Computer Telephony Integration

Computer Telephony Integration ( CTI computer telephony integration ) is the linking of telecommunications electronic data processing.

Computer controlled telephone system

CTI enables out of computer programs, the automatic construction, adoption and termination of telephone calls, the construction of conference calls, sending and receiving faxes, telephone directory services, as well as the attendant calls.

Telephone system controls computer

An automatic caller identification, the matching record can be brought to a screen with customer data from a database. In addition, CTI programs can cause a journal about the calls made ( depending on the provider ). This technology is mainly used by call centers.

A distinction is made between single-user applications ( First Party Call Control) and multi-user solutions ( Third Party Call Control). For single-user applications the phone is either integrated in your computer or directly connected to this. With multi-user solutions is usually a special server between the computer network and the telephone network or the telephone system is connected, which takes over the control of the phone.

The Computer Telephony Integration is a feature that is supported by many telephone systems.

CSTA

Computer Supported Telecommunications Applications (CSTA ) is the name of a standardized by the ECMA protocol specification that is used for the traffic between a telephone system and computer programs. This specification is written like many other protocols in telecommunications in ASN.1. The CSTA protocol defines only the transmitted data, but not the transport layer. For coding of data streams are the Basic Encoding Rules ( CSTA Phase I, II, and III), and XML Encoding Rules ( CSTA Phase III). The CSTA protocol can be transported over different media (serial, ISDN, TCP / IP).

The latest variant is uaCSTA (ECMA Technical Report TR/87 ). Introduced for so-called User Agents variant was created with a limited scope, which only uses XML for encoding.

CTI systems, in practice,

In practice, systems are often used in e -mail programs, such as Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes, integrated and have a TAPI interface. This stored contacts can be called directly from the e -mail program out among others. Journal functions such as applying all the notes that makes an agent during the call, together with the contact from. The called party may optionally have immediate access to the entire history of customer contact, thus saving unnecessary inquiries. In addition, CTI modules some of them have fax capability. Using standardized interfaces can be connected with some products CRM or backend systems.

• Telecommunications
• Switching technology