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Introduction to Workforce Management Integration

WFM Integration is a software package that (in separate modules) collects historical statistics and reports real-time user status updates from your CIC servers. WFM Integration makes these historical statistics and real-time user status updates available to third-party workforce management products.

Companies that have PureConnect's Interaction Optimizer software do not need WFM because Interaction Optimizer provides complete workforce management features and is integrated with CIC server software. WFM is for companies that do not have Optimizer and instead use third-party workforce management software. The WFM Historical and Real-Time Adherence (RTA) modules both extract user status information from your CIC servers and make it available to third-party workforce management software. The difference is that:

  • WFM Historical extracts historical information. Use such information to plan workloads and staffing levels. WFM Historical collects historical statistics about the workgroups you select, such as calls handled, average talk time, and abandons. It collects the statistics at intervals. Each third-party software vendor has different requirements for historical reports, so we pull data from different historical tables.

  • WFM Real-Time Adherence extracts up-to-the-minute information about status changes of employees in call centers and other organizational units that you choose to monitor. RTA listens for real-time changes in user status and reports them to the vendor in real time. RTA does not query for historical data and only cares about statuses.

At a high level, the two modules mainly differ in this way. WFM Historical provides historical information so you can analyze and plan for the future. WFM RTA provides real-time information so you can manage your staff and resources in the present.

The same setup program installs both modules of WFM. You configure and run both modules from the same interface. However, each module needs its own license to run.

For more information about WFM, see the Product Information site at https://my.inin.com/support/products/integrations/Pages/Workforce-Management.aspx.

Supported third-party software

WFM is a versatile product that can work with multiple third-party vendors of workforce management software:

  • Blue Pumpkin/Witness/Verint

  • IEX TotalView/NICE

  • GMT

  • Aspect eWFM

  • Invision/Injixo (cloud version of Invision)

  • Pipkins (applies only to RTA)

Requirements

Component Requirement

IC Server

Customer Interaction Center 2016 R2

Application server

Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit), 2016 (64 bit), 2019 (64-bit)

Note:
Do not install the WFM Integration on an IC server. Typically, the WFM Integration is installed on the SQL Server running the I3 DB repository (if applicable) or the WFM vendor's server (if it is a Windows operating system). Both Historical and Real-Time Adherence (RTA) are lightweight applications and can easily be run on the same server with other applications.

Microsoft .NET Framework

.NET 4.0 is required. Without it, Interactive Update does not function correctly.

Database server

SQL Server or Oracle (tables added to existing I3 database repository)

Third-party WFM software supported

Note: We do not test our WFM Historical or Real-Time integrations for each version of the WFM products we integrate with. We do not expect issues because the communication standards used are not such that should be effected by a new version. If there are new standards available in that version of the WFM product then of course we will not comply at this time. Please contact the WFM vendor for specific information about the differences in their version. They are all aware of the specifics on how we integrate with their products.

  • Blue Pumpkin/Witness/Verint

  • IEX TotalView/NICE

  • Aspect eWFM

  • GMT

  • Invision/Injixo (cloud version of Invision)

  • Pipkins (applies only to RTA)

Other requirements

  • Connectivity to joint file share or FTP location on WFM server (Blue Pumpkin, IEX, GMT, Invision, or Aspect eWFM)

  • Access to PureConnect database instance on SQL Server or Oracle

  • For GMT and IEX, set up status-reporting workgroup in Interaction Administrator before configuring Real-Time Adherence.

WFM licensing

WFM Integration is sold in two modules, Historical and Real-Time Adherence. Each module is licensed separately per CIC server. If a customer has three CIC servers (with switchover/backup servers), the customer would need three licenses for WFM Historical and RTA. You can run Historical without an RTA license; you can run RTA without a Historical license.

The license strings are feature based. Each CIC server license must have the necessary features in order for the application modules to function.

  • WFM Historical License Name: I3_FEATURE_WFM_HISTORICAL

  • WFM RTA License Name: I3_FEATURE_WFM_REALTIME

Even without the required licenses, the user can still configure both WFM modules, but the integration services do not start unless there is at least one licensed server. If there is at least one server, integration services start, but the unlicensed servers are not functional from the integration perspective.