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  • 1.  Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 09-14-2018 10:28
    We are needing to use Soft Phones with our Virtual Desktop within our Citrix environment.  The issue is that there are several different servers the agents could hit when loading the Virtual Desktop.  How can I configure the Soft Phone stations in IA so that the agents could enter the Workstation Name manually to ensure they are connected to their soft phone?

    Let me know if I need to explain this in more detail.

    Thanks,
    Andrew

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    Andrew Wooster
    Genesco Inc.
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  • 2.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 09-19-2018 13:21
    Andrew,

    Good luck with this! We do almost exactly this for our online training and there are some catches that you need to be aware of (mostly to do with configuring the audio pass-through in both directions.)

    Assuming you already have a working solution, my suggestion would be to use Interaction Desktop and then have the agents select "SIP Softphone" as their station. This way, it should launch the softphone app and connect to it without them having to worry about station naming.

    Or am I missing something here?


  • 3.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 09-19-2018 17:04
    So the issue is that the Thin Client the agents run the virtual desktop through has a full computer name such as: "GCO-120.genesco.local".  I've created the soft phone in IA with that as the address.  However, after logging into the virtual desktop, I get an error when trying to provision the soft phone.  I checked the event logs on the PureConnect server and it shows the actual server name of the virtual desktop trying to provision as a station.  This is where the problem is, I can only create 1 station in IA with the server name as the address, but we can have multiple agents on one virtual desktop server.  So far, I don't think there is a way around this but maybe I am missing something???

    Thanks,
    Andrew

    ------------------------------
    Andrew Wooster
    Genesco Inc.
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone
    Best Answer

    Posted 09-20-2018 10:31
    Andrew,

    Yes, I can see that! I assume you have read the TR concerning using Citrix? (here) Note what it says about the SoftPhone on page 9.

    As of 2018 R1, SIP Soft Phone has successfully passed functional testing in a Citrix environment (XenApp/XenDesktop). However, audio quality cannot be guaranteed as the RTP audio is routed via the Citrix Receiver thin-client to Citrix servers before being routed to endpoints and/or PureConnect media servers. In addition, this traffic is managed by a proprietary Citrix messaging protocol. Therefore, server processing, along with network  routing and congestion, affect the quality of all calls and recordings and are beyond the control of the PureConnect platform.

    I appreciate that this isn't your specific issue, however, if it were me, this would e something I would be considering.

    I also reached out to some folks in our Tech Sales team. The demo environment uses Microsoft Terminal Server to deliver the desktops. Although this is not the same environment that you are working within, it shares certain similarities. This is what I got back for the gurus over there

    We did not have this going due to multiple instances on the same hostname as you mentioned and also, because the audio always sounded horrible streaming thru the terminal servers and MIC pass-thru with the Microsoft solution isn't the greatest.

    The best I can recommend is either use the PureCloud integration and they can use WebRTC or a third party softphone client (like Zoiper) and they can create their own SIP identification addresses unique to each user.

    Probably not what you want to hear, but better than beating your head against a wall! Is there any chance the softphone can be installed locally on the user's machine? That would not only save issues like this one, but also probably improve audio quality.

    Good luck with this, I will post again if I dig up any further information. In the meantime, I suggest contacting Support as they may well have additional advice.

    I hope my rantings are of some use.



  • 5.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 05-20-2019 09:13
    Edited by Utku Deriner 05-20-2019 09:12
    Hi Paul,

    We are trying to run SIP Softphone in one of our customer's environment as well. According to this documentation which states that SIP Softphones are now supported in Citrix environment, we tried both methods to pass local PC name. However, we couldn't succeed in sending the local PC name when we start the Interaction Desktop. 

    Andrew;

    Have you been able to run this successfully?

    Regards,


    ------------------------------
    Utku Deriner
    CCR
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 05-20-2019 10:51
    Hi, Utku,

    Actually, that isn't how I read the page at all. What it actually says is:

    "Note: As of 2018 R1, SIP Soft Phone has successfully passed functional testing in a Citrix environment (XenApp/XenDesktop). However, audio quality cannot be guaranteed as the RTP audio is routed via the Citrix Receiver thin-client to Citrix servers before being routed to endpoints and/or PureConnect media servers. In addition, this traffic is managed by a proprietary Citrix messaging protocol. Therefore, server processing, along with network routing and congestion, affect the quality of all calls and recordings and are beyond the control of the PureConnect platform."

    In other words, it can work, but we can't vouch for audio quality.

    Here is the problem (as I see it). When you run any application on a remote machine, then from that application's perspective everything is on the remote machine. So, when the application accesses the machine information (Hostname, IP, MAC or anything else) it will be the remote machine's information that it is given. Now, software such as the SoftPhone is actually designed to be run once per machine, so running it on any kind of Terminal Server is going to mean some clever tricks and work-arounds.

    My advice, as I said before and as has been confirmed by our Tech Sales team, is to use WebRTC instead. That way, you are not trying to have the Terminal Server as your SIP endpoint and then rely on goodness-knows-what remote protocol to forward the audio in each direction.


  • 7.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 05-21-2019 03:14
    Hi Paul,

    Our current concern is not the audio quality as we couldn't come to that step. If we can manage to pass audio through Citrix with softphones, having proper bandwidth and ensuring the audio quality will be managed accordingly.

    It is not properly explained in the document how to configure softphones in Citrix. I would appreciate it if you or someone from the team/community could help in that. I believe there are many users who would benefit from this thread. The beauty of Citrix is you deploy one image for everyone and you don't need to configure phones on individual PCs. WebRTC is not an option for us as our customer resides in Switzerland and cannot utilize PureCloud services due to regulations.

    Regards,

    ------------------------------
    Utku Deriner
    CCR
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 05-21-2019 12:27
    Hey Utku,

    Please don't discount the quality issue so easily. It isn't just about bandwidth, but also delay. Some of the RD protocols can add to the delay due to all the encryption. If they run over TCP, that adds to the overhead as well. You will probably have some kind of load-balancer between the clients and the servers, another step and more delay. Will this be a problem? I have no way to tell you, but please remember that you may end up putting a lot of work in and then find that the audio issues that you come across cannot be solved with bandwidth alone.

    Moving on to the main part of your question.

    I am not sure how much you know about IC's use of stations in general, and the SoftPhone in particular? The Softphone makes use of Managed IP Phones, which relies at least some extent on the end-point in question being the only one present on the host. With a client desktop installed SoftPhone, or a hardware phone, this is a given. This means that the Hostname, FQDN, IP Address and MAC address can all be used to uniquely identify the endpoint. This is not the case in a T/S type environment.

    When you deploy the softphone, you configure the Managed IP Phone object in IA. Hardware phones are ultimately defined by their MAC, SoftPhones by their FQDN. As far as I am aware, there isn't a way with the provided SoftPhone to override this and provide SIP registration details directly. The problem here isn't getting it to work - it's getting it to work multiple times on the same machine. Now, there may well be command-line options to get around this, but if they do exist, I couldn't find any information on them.

    One option might be to use a 3rd-party SoftPhone (IC would just see it as an Unmanaged Station).

    Sorry I cannot help any more than this - hopefully another member of the Community will be able to offer a better solution. Alternatively, I suggest you reach out to the Genesys Professional Services organization - they often have creative solutions to problems like this.


  • 9.  RE: Virtual Desktop & Soft Phone

    Posted 05-22-2019 12:22
    Edited by Utku Deriner 05-22-2019 12:22
    Hey Paul,

    Many thanks for your input. I'm not discounting the quality at all, but we have to give it a try in any case.

    Regarding uniquely identifying the softphone, I have received some further information in the support case I have opened. Citrix Streaming Profiler seems to be required for softphones. I'll share the results if we can manage to resolve this issue.

    Regards,

    ------------------------------
    Utku Deriner
    CCR
    www.ccr.group
    ------------------------------



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