Scaling Contact Centers with Asterisk - Astricon 2014 Presentation

Presented by:Corey S. McFadden, Voneto

CONTACT CENTERS

Scaling & Asterisk

Communications Solutions

CustomerPremises

• Business Phone Systems

• Contact Center Platforms

• Managed Services

Data Centers &Cloud Platform

• Managed Telecom Services

• SIP Trunking

• DR & Business Continuity

• Cloud Phone Systems

• Cloud Contact Center

24 Hour Support / Network Operations

Partners

www.voneto.com

Scaling Asterisk Contact Centers – Astricon 2014www.voneto.com – 215-344-2222

About Voneto


Voneto Operations


• Communications Focused• National Customer Footprint• 24x7 Support & Services Organization• 3 Data Center Locations

• Pennsylvania, Virginia, Oregon

Voneto: 2014 Digium Pinnacle Partner Award

Why Voneto?

Schedule 70 IT Prime Contractor


Some Customers…

Asterisk Contact Centers Overview



Typical Inbound Contact Centers

Small (<20 Agents)

• FreePBX / Elastix / Switchvox

• Basic Queue Configurations

• Ring All or Round Robin

• Basic Analytics

• Queuemetrics

• Asternic

• None

+

Scaling Challenges



Scaling Challenges

• Single Server Capacity / Risk

• Concurrent calls per server not unlimited.

• Influences: Factors such as call recording

• APP_QUEUE

• Monolithic dialplan application

• Lacks many features

• Stability issues under higher loads

• Not updated


Scaling Challenges

• CHAN_SIP

• Doesn’t scale extremely well.

• Largely secondary issue due to app_queue.

Some Solutions…



Scaling Solutions / Concepts

• Multi-Server

• Scale beyond single server limits

• N+1 Architecture

• Agent / Queue Federation

• Track call & agent states across multiple servers.

• Requires centralized call control

• FastAGI


Large-Scale Call Flow

PSTN

CTI Server


Large-Scale System Admin

Admin UI

User Admin IVR Admin ACD Admin Endpoint Mgmt.

Unified Reporting


Other Contact Center Needs

• Predictive Dialing

• Agent Productivity Analytics

• Web Chat

• E-Mail Workflows

• Non-Communication Workflows (i.e. Backoffice)

• Speech Analytics

• Work Force Management


Asterisk Contact Centers Intro.

Basic Asterisk

Asterisk + Web UI

Asterisk + Commercial Contact Center Solution

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Commercial Products



Presence Technology

• Inbound

• Outbound

• Predictive, Progressive, Preview, Robo, etc.

• On-Screen Scripting

• Web Chat

• Social Media

• E-Mail

• Backoffice

• Unified Admin


Presence Technology

REPORT USER

INTEGRATE ADM

IN

COREUNIFIEDCORE

PBXACD

DIALER

MULTI-CHANNEL

BACK-OFFICE

BLENDINGIR / IVR

RECORD

SCRIPT

QUALITY

…


Commercial Products Continued…

• Wombat Dialer

• From Loway (Queuemetrics) here @ Astricon

• ViciDial

• Long-time open source solution

• Many Others…

Customer Examples



Medieval Times

• ~40 Agents

• Inbound Call Flow

• Customer Service & Ticket Sales

• Multi-Location

• Atlanta, GA & Brea, CA

• Skill & Time of Day Routing

• Language / Customer Service


Medieval Times


Arriva Medical

• ~800 Agents

• Inbound / Outbound

• Predictive Dialing

• “Robo Calling”

• Multi-Location

• Coral Springs, FL

• Phoenix, AZ

• Philippines

• Complex Needs


Arriva Medical

What’s Next?



Asterisk 13: ARI & PJSIP

• ARI API

• App-level Call Control

• Node.js

• Pair with central CTI for fine-grained call manipulation

• PJSIP

• Significant Scaling vs. CHAN_SIP

Lessons & Conclusions



Conclusions

• Large Scaling is Possible

• Many Approaches & Solutions

• Commercial Products Available

• Asterisk 13 = Bigger & Better Toolkit


Q & A

• Questions?

• E-Mail for Slide Deck