Telephony Glossary - Page 8

Reengineering - A business term attributed to Michael Hammer, meaning to study a business process and redesign it to improve performance, thereby reducing costs or increasing customer satisfaction. Solutions might include cutting out unnecessary or redundant steps or shifting responsibility for certain steps from one party to another. For example, instead of calling Call Center agents for train schedules, callers with touch-tone telephones might press telephone keys corresponding to the point of origin, destination, and date and time they want to travel, and hear a schedule of train times.

Reference accounts or customers - Satisfied customers or contacts who have indicated their willingness to be contacted by prospective customers.

Relational database management system - See RDBMS.

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) - Any software program that stores and manages data and allows the user to link data in useful ways. For example, it might allow a user to locate a customer by name, transaction date, customer number, region, or customer rep, or by selecting from a list. The user may be able to go from a customer information screen to a screen displaying the customer's past purchases, and then to a screen of detailed information on a specific purchase.

Remote Administration Monitoring - A Lucent Technologies Professional Service that allows remote administration of client's applications using remote console feature. For customers who don't have the internal resources or don't want to develop own CTI expertise.

Request Feature - One of ASAI's eight Application Service Elements (ASEs), which allows the application to invoke station features (activate/deactivate call forwarding, login/logout an ACD agent) for stations within the switch.

Right-To-Use (RTU) fee - Fee system sometimes used to charge customers for use of a technology. For example, CallVisor® ASAI sale involves only the Right-To-Use fee and the boards required to establish the physical link with the host and any Professional Services necessary to help implement the CTI solution; no revenue accrues directly to Lucent from the related vendor partner or ISV sales.

Routing - In telephony and CTI, the instructions or applications used to determine the agent or VRU to which an incoming call should be directed. In systems with multiple switches and/or long distance services, the term may also describe the path taken by outgoing calls as well.

Sales Call - A TAPI- and TSAPI-compliant application from Page Telecomputing that provides outbound power dialing of a contact database and checks against a "restricted list" to comply with state/federal legislative requirements.

Scaleable (architecture) - The ability of an operating system or network architecture to be expanded as needed by adding nodes, so that the organization will not outgrow the system or network.

Screen pop - A screen of information about an incoming call or caller that appears on the agent's screen while the agent's telephone is ringing. Shortens call length and helps agent focus on customer's needs.

Screen-based Telephony (SCB) - Using the computer screen and keyboard to make and observe the progress of telephone calls. Sometimes called computer-assisted autodialing or screen dialing.

Script, scripting - Instructions that tell a computer application what to do. Users may customize applications such as Sixth Sense® by developing their own custom scripts if they have in-house programmers, or Lucent Technologies Professional Services may develop custom scripts for a fee.

Seasonal Tune-Up - An optional service available from Lucent Technologies Professional Services. A quarterly assessment to determine whether application is running at maximum efficiency. Can be done remotely or on site.

Serial port - A hardware port on a computer, most often designed for a particular interface. Commonly used to connect a mouse, printer, or modem.

Session Layer - Layer 5 of the ASAI protocol stock. Not used. However, if it exists in an implementation, it passes data, unchanged, to the next layer.

Set Value - One of ASAI's eight Application Service Elements (ASEs), which allows the application to set switch values such as the Message Waiting Indicator for a specific extension.

Signal Computing System Architecture (SCSA) - This is a comprehensive open architecture for providing multiple-user computer telephony services in a client server environment. An SCSA server offers call control capabilities, such as the capability to make calls, answer calls, route calls, monitor calls, conference calls, and manipulate information (affect the content of calls) over the telephone network. SCSA servers also offer the capability to process various types of media (for example, voice, fax, text, and e-mail) and make conversions between those types of media in order to present the information in a more useful form.

SCSA is composed of a hardware model and a software model. The SCSA Hardware Model defines the interfaces and protocols for a real-time communication bus and a flexible, high capacity, distributed switching fabric.

The SCSA Telephony Application Objects Framework™ (TAO) defines a standard set of software interfaces, protocols, and services that constitute the software model. These interfaces are open, object-oriented, and hardware-independent.

The SCSA TAO Framework contains a standard set of APIs that lets multiple-client applications share a common server and the call control and media-processing resources within the server. Below the API level, the SCSA TAO Framework consists of a service provider framework that includes a standard set of services that manage the server without requiring any application involvement. It also consists of a standard protocol that allows for communications within the server.

Single point of contact (SPOC) - A way of handling a multi-vendor sale and implementation in which one vendor or consultant handles contacts with the other vendors and/or departments and presents a unified proposal and project management to the customer, so that the customer needs to deal with only one person or team.

Sixth Sense® - TSAPI- and TAPI-compliant middleware from AnswerSoft that launches and controls multiple applications while the agent is on the phone, for example, provides a screen pop with an incoming call, and may present data and/or forms the agent needs during the call or send a fax or email message after the call. A PEC'd ISV available in Passport written languages.