Interaction Designer COM API

The Interaction Designer COM API gives developers programmatic control over the familiar visual objects exposed by Interaction Designer. This API provides object-oriented access Designer "objects", such as handlers, tools, subroutines exit paths, and aspects of Designer itself.

Developers who are familiar with handler development and with a programming language that supports the component object model can use this API to create applications that integrate with Interaction Designer.

As mentioned earlier, Interaction Designer is the visual programming environment for CIC that creates sophisticated server applications. Designer is powerful-all of Customer Interaction Center's default event-processing behaviors were created using Interaction Designer, without writing code.

The Interaction Designer COM API makes it possible to manipulate objects in Interaction Designer by writing procedural code, using traditional programming languages such as C++ or Visual Basic 6.

New objects, such as handlers, can be created on the fly. The API is a gateway into Interaction Designer that provides access to tools, handlers, steps, messages, subroutines, initiators, exit paths, and to properties of Designer itself. This API is compatible with Windows programming languages that support COM.

Designer COM objects

In Interaction Designer, handler developers lay out logic that responds to a given event by arranging and connecting on-screen graphical objects. Each object performs a specific task, such as sending a fax, e-mail, or routing a call. These event-processing programs are called handlers.

Handlers encapsulate program logic within graphically connected nodes, called steps, for events processed by the CIC server. Each step is created by dragging a tool (a template definition of each step) from a palette, pasting it in the workspace, and editing the tool's properties. Interaction Designer provides an extensible palette of tools that serve as building blocks for building handlers.

The first step in each handler is an initiator-it identifies the event that starts the handler. An example of an event might be Incoming Call. When Interaction Processor receives a notification that an Incoming Call event has occurred, it starts the handler whose initiator is configured for Incoming Call.

Interaction Designer publishes handler logic. This process converts visually designed logic to Java program code that is compiled to create a highly efficient server application. Most non-visual objects (supported by the API) are analogs of familiar visual objects in Interaction Designer. For example, a handler object in the API provides access to a collection of step objects. The image below shows the correlation between visual elements in Interaction Designer and objects exposed by the API:

Interfaces in the Designer COM API provide access to familiar objects such as handlers, tools, subroutines, or variables, and even to some aspects of Designer itself. Each step has properties such as the step name, position, and exit paths that can be managed programmatically. Likewise, you can call methods that perform actions on Designer objects. For example, you can publish a handler by calling the Publish method of a handler object, or open a handler by calling the OpenHandler method of the Designer object.

The II3IDStep, II3IDStepLink, and II3IDExitPath interfaces wrapper tool steps, exit paths, and linkages between steps.

Note:
Interaction Designer must be running when Designer COM applications are executed.

This API provides a comprehensive set of classes that wrapper tools, handlers, steps, messages, subroutines, initiators, exit paths, and properties of Designer itself. New objects (handlers, steps, etc.) can be created and published under program control, and existing objects can be enumerated and modified on the fly.

Note:
For more information about Interaction Designer COM API, see the Interaction Designer COM API Reference at https://help.genesys.com/cic/mergedProjects/wh_dcom/desktop/designer_com_api_reference.htm. It provides a complete reference to objects, methods, and properties.