CosmoCom Announces Upgrade To CosmoCall Universe

CosmoCom, a global company focused on Call Center Consolidation 2.0, today introduced Version 5.2 of its flagship product CosmoCall Universe. The latest version of CosmoCall Universe adds effective internal communication tools to its external ones, enhancing support of open standards and vendor interoperability, and improving administrative controls. The new version includes significant feature enhancements in the areas of agent-supervisor communication, media server support, and administrative change logging, plus other technology infrastructure updates.

Though contact centers are a high end communication tool, the need for communication between agents and their supervisors is sometimes underserved. This need has given rise to independent add-on products used by many contact centers. CosmoCall Universe now includes tools agents can use to request supervisor assistance, and supervisors can use to broadcast important information to all agents or to any defined group of agents. Agent-initiated help requests are automatically routed to a qualified supervisor who responds by opening up a keyboard chat session with the agent, which can become a voice call with one click. One click can also put the supervisor in silent monitor, whisper, or barge-in mode for the requesting agent’s current call. The assisting chat session is independent of the agent’s conversation with the customer, regardless of the channel. Supervisors can also request chat sessions with agents or with other supervisors. In addition to the need for one-to-one sessions with agents, supervisors often need to broadcast announcements to agents. Now these announcements will pop up on the agents’ screens in similar chat-window style.

Since many of its new customers already had a media server technology strategy in place, CosmoCom has created media server extensions to CosmoDesigner, its GUI service creation tool. These extensions allow customers to enjoy the benefits of the CosmoDesigner environment while using other standards-based media servers to implement the applications. One set of extensions uses the MSCML standard and works with media servers that support that standard like Dialogic’s Snowshore IP Media Server. Another set of extensions is designed for the HP OpenCall environment. Making the CosmoDesigner platform work transparently in a media server environment is another expression of CosmoCom’s commitment to open VOIP standards and VOIP infrastructure interoperability.

As its installed systems grow and the number of administrative users grows with it, the need for additional visibility and control of administrative changes has become very apparent. Just the simple ability to know "what changed" can make all the difference in many operational situations. CosmoCom’s administrative change log feature tracks the who, what, and when of every change made at any level of administrative activity, including configuration changes, agent profile changes, and call routing changes. The new logging capability is implemented in full consistency with the CosmoCall Universe multi-tenant architecture. Each tenant has a log of changes made within that tenant. The system landlord has a log of changes made at the landlord level, plus visibility to the individual tenant logs. Now when the need to know "What changed?" arises, the question can be answered easily, quickly, and completely.

Version 5.2 also includes several internal technology updates. The browser-based agent software now runs in the latest .NET 2.0 environment. All system code is now based on the Visual Studio 2005 development suite, up from the 2003 version. In addition, enhancements to the SIP interface have enabled interoperability certification with the Siemens HiPath 5000 and 8000 product lines. As always, the release incorporates a long list of other minor enhancements and solutions.

"Release 5.2 reflects our philosophy of continuous improvement," commented Ari Sonesh, CosmoCom’s Chairman and CEO. "Every improvement we have introduced was motivated by customer feedback and demonstrable market need. These have always been the key drivers of our development priorities, and this release is no exception."