occasionally, with Salesforce.com, the caller_number variable must be the last parameter on the call line.

Open a URL when placing an Outbound call

Similarly to the functionality described above, one of the features within HUD will allow you to open up a custom configured URL automatically in a web browser window when a call is originated from within HUD. You can pass the Caller-ID number of the number being dialed to your web application in a variable to allow you to look up your customer information by Caller-ID information. Also available, along with caller-ID number information, is the caller-ID name and the extension number of the extension placing the call.

To configure HUD for Web Launching, within HUD, go to File-> Settings-> Web Launcher. Check the box next to "View URL on outgoing call", and in the text box below, enter the URL of the web application, with the appropriate parameters, and close.

Using Custom Applications

While unsupported by Fonality, it is possible for a customer to configure HUD Web Launcher as described above, and have a custom desktop application that would "listen" on TCP port 80 at IP address 127.0.0.1 (localhost) and parse the incoming HTTP GET request for the passed caller/extension information, similarly to a very bare-bones webserver.

Detailed Call Records

For some CRM integrations, the logged records of each call are needed in order to assemble a history of calls between customers and various agents. Although this is an advanced integration that will be very specific to your CRM application, we do sometimes get requests for this. You can collect the call data records (CDR) from the

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system in Comma Separated Values (CSV) format and insert them into a database of your choice. For details, see KB article How to find raw CDR files for details on where to locate these files, and what format they are presented in.

Custom Call Routing and Special Configuration

Many call centers operate multiple queues, and want to be able to intelligently route calls to different Queues using number dialed (DID) or by more specific information entered by the customer. The

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already includes a Call Sequence item named “Go to Submenu by Number Dialed” that you can use to route calls based on what phone number was dialed by the caller. However, sometimes more intelligent routing is desired for applications like the following:

• Prompt caller for contract number, and be routed to a priority queue if they have an active contract in your database.

• Look at the caller-id of the inbound caller, and look up what state in the US they are calling from, and route them to the closest local office.

• Prompt the user to enter their zip code to be routed to your nearest retail store.

• Integration with your logistics system to allow customers to know when shipments are due to arrive.

• Allow lookup of billing information (last payment received, remaining balance, next payment due date, etc.)