UII computer telephony integration (CTI) framework

The User Interface Integration (UII)computer telephony integration (CTI) framework allows businesses or organizations to connect UII-based desktops (such as Unified Service Desk) with their CTI infrastructure. Although a CTI system typically refers to telephony integration with software systems, the UIICTI framework can be used for any communications channel available to an organization.

UII CTI framework: Overview

In UII, all communications over a particular channel—whether chat, email, telephone, or others—occur directly from the organization's CTI system to the UII desktop (such as Unified Service Desk). Dynamics 365 Server isn’t involved in this process. The following illustration shows an example of this type of communication.

UII CTI framework components

The CTI framework in UII contains the following three components or layers: CTI Connector, CTI Desktop Manager, and CTI controls.

CTI Connector

CTI Connector provides the logic to connect to and communicate with the external CTI system. CTI Connector layer exposes the methods and events that will be called and listened to by the CTI Desktop Manager component. CTI Connector supports either a polling or instance-based connection model.

After the connection model is determined, a hosted control is developed that will implement the logic. CTI Connector is a specialized hosted control that is designed to exist in HiddenPanel in UII desktop (such as Unified Service Desk).

For more information, see Create a CTI Connector.

CTI Desktop Manager

CTI Desktop Manager provides the business logic for your CTI adapter. It responds to a call when it arrives in the UII desktop (such as Unified Service Desk), and performs the necessary steps to connect to the CTI Connector and create call management (ICtiCallStateManager) and agent state management (ICtiAgentStateManager) objects. The call state and agent state objects collectively manage the state and data of a call as a unique object to isolate information as there can be multiple or concurrent calls. CTI Desktop Manager is implemented as a hosted control that communicates between the UII desktop and the CTI system to raise events and route calls appropriately in the UII desktop.

For more information, see Create a CTI Desktop Manager.

CTI controls

These are the user interface (UI) controls in a UII desktop that allow agents to interact with the CTI system (manage calls) and manage the agent status.

For more information, see Create a CTI Control.

See also

Integrate with CTI systems