Major Features and Enhancements in the 18.1.2 patch
For additional information, see the technical documentation references cited for each feature
Blackouts
Real-Time Blackouts is the only supported blackout method within NICE Uptivity going forward. This blackout method provides the highest level of security because it prevents sensitive information from ever being recorded. For integrations that provide a completed recording to Uptivity, such as ShoreTel TAPI-WAV, Post-Call Blackouts are still acceptable. In this scenario, the audio is transcoded just to apply the blackout.
All API Server Commands continue to be supported; however, due to Real-Time Blackouts being the only supported method of blackouts, any value specified for OFFSET in an API command is no longer used as they were specific to Post-Call Blackouts.
Optimized Transcoder 2 Performance
For recordings with video (screen recordings), the total time to transcode has been reduced, on average, by 50% when compared to the previous version running on identical hardware. These improvements make recordings with video more quickly available for playback.
Customers on versions 18.1 or 181.1 can expect better performance with no increase to hardware requirements. Customers upgrading from 17.3 or earlier who desire near real-time playback of recordings with screen may need to re-evaluate their hardware resources used for transcoding. A NICE inContact Sales Engineer can assist with designing a solution that meets this need. Audio transcoding performance and playback availability remains unchanged from previous releases.
Media Export Options: .MP3, .WAV, and Audio-Only .WebM
Call recordings can be exported in MP3, WAV, and Audio-Only WebM file formats. NICE Uptivity continues to support exporting to WebM (audio and video combined).
For more information about exporting recordings, see Export Recordings.
Screen Capture Client Resiliency
Screen Capture Client supports connections to multiple RabbitMQ nodes in a RabbitMQ cluster for high availability and redundancy. If the primary RabbitMQ node becomes unavailable, Screen Capture Client automatically connects to a secondary RabbitMQ node in the cluster and continues normal service.
Although not required, the latest version of the Screen Capture Client is recommended for 18.1.2 to take advantage of the latest features and bug fixes. Customers may deploy this at any time.
For more information about Screen Capture Client resiliency, see Screen Recording Overview.
Historical Speech Analytics Tag Reprocessing
When creating an analytics tag, NICE Uptivity Speech Analytics can reprocess historical calls whose phonetic index files (PATs, or phonetic access tracks) were created before the date that the analytics tag is created. Phonetic index files, or PATs, are created during the original processing of the recording, are searched for words and phrases in order to tag calls and are then retained for the timeframe specified in Analytics configuration. Reprocessing of historical calls is performed when a new tag is created with an Effective Start Date prior to the current date.
You might want to reprocess historical calls if you want to search for a term or phrase in recent interactions, from the past week, for example.
In the Uptivity Web Portal, when you are creating a new analytics tag, the Earliest PAT Creation Time field indicates the earliest date of historical calls that can be reprocessed.
The reprocessing job begins when you save the new analytics tag. When the new analytics tag is saved, the reprocessing job cannot be paused or stopped. Reprocessing jobs can recover from an interruption that may unintentionally stop the reprocessing job before the job is completed, such as a server reboot for example.
To monitor the status of a reprocessing job, you can monitor start and complete events in the Analytics Manager log file.
For more information, see NICE Uptivity Speech Analytics Tags Overview and Create an Analytic Tag.
For installation information, see the section "Notable Updates to the Installation Guide for Versions 18.1, 18.1.1, and 18.1.2" in the NICE Uptivity Installation Guide.
Transcoder Delay
The Transcoder Delay setting has been deprecated and the queuing behavior has been enhanced in its place. Transcoding attempts will no longer be made until after files have finished moving from their temp locations to the schedule location. This results in fewer failed Transcoding attempts.
For more information, see Transcoder Service Settings.
New Retranscode Tool Command for Smaller WebM Files
With the 18.1 release, some customers were affected by an issue that resulted in .webms being created with significantly larger file size than was expected. This issue has already been addressed with a patch to the Transcoder 2 service, so new recordings are created at the expected file size.
With 18.1.2, affected customers can use the Retranscode tool to reprocess large WebM files created before the Transcoder 2 patch into smaller WebM files. This is done by running the new Retranscode Tool command retranscodelargewebm. This only needs to be done once for the existing large files.
For more information, see Use the Retranscode Tool.
VP9 Codec
NICE Uptivity Screen Recording now uses the VP9 format for video transcoding. This codec offers better performance for Transcoding and more efficient file size for recordings. Users can expect their playback experience to match what was offered in 18.1 and 18.1.1 when using a supported browser. Internet Explorer 11 continues to be supported but users can expect a superior playback experience when using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
Transcoder 2 Video Threads
The maximum number of threads that can be used for video transcoding has been increased to 8; however, the number of threads specified in this setting should not meet or exceed the number of CPU cores.
This change allows customers to run more Transcoder 2 threads on fewer, more powerful servers rather than needing to provide multiple servers.
For more information, see Transcoder 2 Service Settings.
Major Features and Enhancements in the 18.1.1 patch
For additional information, see the technical documentation references cited for each feature
Blackouts
Real-Time Blackouts is the only supported blackout method within NICE Uptivity going forward. This blackout method provides the highest level of security because it prevents sensitive information from ever being recorded. For integrations that provide a completed recording to Uptivity, such as ShoreTel TAPI-WAV, Post-Call Blackouts are still acceptable. In this scenario, the audio is transcoded just to apply the blackout.
All API Server Commands continue to be supported; however, due to Real-Time Blackouts being the only supported method of blackouts, any value specified for OFFSET in an API command is no longer used as they were specific to Post-Call Blackouts.
CXone: Multi-site Support for Media Playback
The initial release of the Uptivity-CXone WFO Pro integration supported media playback from a single media archive only. For version 18.1.1, the Uptivity-CXone integration now supports multiple media archives that are distributed across separate sites. (A site is a physical location where media is archived.)
Multi-site support eliminates media file "round-tripping" for users that are playing back media in the same location that the media is stored. By eliminating media file round-tripping, less network bandwidth is used, which optimizes system performance.
"Round-tripping" is when a file is routed across a network to a non-local site (for some function or service) and is then re-routed back to its local site. Round-tripping usually occurs in some form of a centralized system.
Documentation with further details and instructions is in progress and will be available, linked from here, by the release date.
For more information about multi-site support for media playback, see CXone WFO Pro Integration.
Speech Analytics: Multi-site
NICE Uptivity supports the coordination of multiple Speech Analytics servers located across geographically-separate sites. An advantage of this capability is that media files can be processed locally, eliminating the need to send large media files across a WAN to be processed at a different site.
For more information about multi-site Speech Analytics, see NICE Uptivity Speech Analytics Overview.
Speech Analytics: Phonetic Index Retention
Each call processed by Uptivity Speech Analytics creates a phonetic index - a file that is stored on the analytics server and managed by Nexidia. The phonetic index is kept to facilitate anticipated functionality that will allow searching for calls that have previously gone through analytics processing.
18.1.1 includes a process to delete indexes after a configurable number of days for disk space management. The PAT Retention Days setting on the Analytics Module Configuration page in the Web Portal determines, in days, how long a PAT is kept. If the multi-site analytics feature described previously is being used, this value affects all analytics processing servers.
For more information, see Configure NICE Uptivity Speech Analytics.
Screen Recording: Retention Management
In version 18.1, the recording storage standard changed from using separate files for the audio and video of a recording to using an industry-standard media container file (WebM) that stores audio and video together. This new file format reduced the amount of space needed for archiving recordings by an average of 80%, facilitated responsive and resource friendly playback in web browsers without use of plug-ins such as Silverlight, and also enabled the Uptivity to CXone WFO Pro integration.
Because WebM is a combined file format, 18.1 was missing the historical Uptivity feature known as archive actions. Archive actions allow video to be removed from an audio + video recording. This capability has been restored in the 18.1.1 release, and is configured with the same archive actions used in 17.3 and earlier releases. For customers upgrading from 17.3 to 18.1.1, existing archive actions will continue to work without any change.
Screen Recording: Mouse Pointer Capture
In 18.1, screen recordings did not include the user's mouse pointer. Screen recordings in 18.1.1 add the mouse pointer back to each frame used to create the video. The inclusion of the mouse pointer is not configurable. There is no animation of the mouse pointer as it moves across the screen.
For customers migrating from 17.3 or earlier releases to 18.1.1, the retranscoding of existing videos will keep the mouse pointer.
Transcoder 2 Setting
There is a new setting in the Transcoder 2 service INI file. The setting configures the number of concurrent video transcoding threads that the system can process.
For more information, see Transcoder 2 Service Settings.
Major Features and Enhancements in 18.1
For additional information, see the technical documentation references cited for each feature
CXone WFO Pro Integration
With this release, the call and desktop recording capabilities of Uptivity can now be used as voice and screen connectors for CXone WFO Pro, creating a hybrid (premise and cloud) workforce optimization solution.
Through the integration, CXone WFO Pro stores a copy of all recording metadata and accesses recording media that is stored on premise, allowing users to playback recordings and perform quality management tasks from CXone WFO Pro.
For more information, see CXone WFO Pro Integration.
New Screen Capture Solution
Uptivity's Screen Capture solution has been thoroughly redesigned to support the integration with CXone WFO Pro and to bring greater value to customers by reducing space required for storing screen recordings.
Uptivity now utilizes the WebM open file format for storing screen capture and audio media files - a call recording and its screen recording are combined into a single media file. By adopting WebM as the standard media file format, Uptivity call media is now compatible with CXone WFO Pro.
Additionally, leveraging WebM as the standard media file format brings several significant benefits to a customer's Uptivity system:
- Up to an 80% reduction in disk space used for systems that are recording audio and video media together.
- Reduced network bandwidth between desktops and server. This performance gain is a result of compressing the desktop images that are captured during screen recording before sending them to the server.
- Use of an open file format for archived recordings, instead of the legacy proprietary format, removes the dependency on Silverlight for all media playback.
For more information about NICE Uptivity Screen Recording, see NICE Uptivity Screen Recording Overview.
Functionality Changed or Removed
Important changes to Uptivity functionality:
Silverlight
- The Web Player (Silverlight Player) is no longer available. All recording playbacks use the Media Player. The Web Player was removed as a result of Microsoft's obsolescence of Silverlight.
- Silverlight Live Monitor, Silverlight Call List, and the Web Media Server service have been deprecated as they are no longer required.
Media Player
- All call and screen recording playback is through the Media Player.
- The Media Player in 18.1 provides an improved playback experience from previous versions. It features improved performance, reduced memory and resource usage, support for playback of larger and longer recordings, and playback speed control.
- The following features are not available in the Media Player:
- Display of the cursor in screen recordings.
- Ability to apply manual blackouts to recordings.
Transcoder
- The Transcode by Board setting has been removed. This setting specified whether the voice board ID should be added as a prefix to the Transcoder record for each call.
- The Look for Code field on the Transcoder configuration page relates to the Transcode by Board setting, so it has also been removed.
- Settings Removed from the Transcoder Configuration Page — In addition to the Look for Code field mentioned above, the following settings have also been removed from the Transcoder Configuration Page due to the transcoder redesign: Create Analytics, Analytics Keep Days, Analytics Storage Path.
Archiver
- The Archive Restriction setting has been removed from the New Archive Action and Edit Archive Action pages. The Archive Restriction setting specified which recording-related files should be governed by the archive action (audio, video, analytics).
- This setting was removed because the Archiver in version 18.1 is unable to archive or purge audio and video files separately (for media files that contain both audio and video).
Media Export
- Uptivity users cannot export media files in the following file formats in version 18.1:
- .WAV
- .CAV
- .VOX
- .MP3
- Media files can only be exported as a WebM file for version 18.1.
Blackouts
- Uptivity no longer supports:
- Call-level blackouts
- Manual / Agent-level transcoded blackouts for video
- Uptivity continues to support:
- Manual / Agent-level transcoded blackouts for audio
- Real-time blackouts for video
- For more information about blackouts, see Blackouts Overview.
Timed Schedules
- Timed schedules are no longer supported.
Workstation Mapping No Longer Supported
- Screen recording by statically mapping a phone extension or device to a Windows workstation name is no longer supported. Each agent must use a dedicated Windows login.
- Windows usernames must be unique for every Uptivity system username.
- If users at a company have accounts with more than one domain, during user profile configuration, the complete domain name that users will use to log in to their workstation that will be recorded must be specified.
