Release 6.0 of San Jose, California-based Aspect Telecommunications Inc’sCallCenter has just been announced, and the company is claiming that the enhancements the new version brings are the largest and most robust to date. Release 6.0, described a s a single-switch offering for both inbound and outbound call operations, has new Computer-Telephony Integration capabilities, increased interoperability and enhanced remote monitoring and management, according to the company. Specifically, Aspect has integrated its inbound call handling capabilities, with its outbound predictive dialing applications resulting, it says, in increased efficiency, and the elimination of redundancy in inbound and outbound operations. Another new feature is answer- detect – used both to screen out data calls, and to recognise country-specific telephone protocols – which will enable operators to answer the call in the correct language. On the computer-integrated telephony front, link redundancy between the phone system and the computer system is now supported, while the company has also added new computer-integrated telephony options in the shape of Resource Bridge and Event Bridge. Resource Bridge enables groups to be reassigned according to need in real -time, while Event Bridge is designed to enable external data systems to be notified of call state changes, or agent state changes. Interoperability Finally, the company has announced new interoperability capabilities for the product: Temporary Signaling Connections for Network InterQueue has been incorporated – enabling the public switched telephone network to be used as a supplement to, or replacement for, leased T1 lines – and AMIS-based Analog Networking has also been added for the exchange of spoken messages between the CallCenter and other voice mail systems supporting the AMIS-A standard. Finally, the company has added Non-Facility Associated Signaling to enable the CallCenter to use one data channel to support up to eight ISDN Primary Rate Interface connections, and now offers support for the QSIG protocol. Release 6 will be free to existing users; the Event Bridge will cost $20,000; AMIS Analog Networking is $4,000; and the Temporary Signaling Connections will cost $15,000 for existing Network InterQueue users, and $35,000 for new users. All are shipping this month. The single-switch outbound integration will cost around $1,100 per agent, and the Resource Bridge will be priced at $10,000, with both shipping next quarter.
