The following information provides an overview of the technology and architecture used by the Infinity platform.

The whole platform consists of two main application interfaces (Console and Contact Manager), with a suite of back end services. The applications and services are written using Microsoft .NET v2 Visual Basic.

• Administration
• Script Designer
• Reporting
• Quality Assurance
• Human Resources
• Timesheets

• Full contact management, list recycling etc

• Realtime Status of each agent
• Chat
• Message Broadcast

This is a wrapper for the 'Script Engine' without utilising the Reporting/CTI/List Management/Live Button interfaces

Web services have been used to provide the data access and business logic layer between Console, Contact Manager and the database. The use of web services for data access can reduce the load placed on the database server by reducing the number of connections as it allows data to be cached by the web service. Security can be enhanced as there is just a single configuration file, allowing data to be kept in a secure location at the heart of the business.

Web services also allow expansion of the business to occur quickly with the need for minimal additional hardware, as a single web service can handle a large number of users, additional web servers can be added either at the same site or at additional sites.

The use of web services also allows third party applications to connect and use the Infinity database.

We have designed Contact Manager to be telephony platform independent by developing a standard interface which we use to integrate with the telephony API, this allows Contact Manager to provide standard functionality regardless of the telephony system in use.

We have integrated to the following telephony platforms;

• Callmedia (Azzurri)
• CT-Connect (Envox)
• Aspect (Melita)
• Intertel (Mitel)
• Ultra
• SunDial

As well as providing a flexible interface for the telephony system, we also provide an interface for integrating with a Recorder platform. We currently have an integration available now to a free PC sound card based recorder, which makes use of a 'Danaswitch' - PC to telephone connector - which routes the conversation to the PC sound card.

Infinity Desktop allows its scripting functionality to be enhanced by using custom built .NET controls. The use of custom controls allow you to add simple, or complex, functionality to the agent script. The other benefit of using .NET controls is that they do not need to be registered on every agent machine, just included in the Contact Manager application folder.

This is a scheduler service that calls other services at regular intervals. The services that can currently be managed are

• Inbound Email Collector : This will poll a POP3 or Exchange mailbox and load the emails into the Infinity database, creating a task for the agent to process. The Email collector is able to send standard automatic reply messages and filter out messages that are considered junk mail.
• Outbound Email Sender : The Email Sender is used to send out the email responses generated by agents when they process the emails loaded by the Email Collector.
• Automated Data Loading and Exporting : Other services managed by the Infinity Manager are imports and exports with the relevant files being sourced or sent to an FTP site for instance. The FTP service takes into account the different user accounts and permissions required to access the FTP area.

With call centre campaigns requiring multi-skilled agents Contact Manager allows your agents to process different types of task - Inbound Calls, Emails and Callbacks. Agents can be assigned to mulitple task types each with different priorities - allowing some agents to be allocated emails over callbacks or vice versa.

Contact Manager provides a Task Viewer for agents to see how many, and what kind of tasks are waiting to be processed, and a Task Manager for Team Leaders which will allows them to allocate tasks to specific agents or skills.

Infinity Desktop is designed to present agent state changes (talk, wrap, break etc.,) to the Infinity Live server via 'fire and forget' UDP data streams. There is no error handling for any packets that don’t make it for a network failure or other reason.

The link between the Infinity Live server to the Infinity Live client is via a locked down IP (managed open connection) - which means that it handles network failures better than UDP by keeping a record of lost packets etc., The Live server can also access Infinity database data.