Usage Licensing

Concurrent Usage - Definitions

From V10.7 - The methodology for counting agents as active has evolved, partly in response to customer demand, and partly because Softdial Contact Center™ (SCC) now provides a multimedia, multichannel ASD® (Automatic Session Distributor).

License usage is defined for each user type as follows:

A predictive/ ASD user may have multiple endpoints configured (see Users, Agents and Endpoints); this allows a user to handle multiple media sessions in parallel (e.g. a voice session as well as chat and email sessions running in parallel). A single concurrent agent license is consumed for each active user, regardless of the number of endpoints configured.

A user of the system is

  • active at the point of logging on to any endpoint
  • inactive on logging off from all endpoints

In both of these cases, licenses are consumed only when the user is actively processing a media session (phone call/ chat/ email, etc).

This methodology enables fair treatment of the following scenarios:

  1. Provisioning many IVR agents for different queues (e.g. 1000 IVR agents; 50 each for 20 queues) when concurrent IVR usage across all queues may only be 50 agents.

    In this scenario, a total of 50 licences total would be consumed.

  2. PBX users, often configured statically. These may have an occupancy rate of perhaps 3%, so for 200 PBX users, perhaps only 6 users will be talking at any one time.

    In this scenario, a total of 6 licences would be consumed.

  3. Packet media sessions, such as email, may be many. A support inbox for a large organisation may receive many thousands of emails per hour. An agent licence for an IVR agent is only consumed for the amount of time that it takes for the IVR to process the email, categorise and requeue it for further processing by the right department.

    In this scenario, a small number of IVR agents will be able to handle the automatic processing of a large volume of email.

  4. The SCC IVR capabilities can be used to deliver chatbots, either as dialog tree applications similar to traditional IVR, or using a goal-seeking AI engine.

    In either scenario, an IVR agent licence is only consumed when the chatbot is in dialog with a customer.