Set up a channel

You can assign a flow to an entry point. Cisco recommends that you use business hours to assign a new flow to an entry. If you already have existing routing strategy flows, it's a good idea to move these flow setups to the entry point by using business hours. For more information, see Business Hours.

Contact Center allows you to create following Channels types:

Chat
Email
Social
Inbound Telephony
Outbound Telephony

The inbound entry point is where a customer's call first arrives in the Contact Center system. For customers calls, you can add one or more toll-free or dial numbers to a specific entry point. The system uses interactive voice response (IVR) to handle the call while it's in the entry point.

The outdial entry point is set up for making outbound (outdial) calls to customers in the Contact Center system. In the list of Outdial Entry Points, there is an entry point called 'Outdial Transfer to Queue' that the system creates automatically. If you need to transfer outbound calls to a queue, you can link the support or dial number to the 'Outdial Transfer to Queue' entry point

Create a channel

Select Services > Contact Center.

From the Contact Center navigation pane, select Customer experience > Channels.

Click Create to create a channel and enter the following information:

Entry Point

Description

Name

The name of the entry point.

The Name can’t exceed 80 characters. It can contain alphanumeric characters, underscores, and hyphens.

Description

A short description of the entry point.

Queue Type

Choose a Inbound queue, and Outbound queue.

Channel Type

Choose a channel type, such as Chat, Email, Social Channel, Outbound or Inbound Telephony.

Social Channel Type

This entry point appears only when you choose Social Channel as a Channel type.

Select from one the following Social Channel:

Facebook Messenger
SMS
WhatsApp

Based on the Channel Type you chose, enter details for the following Entry point Settings:

Entry Point

Description

Timezone

Select the time zone that Business hours use for this entry point.

The default timezone is the timezone of the tenant.

Service Level Threshold

Enter the duration for which a customer request can be in a queue before the system flags it as outside the service level. If the agent completes a customer service request within this time interval, the system considers it within the service level.

Routing Flow

Choose a flow from the drop-down list to assign to this entry point.

This list contains all flows that are created in the Customer Experience > Flow.

If you want to implement the business hours to define working and non-working hours for your organization, we recommend you to choose only those flows in which the Business Hours activity is configured. The Business Hours activity takes the appropriate branch based on the business hours configuration associated with it. For more information about creating business hours entities in Control Hub, see Business Hours.

Contact Center supports building flows and event flows using the flow designer. You can use these flows in an Outdial Entry Point.

Choose the flow that you want to assign for this Outdial Entry Point.

You can choose either a routing strategy or a flow for any outdial entry point. If you choose a routing strategy, you can't customize the outdial features such as selecting flow, music, and outdial queues. You can't use flow control configurations such as Customize ANI, Screen pop, Global variable and so on, as part of the outdial experience. We recommend that you use flows instead of routing strategies to avail any advanced configurations such as Screen pop, Customize ANI, and so on.
For activities that are supported, see Support for workflows in Outdial Entry Point.

Music on hold

Select the music file that you want use in the Outdial Entry Point.

Outdial Queue

Select the outdial queue from the list for the Outdial Entry Point.

If you are creating an inbound telephony entry point, you should map the support or dial numbers. For other entry point types, go to Step 8.

To map the numbers with an inbound entry point, select the numbers in Support Number section.

Support numbers are the phone number customers call to reach your business. You can select multiple phone numbers from the numbers you have configured under Webex calling services as needed. These numbers are already configured in your Webex Calling service.

Click Create to create the entry point.

Edit or delete a channel

You can't edit a Channel type.

1	Sign in to Control Hub.
2	Navigate to Services > Contact Center.
3	From the Contact Center navigation pane, select Customer Experience > Channels.
4	Click the Channel that you want to edit or delete.
5	Edit the Channel details and click Save.
6	To delete the Channel, click delete icon on the top-right corner. You can't delete a Channel that is in an active state.
7	Click Delete in the confirmation pop-up to delete the call recording schedule.