Cisco Cisco Computer Telephony Integration Option 8.5 Developer's Guide

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CTI OS Developer’s Guide for Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise
Release 8.5(1)
Chapter 4      Building Your Application
Integrating your Application with CTI OS via the CIL
Warning
Never select the COM Components tab from the “Customize Toolbox” dialog box and never select the 
CTI OS ActiveX controls. Doing this will cause Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 to automatically 
generate a set of  private RCWs that are not optimized nor approved by Cisco, and may lead your 
application for unexpected behavior that could result in application failure.
3.
From the list, select the CTI OS RCW that corresponds to the CTI OS ActiveX Control you want to 
add to the toolbox. For example, for the Agent State Control select the “AxAgentStateCtl”
4.
To add more CTI OS ActiveX controls, repeat steps 1 to 3.
Integrating your Application with CTI OS via the CIL 
Creating an integration between your application and CTI OS via the CIL is straightforward. The first 
step is to articulate the desired behavior, and to create a complete design specification for the integration. 
Planning and Designing Your Integration
Good design depends upon understanding how CTI will fit into your application and workflow. Your 
requirements analysis and design process should address the following points, as they relate to your 
specific application:
Start with the call flow. What kind of call processing is done before calls are targeted for a specific 
skill? Determine how CTI data can be collected from the caller before the call arrives at an agent.
Study the agent’s workflow. What are the points where CTI will be able to make the workflow 
easier and faster? Build a business case for the CTI integration.
Evaluate what will CTI do for your application. A good approach is to make a list based on the 
priority (e.g. screen pop, then call control) and then design and implement features in that order. 
Design how CTI should work within your application. What are the interaction points? Get 
specifications as to which screen will interact, and which data values should be sent between your 
application and the CTI OS platform. 
Determine when the application should connect to the CTI OS Server. Some applications will 
be server-type integrations that will connect at startup, specify a monitor-mode event filter, and stay 
connected permanently. Agent-mode applications will connect up when a specific agent begins the 
work shift.
Clean up when you’re done. When and how does the application stop? Some applications will stay 
up and running permanently, while others will have a defined runtime, such as the agent’s workday 
or shift. For server-type applications without a specified stopping point, create an object lifetime 
model and procedure for recovering no-longer-used resources. For applications with a specific 
stopping point, determine the kind of clean up needs to be done when the application closes (e.g. 
disconnect from server, release resources).
What Language and Interface to Use 
The CTI OS Client Interface Library API comes in programming languages, each with benefits and 
costs. The choice of interface is important to direct you through this developer’s guide, since this guide 
addresses the CIL API for the C++ and COM programming environments.