Novell Service Desk CTI Integration

  • 7012245
  • 01-Apr-2008
  • 17-Jun-2013

Environment

Novell Service Desk 6.5

Situation

Novell Service Desk's CTI Integration caters for software based IP Phones, although in some instances it may be applied to hardware phones.

Resolution

How it works: A technician with a headset works with a target computer that has IP telephony software installed. The customer using a software based IP phone, calls the support number that has been configured to hit a target computer. When a call is received by the IP telephony software on the target computer, the software launches an executable, as the software identifies the origin of the phone number. Novell Service Desk allows the telephony software to 'hit' a URL, which should, on any normal operating system, launch a web browser pointing at the URL that has been executed.

This action assumes that the software phone is capable of assembling the URL using the phone number of the caller. In theory the URL compiled by the software phone looks like this:

HTTP://<Novell Service Desk_host>/Novell Service Desk/WebObjects/Novell Service Desk.woa/wa/LookupCustomer?phone=56974161414

This action prompts Novell Service Desk to return the customer record that includes the matching phone number. If the technician is logged into the system, Novell Service Desk will immediately display the customer's details.

Alternatively, Novell Service Desk prompts the technician to log in and then displays the customer details with that phone number.

Additional Information

Requirements For this functionality to work, it requires customers to have a unique phone number. Also, telephone numbers need to be formatted within Novell Service Desk the same way the phone outputs them.

It is also important to note that there are so many different IP telephony solutions and in general, Novell Service Desk only supports software based IP phones as they have an intelligent scripting ability to hit the URL required to identify the relevant customer record.

Formerly known as 1000337