Preface
Prepare your network and agent workstations to operate with the 8x8 Quality Management and 8x8 Speech Analytics applications.
Summary
8x8 Quality Management and 8x8 Speech Analytics are intuitive, fully cloud-based application that integrates natively and seamlessly with 8x8 products and services. The system is maintained and continually improved to meet the needs of current and future customers. Using the application, you can easily track information about customer voice interactions or monitor employees’ activities. The tool is very useful for Quality Assurance teams because they can effectively evaluate the agents’ work on a daily basis with the goal of implementing a continuous improvement process. They can also add comments and hints, and share them to provide the best customer service possible.
Users who are subscribed to Screen Recording services for Quality Management or Speech Analytics have the ability to capture agents' desktop screens. For users who have the Screen Client software installed on the agents' machines, administrators of the system can elect to record the agents' desktop activity along with telephone conversations. After the call is completed, you can watch the video recording in the Slide out Panel. Windows and Mac platforms are supported.
Considerations and Limitations for Screen Recording
Considering the user environment is typically behind a firewall, certain requirements must be reviewed prior to a successful deployment.
- Screen recording requires a small client MSI or Mac Installation package to be installed on the agent workstation.
- It synchronizes with the 8x8 Contact Center web client using a local loopback call to 127.0.0.1:43488 on the agent workstation. This allows the screen recording client to identify which voice interactions the video recording should be associated with. It also allows for start, stop, pause, and resume control.
- This port should be open on the workstation to receive the call.
- The Screen Client installer handles this exclusion; however, in typical call center environments, administrators may have this functionality locked down.
Outbound TCP Connections
Quality Management Screen Recording utilizes a one-way established, yet two-way communication channel, secured with SSL/TLS 1.2 encryption, to communicate with the 8x8 data center on port 443.
Outbound port 443 connections must be allowed from the agent workstation to the 8x8 data center specified by your 8x8 Contact Center administrator.
Local Workstation Considerations
In most environments, our installer makes all the Windows Firewall exclusions. In some cases, users may need to collaborate with their in-house IT department to ensure that group policies or NTFS global permissions do not interfere with the reading and writing of screen recordings to disk. It is required that the installation be run as a Local Administrator (via script is also acceptable), which will create the proper environment.
Browser-Based Ad-Aware and Ad Blocking Applications
On rare occasions, certain agent workstations may have browser plug-ins installed that prevent authentication to the Quality Management or Speech Analytics application. These plug-ins are typically called “Ad Blockers." They prevent the local loopback request, as described above, and can result in the Screen Recording Client failing to connect to the cloud. The application will appear to be installed correctly; however, it is unable to establish a connection to its home cloud server. Care should be taken to ensure no clients are installed on machines with these applications. Removal of these applications should be completed before installing 8x8’s screen recording client software.
Third-Party Screen Recording Clients
In some cases, customers may have a secondary screen recording application installed on the agent workstations. This could be a result of a previous installation that is no longer active or valid in the customer environment. 8x8’s desktop screen recording client application is not designed to work in conjunction with other third-party screen recording tools. This includes desktop tools that record the desktop screen for purposes other than attachment to a voice interaction. It is required that any screen recording applications be completely removed before installation of 8x8’s screen recording client software.
Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware Exclusions
Due to the inherent nature of screen recording, it is possible for the application to be falsely identified by antivirus and anti-malware applications. These applications will quarantine the installed application files and, in some cases, completely remove the installation. This will cause the desktop screen recording client software to simply stop functioning, requiring a full reinstall. The behavior will continue unless the Windows administrator specifically excludes the files, folders, processes, and services from the anti-virus or anti-malware applications as described below.
An example of how an anti-virus application might falsely identify the 8x8 screen recording client is shown below:
Follow these guidelines in excluding the default application folders and files. It’s essential to note that the administrator should not attempt to change the default installation locations unless absolutely necessary. In this case, it’s essential to consider these changes when implementing the exclusions.
Application Folders and Files
- C:\ProgramData\ScreenRecorder\*
- C:\Users\*\AppData\Roaming\QualityManagement\ClientTray\*
- C:\Program Files (x86)\8x8 Quality Management\*
User-Based Processes
- C:\ProgramData\ScreenRecorder\ClientTray.exe
Services
- C:\Program Files (x86)\8x8 Quality Management\SystemMonitor.exe
Automated MSI Installation Systems
While 8x8’s desktop screen recording client application is a generic installation, it is fully tested and designed without the use of automatic installers in a domain-managed system. It’s essential that system administrators ensure the installation application used for system-wide pushes mimics the behavior of a local file installation. It’s essential that the customer’s desktop administrator validates the installation in a controlled environment before deployment. It’s equally important that the above-described limitations and considerations be taken into account.
Screen Recording Requirements for Agent Workstations
- Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and 11 are supported
- MacOS High Sierra is required at a minimum
- 30GB Free Hard Disk Space
- Minimum 1024MB of RAM, 2048MB recommended
- Support for up to 4x 1080p displays (for systems with many displays, 4096MB Ram recommended)
- 2-3MB per minute of file size per 1080p display (slightly adjustable)
Multiple Agents Workstations
There are situations when multiple agents are sharing the same workstation. For proper screen recording operation, only one agent can be logged in to the 8x8 Contact Center Web client at a time on the same workstation. If more than one agent is logged in to the 8x8 Contact Center Web client, the screen recorder will capture only the screen associated with the last logged-in agent's interactions.
Screen Recording Optimization
The screen recorder can be optimized to support 1-4 FPS (Frames Per Second) and also scale down the resolution to improve bandwidth consumption. Typically, screen recording consumes 100Kbps of bandwidth per screen but is adjustable to more or less depending on the requirements. In environments with multiple screens, we “squash” the two screens to one 1080p display. Pan and Zoom are used on the client side to view the two screens in one display window.
Customers with more than two screens need to consider increasing the resolution for screen recording, adding additional bandwidth, and disk space considerations.
Because screen recording uses a “changed area only” approach, customers with standard corporate operations software, such as CRM, experience a lower bandwidth requirement. Customers using full motion video, for example, require more bandwidth and storage to consume and store. This is atypical, as much use cases are for “normal” desktop use.
Support for Pause and Resume for Compliance Reasons
8x8’s desktop screen recording client supports pause and resume operations for masking sensitive information. Some customers require, for example, the masking of credit card information which may be displayed on the agents’ desktop. Using the 8x8 Contact Center recording control API, the desktop screen client will respond to these requests natively. No further action is needed for screen recording pause and resume control when customers use the 8x8 Contact Center recording control API. Documentation on this call recording control API can be found in 8x8 Contact Center Recording Control API.
Accessing the User Interface for Playback
- Quality Management and Speech Analytics are fully web-based. No plugins are required to operate the administrator or supervisor client.
- The following browsers are tested and supported:
- Internet Explorer 10 and above, including Microsoft Edge
- Firefox v 32 or above
- Chrome v 39 or above
- Safari 9 or above
Customer Requirements for 8x8 Contact Center
- 8x8 Contact Center and Quality Management/Speech Analytics are tightly integrated.
- Any changes made to 8x8 Contact Center will automatically reflect in Quality Management/Speech Analytics.
- Customers using 8x8 Contact Center will notice that many of the user functions in Quality Management/Speech Analytics are disabled.
- This is because they only need to make a change in one place, and the change is completely reflected into the Quality Management/Speech Analytics interface.
- CC X Series Screen Recordings Hot Storage licenses
- There are no additional or specific requirements for Quality Management/Speech Analytics to run on 8x8 Contact Center.
Download the Screen Recorder Client
Additional Information
If a user has screen capture/recording enabled, it will show as Voice Screen; otherwise, it will display Voice Interaction.