BPCC 5.33.0 Release Notes

Added/Updated Features

Task and Email Automation with Scenarios

This release introduces Task and Email scenarios that open up new possibilities for automation. Use scenarios to apply logic, query external data sources, dynamically adjust services or priorities, set screen pops, and more, before routing tasks or emails to agents. This provides granular control over each interaction similar to voice and chat scenarios.

Task and Email scenarios have access to all the blocks found in Workflows, and a few others specific to tasks and emails. A significant addition, the Ask AI block (explored in more detail below), allows you to create powerful automations in your email scenarios using the latest artificial intelligence models from a number of providers.

Blocks for Task and Email Scenarios

Alongside the Ask AI block, the following blocks give you a wide range of options for how you automate task and email interactions:

• Item Completed: This block concludes scenario processing for a task or email and applies a disposition, similar to the Set Disposition block in voice and chat scenarios.

• Set Priority: Allows you to dynamically change an item's priority during scenario execution, influencing its position in queues and how it's treated by the Find Agent block.

• Set Service: Enables the scenario to change the service associated with a task or email, facilitating dynamic re-routing based on evolving conditions or information gathered by the scenario.

• Move to Service Queue: Provides the ability to move an item from an agent's personal queue back to the appropriate service queue, useful for escalation or re-queuing logic.

• Find Agent: This block includes robust escalation capabilities with multiple, time-based intervals (respecting business hours) and a Timeout exit path if no agent is found.

• Get Statistics: Allows your scenario to query various real-time queue and agent statistics.

• CRM Screenpop: Configure relevant CRM records to display to the agent when handling the interaction.

AI-Powered Features & Enhancements

AI Agent Scenario Block

This release updates the AI Agent block, focusing on changes to configuration and context management. New features allow users to automatically generate outcomes from instructions, customize system prompts and AI creativity, and manage how the conversation context is maintained.

Automated Outcome Generation

A "Generate Outcomes" button has been added below the "Instructions to AI field". Write your instructions in plain language, and the AI analyzes the text to propose outcomes and variables (e.g., account_number, payment_amount) required for each outcome. This feature also acts as a real-time prompt testing tool, allowing you to see how your chosen model interprets your prompt.

Better UI

The interface for defining data collection has been revised, and each field now includes inline help text to guide configuration.

Conversation Context Management

The block now has better options for maintaining context across multiple turns or even between different AI blocks in a scenario. The "Include preceding transcripts" setting was insufficient for complex workflows, and is replaced by a more powerful "Include conversation context" setting which introduces options:

• AI-Generated Summary: The block can generate a summary of the interaction after it runs. This summary is stored in a variable $(aiAgentSummary) and can be passed to the next AI Agent block or a human agent.

• Additional Context: A new "view/edit Context" interface allows users to provide extra information to the AI, such as results from a database query, free-form instructions, or scenario variables.

You can choose to include the summary, the additional context, or both in the next AI request.

Improved Transcripts for Monitoring

For improved monitoring, AI Agent responses are now included in interaction transcripts and attributed to the "System" party, as long as Record IVR call segment is enabled for the service.

Adjustable AI Creativity (Temperature)

A "Temperature" setting has been added to the block's configuration letting you control the creativity of the AI provider's responses. Lower values produce more deterministic and focused outputs, while higher values result in more diverse responses.

Optional Final AI Response

A "Trim final AI response" checkbox has been introduced to control the delivery of the AI's last message. By default, this option is checked, preserving the existing behavior of suppressing the final reply. Unchecking it will pass the final response to the customer. This can be used for confirmation messages or concluding statements when no data needs to be collected.

System Prompt Customization

An "Advanced" button now provides access to the "System Instruction Prompts" dialog. This interface allows modification of the default system instructions sent to the AI provider, as well as the prompt used for summary generation. The hardcoded language instruction has been removed, so language can be specified directly in the main "Instructions to AI" field.

Updated Defaults and Settings Clarity

Default values for "Customer reply timeout" and "Max dialog turns" have been increased to better suit common use cases. Inline help text has been added to all timeout-related settings. "Max consecutive reply timeouts" has been renamed to "Max consecutive retry attempts" to more accurately reflect its function.

Ask AI Scenario Block For Workflows and Email Scenarios

The Ask AI scenario block lets you use advanced AI models directly in your Email scenarios. You can send the content of an email, along with other contextual data (such as information retrieved from your CRM or elsewhere), to a configured AI provider. Some of the ways you can use AI in your scenarios:

• Extract Information: Identify intent, sentiment, and key entities.

• Provide Analysis: Synthesize emails with data from external sources.

• Reduce Response Time: Generate suggested replies for agents to review, or even auto-reply without agent intervention.

• Automate Decisions: Drive scenario logic, such as routing to a specialized queue or automatically setting dispositions.

Note: The Ask AI block is also available in Workflows.

AI Integration Supports Claude from Anthropic

You can now connect Anthropic API accounts to your contact center, making it possible to use Anthropic's Claude-family of AI models to power the AI Agent block within your scenarios. To configure the integration, create a new "Anthropic Claude AI" AI Provider integration account for your contact center. You will need to provide your Anthropic API key.

Contact your service provider about using Claude if you rely on them to configure AI providers.

Custom AI Gateway

In addition to the Anthropic integration, you can use the "Custom AI Gateway", a new AI Provider integration account type, to connect to any AI providers compatible with the OpenAI Chat Completions API specification. Consequently, a broader range of AI services can be used to power the AI Agent block.

Contact your service provider to discuss AI provider options if you rely on them for AI provider configuration.

Salesforce Integration

Task Routing with Salesforce Flow

You can now distribute tasks to your contact center agents using Salesforce Flow automations. When changes occur to a Salesforce Case, such as its creation, a change in its assignment, an update to its status, or a modification of its priority, Salesforce Flow workflows and triggers can initiate the creation and distribution of a corresponding task within Bright Pattern.

Activity Forms in the Salesforce Communication Widget 1.0

This update lets you move agent work fully into Salesforce. Previously, agents who conducted most of their work within Salesforce (such as looking up customer data and managing cases) still had to switch to Bright Pattern to fill out activity forms after an interaction. This meant that while customer information was in Salesforce, the details captured in these forms were logged in Bright Pattern.

Now, agents can complete Activity Forms directly within the Communication Widget integrated into Salesforce, without opening the Agent Desktop, and the content of call and email cases can be saved to Salesforce.

When creating Activity Forms, administrators can map form fields to CRM fields using the new "Integration Field" property. Mapped fields send form data directly to the CRM in which the Communication Widget is running. This ensures that all data, whether manually entered by the agent or automatically recorded, is saved directly in Salesforce alongside the relevant customer records.

Field types that can be defined with an "Integration Field" include:

• Text
• List
• Number
• Date Time
• Phone Number
• Email Address

As with forms in the Agent Desktop, if an Activity Form has required fields, agents must complete them within the ACW time limits.

Emails and Cases

Clickable Case Number in Activities Tab

The Activities tab for a contact in Agent Desktop now includes a "Cases" column, which contains a clickable case number for activities with an associated case. This direct access to case details helps agents understand the full context of a contact's interaction history, especially when an activity relates to a case handled by a different agent or when investigating past interactions.

Additionally, agents can now select which columns are visible in the Activities tab, including: Date, Time, Agent, Disposition, Duration (for calls), Subject (for emails), Notes, Case number, Sentiment, and Service.

Introducing Case Bookmarks

Agents can use the new Bookmarks feature to create a personal list of cases for monitoring or follow-up. Cases can be bookmarked irrespective of their current status or whether they are assigned to a specific team or personal queue. This offers a consistent way to keep track of cases that require attention. Key elements of case bookmarks:

• A button on the case preview panel allows agents to bookmark or unbookmark a case.

• The "Bookmarks" tab in the My Cases section of the Agent Desktop displays all cases bookmarked by the agent.

• Bookmarked cases remain in the "Bookmarks" tab until unbookmarked, providing a persistent view.

Choose Whether Dispositions are Required for Forwarded Emails

A new setting, Require dispositions for forwarded emails, controls whether agents can forward emails without selecting a disposition. When deselected, forwarded emails inherit the most recent disposition from the case history. This means that for purely informational forwards, if a disposition can be inherited from case history, agents do not need to manually select one. This setting does not affect disposition requirements for replies.

Option to Add Case Number to Outgoing Email subject Lines

You can now configure your contact center to insert case numbers into the subject lines of outgoing emails. This allows agents and customers to more easily identify and track email conversations for specific support cases. You control the format of the inserted text and can specify exclusions for certain email types, such as unsolicited outbound or forwarded emails. The settings Insert case number into subject line of outgoing emails]], Format, Exclude unsolicited outbound emails, and Exclude forwarded emails determine if and how case numbers are added to email subjects.

Other Improvements

Automated Skill Rotation for Balanced Interaction Handling

The Automated Skill Rotation feature makes it possible to ensure a portion of your omnichannel agents remain available for specific types of interactions, even when they handle multiple concurrent interactions of another type. This capability addresses scenarios where agents managing both voice calls and multiple chats might become fully occupied with chats, leaving no capacity for incoming calls.

Using Automated Skill Rotation, you can:

• Define a group of agents based on a set of common skills and their minimum values.

• Select a specific "target skill" (e.g., "Chat Availability") for this group that the system will manage.

• Configure the system to periodically rotate the value of this target skill (e.g., from 100 down to 0, and from 0 up to 100) among the eligible agents in the group.

• Specify a minimum number or percentage of agents within the group who should always have the target skill set to the lower value (e.g., 0), effectively reserving their capacity.

This automated process allows for consistent service levels across different media channels without requiring supervisors to manually adjust agent skills throughout the day. Configuration is accessible via the new Availability Rotation page within the Contact Center Configuration section.

Adaptive Capacity Allocation for Chat Interactions

Chat conversations can involve pauses, as customers may take time to type or attend to other matters. Adaptive capacity allocation addresses the challenge of agents waiting for slow customer replies or chats being unnecessarily re-queued.

You can configure chat services to dynamically modify the capacity an active chat session consumes from an agent's total capacity, based on the recent history of the customer's response times. If a customer consistently responds slowly, the capacity value assigned to that chat decreases.

When the agent has enough available capacity, new interactions (of any media type, based on precedence) can be routed to them. Importantly, the slow-responding chat remains with the original agent, ensuring continuity, and any associated screen-pops or chat history within the agent's view are preserved. This allows agent time to be efficiently spread across multiple conversations, even if some have long reply latencies.

Send Custom P-Asserted-Identity SIP Headers

The scenario variable $(item.sip.send.headers) now supports sending P-Asserted-Identity SIP Headers. You may need to contact your service provider to enable this functionality in your contact center.

Furthermore, this update also expands the user properties accessible through the Get User Configuration scenario block to include:

• Chat nickname
• Work phone
• Mobile phone
• Phone PIN
• Title
• About me
• Country
• City
• State
• Time zone
• Rank
• Max concurrent chats
• Record calls
• Do not record calls
• Screen recording enabled
• Voicemail enabled
• Voicemail timeout

Safer Regular Expression Processing in Scenarios and Workflows

To protect your contact center from performance issues caused by inefficient regular expressions in Scenarios, a parsing time limit has been implemented for the built-in replace function.

When a regular expression operation takes longer than the configured maximum duration, the process is automatically stopped. In such cases, the replace function will return the original input string, as if no match was found.

Option for Continuous After Call Work (ACW) Timer

A new option, ACW timer to continue even if the agent is busy, is available in the Admin Portal under Call Center Configuration > General Settings. This setting controls how After Call Work (ACW) timers operate when agents are managing multiple interactions.

Behavior when the new option is OFF (default)

If an agent, after finishing an interaction with ACW configured (like a phone call), receives another interaction of a different media type (like an email or chat), the ACW timer for the first interaction will pause. While paused, the agent's capacity is limited by the first interaction, preventing them from receiving new interactions of the first type (e.g., new calls) until the second interaction is also finished. By keeping the second interaction active, agents can abuse this system behavior as a work avoidance technique to avoid being routed any calls.

Behavior when the option is turned ON (new behavior)

The ACW timer for an interaction continues to count down, even if the agent switches focus to another interaction. Furthermore, break times following an interaction are more consistently honored because the ACW completes in the background, freeing the agent according to the intended schedule.

Option to Pause Screen Recording when Voice Recording is Paused

A new Quality Management setting Pause screen recording when voice recording is paused, allows for audio and screen recording synchronization. If this checkbox is selected, an agent's screen recording will pause whenever their voice recording is paused for any service call, and resume when voice recording resumes. This supports compliance. For example, it prevents screen capture of payment card details when voice recording is paused to collect this information.

Japanese Localization Updates

This release includes updates to the Japanese language user interface, providing a smoother and more intuitive experience for Japanese agents and administrators.

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