CCF 2008 is now RTM!

To summarize, CCF in three words is:

1. AGGREGATION
2. AUTOMATION
3. ACCELERATE

Let's elaborate on each one.

AGGREGATION

From a business perspective, it's: " I need a 360° view of my customer"

From a technical perspective, it's: I need to gather and monitor events from

• Front end applications. “If I click on this button, then take the value from this textbox and update the CCF Context."
• Backend applications. “When a call is coming, I need to call a web service and populate the context with the response”
• Channels (CTI, Email, Chat...). “I want my CCF Hosted application to subscribe to new call event”

Aggregation of data requires asynchronous capabilities. What’s new with CCF 2008?

1. New Messaging and Loading patterns based on the patterns & practices Composite UI Application Block (CAB)
2. CCF integrates the Windows Workflow runtime engine, library, graphical designer, and other capabilities (see later for Automation)
3. CCF is built upon Windows Communication Fundation (WCF) for Multi Channel capabilities but also all CCF Web Services.
4. New flexible Multi Channel Architecture (MCH) that allows any hosted application to subscribe to events coming from a Channel ( A channel is a communication from the server to the client. It can be a voice call, an email, or a custom application you might develop in order to push information from server to clients...)

Aggregation means controlling the performance and the security. What’s new with CCF 2008?

1. Throttled Sessions. CCF 2008 enables you to set a limit on the number of sessions an agent can participant in.
2. Dynamic applications. Allows an agent to manually select an application from a list. Then CCF loads the application and attaches it in the CCF Session.
3. Enterprise Single Sign On (ESSO). Embedded with CCF. Allows agents to sign in to all communication channels and applications providing their credentials only once

(I will publish later a demo showing all these capabilities)

Aggregation means that you need to have a flexible UI is order to decide where to display the data (Composite application block concept)

• CCF2008 allows a user to choose dynamically whether to start in Desktop or Toolbar mode.
• UI code is public and supports ClickOnce deployment (as well as CCF logic)

AUTOMATION

From a business perspective, it's:

• “I need customer centric processes not system centric”
• “I want to be sure that my advisers follow the 5 steps to success. If they do it, we’ll improve First Contact Resolution rate by 2% (i.e. Better customer satisfaction)”

From a technical perspective, it's: "I need a tool to orchestrate activities but I don’t want to focus on the connectivity of the front end applications"

What's new with CCF2008?

• Hosted Application Toolkit (HAT)
• New sub-system in CCF 2008 based on Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)
• Extensible application user interface integration framework to provide CCF application automation
• CCF Workflow panel implemented with HAT. This allows many new scenarios like scripting or human workflow

ACCELERATE

From a business perspective, it's:

• “I need to reduce Average Handling Time”
• “I need to improve productivity”
• “I need to reduce time to integration”
• “I need a ROI in less than one year”

I will not details these one as it's already described in all posts, however these benefits are much more important that any others

From a technical perspective (focus of this post)

• “I need to reduce code”
• “I need to decouple the logic from the implementation, so that I can easily migrate my LOB applications”
• "I need to reduce the time to Integration, the maintenance and the deployment effort"

What's new with CCF2008?

• Data Driven adapters
• Extensible framework components that encapsulate the details of user interface interaction (the UI is described in a XML document)
• Allow separation of logic (automation piece or flow of information) and implementation (how do I find this textbox? How do I click this button?)

• ClickOnce support (no deployment issues)