Call Management Automation Server, or CMAS is a call center middleware solution that unifies the call center infrastructure and applications to provide high level functionality through centralized monitor and control.

Centralized Control and Monitor

For phone calls, it provides a single point of control and monitor for all calls as the call transitions though the contact center. This is done through a CMAS software model known as a "call network". This call network is built from information gathered by real time connections to the call center infrastructure.

Associated with every call is "call data", the collected knowledge of the call to date. This will initially be IVR and switch data, but is typically augmented by database, application and other data. Multiple destination applications can subscribe to this call data, which is available throughout the entire duration of the call.

There is a real time analytic feed created by a CMAS component known as Contact Sentry. More detail about Contact Sentry can be found here.

Multiple Sites Act as One

Often in multisite or hosted implementations, a customer transfer is implemented as a new call to the destination, which is then joined to the original customer call. Since the customer call is a fresh call from the perspective of the second site, collected call data is gone, and it is not possible to measure the call from the customer perspective.

Different sites can be networked via a CMAS component known as MAPS, which not only preserves call data in this scenario, but also treats this split call as a single call for analytics.

Applications of CMAS

Destination applications receive events as the call transitions from one node to the next. These events can be used to:

• Monitor the call and the interaction in real time (analytics/reporting)
• Drive behavior of other applications based on phone events (server based call control/CTI)
• Affect the call flow (specialized routing)
• Relay and preserve call data between sites and/or hosted infrastructure (multisite integration/CTI)
• Integrate otherwise incompatible components (technology migration/preservation)

Other Features

CMAS adds an email/chat skills based ACD and associated services. The call center/PBX model is applied to these media types, in order to comply with call center agent workflows.

CMAS also contains a wide range of tools for solving specialized call center issues. Included are test/verification/debug tools that provide a transparent view into the integrated system, so that deployment issues can be easily resolved.

Vendor Independence

An important aspect of the CMAS and the call network is that it presents an identical application interface regardless of the underlying PBX, IVR, and other call center components. CMAS has a large library of standard "connectors" to interface call center components and applications from a wide range of vendors.

In multisite implementations, this means that application integration need be done only once even if there is, for example, a Cisco PBX at one site and a Nortel at another. Also, the rich analytic feed provided by Contact Sentry is identical regardless of infrastructure, permitting “apples to apples” comparisons.