Competella is the third Contact Center to be Microsoft Teams Extend Certified. There are 14 contact centres certified for Microsoft Teams, but only Luware, Tendfor and Competella are certified for Extend.
With Microsoft Teams Extend certified contact centres, customers can bring their own Contact Center PSTN connectivity via Microsoft Calling Plan, Operator Connect or Direct Routing.
The Competella Communication Suite is a subscription SaaS multi-tenant solution running in Azure and leveraging native Microsoft Graph Communications APIs. Competella has over 700 customers with 100+ on the Competella Communication Suite for Teams, first released in March 2020.
Competella was acquired by Enghouse Systems in June 2022. The Competella Communication Suite will become a part of the Enghouse Interactive portfolio of products for Teams.
Competella Communication Suite consists of Attendant Console, Contact Center Workgroup and Contact Center Enterprise. The Competella solution includes advanced statistics and reporting capabilities which can be used for analytics and planning purposes.
Customers can add additional features with add-on licences, including IVR Express, Voice Recording, Call Back, CRM integration and Realtime Wallboard.
Competella Attendant Console and Contact Center Enterprise features:
- Competella CRM Integration Gateway – extended 360? view and AI CRM-based routing with a turnkey solution for Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, open API for other ITSM and CRM systems.
- Competella Voice Recording – record, and store inbound, outbound and on-demand call recording for compliance and training purposes.
- Competella Callback – offers callback to callers waiting in line, keeping their position.
Competella AC – Attendant Console
The Attendant Console offers fast call handling, directory search, Teams presence, Mobile presence (Northern Europe feature) and Exchange Calendar presence all in one view.
Competella CCW – Contact Center Workgroup
Contact Center Workgroup offers an advanced hunt group solution for mobile users, Teams users and users who want to enable simultaneous ring. Used by both administration departments, front-line workers with mobile phones and on-call agents who can easily login through the agent portal app in Teams or in a browser to receive calls in Teams.
Competella CCE – Contact Center Enterprise
Offers fast call handling, directory search, Teams presence, mobile presence, 360? view call history of caller, previous agent, previous transfer to and wrap-up code to inform the agent about historical contact to improve first-time resolution.
You can find out more about Competella’s solution here
What does Microsoft Teams Extend Contact Center certification mean?
Microsoft has a certification program for contact center solution providers. There are 3 models for contact centres to integrate with Microsoft Teams; Connect, Extend and Power.
The Connect model uses Microsoft certified SBCs and Direct Routing to connect contact center solutions to Teams phone system infrastructure. So essentially the contact center takes a call in on PSTN, does all the routing in its platform and then routes the call to a contact center agent on Teams via Direct Routing (essentially a phone call). These solutions may integrate further with Microsoft for user sign-in and presence. This is the model that, until now all the certified contact canters were using.
The Extend model is where contact centres solution leverages Teams Graph APIs and Cloud Communications API in Microsoft Graph to do call control and routing and route calls to Teams via API, not Direct Routing. This model opens up some key differences
Customers can bring their own Contact Center PSTN connectivity via Microsoft Calling Plan, Operator Connect or Direct Routing. Numbers can come into Teams from any of these and then be directed to the contact center for routing. This means you can mix and match operators and PSTN connectivity models for your contact center.
There is no need to configure any Direct Routing specifically for the contact center
The Power model is the contact center vendor using Azure Communication Services as a platform for routing and call management and then presenting the call to agents in Teams. ACS potentially opens up chat and video options too. To date there are no contact centres certified on this model and Microsoft is still finalising some of the APIs/SDKs but they are coming. Look out for more news on this later this year (2022).
Unfortunately, Microsoft docs still don’t show which type of integration certified vendors are using. I hope this will change in the future.
