Virtualized computer telephony integrated link for enhanced functionality in call centers

US6359981B1 · kind B1 · utility

Assignee

• Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. · US

Inventors

• Igor Neyman · Palo Alto, US
• Myhailo Barskyy · San Francisco, US
• Alec Miloslavsky · Hillsborough, US
• Oleg Bondarenko · San Francisco, US
• Valeriy Issayev · San Bruno, US
• Andrei Petrov · Palo Alto, US
• Pavel Karpenko · Walnut Creek, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Oct 14, 1997
• Grant date: Mar 19, 2002
• Expiry date: Oct 14, 2017

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H04M2242/22
• WIPO field: Telecommunications
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

A telephony call center has agent workstations having telephones connected to station-side ports of a telephone switching apparatus adapted to receive and switch conventional telephone calls to the telephones, and also computer platforms connected on a local area network (LAN). A processor also connected on the LAN has a wide area network (WAN) port and is adapted to receive and distribute computer-simulated telephone calls from the WAN to computer platforms at the agent stations. At individual agent stations the telephone and computer platform is connected by a Telephone Application Programming Interface (TAPI)-compliant bridge. Status of calls of both types at agent workstations is communicated to a network-level router by the processor having a WAN connection, which may also receive computer-simulated calls. The router may then make routing decisions based on agent status relative to both kinds of calls.