Communications firm Nortel is in the process of introducing a slew of new contact centre products and services with advanced capabilities including Contact Center 7.0 along with enhancements to Nortel's interactive voice response solution, the Interactive Communications Portal (ICP), and added functionality to the Agile Communication Environment (ACE) platform.

Contact Center 7.0 provides open application programming interfaces using a services oriented architecture (SOA), which enables integration of the contact centre into a company's business applications and processes. With web service interfaces for queuing, computer telephony integration (CTI), and database integration, a business can automate workflow between front and back office applications to remove tedious manual processes.

According to media reports, the integration of Contact Center 7.0 and Microsoft OCS provides a single, unified agent desktop interface for inbound/outbound voice, email, web chat, and instant messaging. The Predictive Outbound Dialing application has been integrated with Contact Center 7.0 to improve the efficiency of agents by allowing the system to intelligently predict when an agent will become available and place an outbound call to coincide with their availability.

Contact Center 7.0 also features a graphical 'drag and drop' tool that takes the work out of contact centre and self-service workflow creation. With Service Creation Environment (SCE), the workflow orchestration between different applications is simplified using open, web services interfaces, which reduces the cost and speed of deployment.

Contact Center 7.0 solution is complemented by an enhanced set of new services spanning all aspects of contact centre operations. These include: consulting and design; development and customisation; implementation and integration; manage and maintenance; and optimisation services.

Nortel is also making improvements to its ICP offering with Feature Pack 1. Enhancements include outbound detection for discerning between a person and an answering machine; co-residence of the Nuance speech server, eliminating the need for a separate server; and extension of SIP CTI interworking to support Avaya AES.

The company is also adding the following functionalities as part of ACE Release 1.2 -- increased support of Microsoft OCS 2007 for enhanced presence capabilities; integration with IBM Lotus Sametime Client 8.0.1 for click to conference and enhanced presence capabilities; and, services for application customisation, prototyping, and custom application development.