Call companion

Call companion is a Dialogflow CX feature that enhances the customer experience by providing a supplementary interactive visual interface on the end-user mobile devices during voice interactions with Dialogflow CX virtual agents. This interface allows for information exchange and end-user interactions.

For Contact Center AI Platform (CCAI Platform), by integrating virtual agents with the existing telephony/IVR infrastructure, the platform enables more personalized customer interactions. In addition, leveraging the existing SMS session-less capabilities, all communication is handled through a single platform.

Prerequisites

Prior to being able to use the call companion service with CCAI Platform, the following prerequisites must be met:

A provisioned CCAI Platform.
A Dialogflow CX virtual agent integrated with an IVR queue within the CCAI Platform instance.
SMS capability enabled for a designated phone number associated with the CCAI Platform instance, and not being used for SMS Chat.

Limitations

The SMS capability cannot use the same phone number as the IVR, due to the employment of a session-less SMS API.

The SMS API is disabled by default and has to be enabled. It cannot be enabled through the CCAI Platform user interface. A workaround is detailed here:

Open the Chrome web browser, sign in to the CCAI Platform portal as a user with administrator role.
Open the Chrome .
Click the Console tab, and then copy and paste at the prompt.

  var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
  xhttp.open("PATCH", "/v1/settings/sms", true);
  xhttp.setRequestHeader("X-UJET-XSRF-TOKEN", localStorage.getItem('xsrf-token'));
  xhttp.setRequestHeader("X-XSRF-TOKEN", localStorage.getItem('xsrf-token'));
  xhttp.setRequestHeader("Accept", "application/json, text/plain, */*");
  xhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json;charset=UTF-8");
  xhttp.send(JSON.stringify({"sessionless": {"enabled": true, "auto_response_message": "This message couldn't be delivered because the sender does not support responses"}}));

Architecture

The workflow will be structured in this manner:

End-user calls the telephony/IVR queue.
Telephony initiates session request to Dialogflow API.
Dialogflow CX starts a conversation.
Dialogflow CX creates a call companion URL and triggers a webhook to send SMS to the user using the CCAI Platform session-less SMS API.
CCAI Platform SMS server sends the SMS message to the user.
End-user opens call companion web UI using the URL present in SMS.
End-user can now interact either using the Voice channel or using the screen, leveraging the call companion API.

Configuration

This section outlines the steps needed to enable the call companion service.

Enable data parameters

Data parameters will be leveraged in order to pass necessary information from CCAI Platform to the Dialogflow CX virtual agent.

Go to the CCAI Platform portal for the instance.
Go to Settings > Queue.
Click Edit/View IVR Queue.
Within the IVR Queue, find the queue that has the virtual agent assigned and click Edit virtual agent assignments.
Within Pass data parameters you can add parameters.
1. Click Add parameter.
2. Add the following parameters:

Parameter Name	Description	Dynamic or Fixed	Value
ccTo	Phone number to send SMS to	Dynamic	Session metadata - ANI
ccFrom	Phone number to send SMS from	Fixed	+13211231212
ccaipHost	Your CCAI Platform hostname (no https:// or trailing /)	Fixed	myccaip.uc1.ccaiplatform.com
projectID	The Google Cloud Project ID that your DF Virtual Agent resides in	Fixed	my-gcp-project

Create API credentials

To be able to send the outbound SMS using the CCAI Platform session-less API, the following steps must be taken:

Go to the CCAI Platform portal for the instance.
Go to Settings > Developer settings.
Go to the later section API credentials.
Click Add API credentials.
Provide a name for these API credentials, for example Sessionless SMS. An API token will be generated and displayed.
Copy this API token.

Set up webhook in Dialogflow CX virtual agent

The following steps will enable you to setup a webhook in Dialogflow CX. This is necessary to be able to send the outbound SMS using the CCAI Platform session-less SMS API.

Go to the Dialogflow CX virtual agent.
Select the Google Cloud project from the drop-down list at the top.
In your Google Cloud project, select your Dialogflow CX virtual agent.
From the Manage tab, you will find the webhooks section option.
Click Create new.
Provide a display name for the webhook, such as Send SMS.
Set the webhook URL to the value:

https://$session.params.ccaipHost/apps/api/v1/sessionless_sms
Select Flexible as the Subtype.
Select Post as the method.

For the request body, provide the following:

{
  "from_phone": "$session.params.ccFrom",
  "to_phones": [
    "$session.params.ccTo"
  ],
  "messages": [
    "Hello from Google Call Companion! To interact with the call visually click here g.co/cloud/df-callcompanion#$session.params.projectID%2Fglobal%2F$request.session-id&$session.params.call-companion-auth-code  Text STOP to stop all SMS."
  ]
}

Authentication in Basic Auth, provide the first part of CCAI Platform hostname, for example if your CCAI Platform instance host is myccaip-abc123.uc1.ccaiplatform.com, provide myccaip-abc123 as your username.
Pass the API Credential that you created in the earlier API credentials stage as the password.
Click the save button at the top of the page.

Enable Webhook in virtual agent flow

Now that the webhook has been created in the virtual agent from the previous steps, change the virtual agent to use this webhook at the chosen point in the conversation with the end user.

Some customers choose to send this SMS message at the start of the session when the user first connects, while others choose to only send the SMS message for certain parts of the conversation or flows.

In the Dialogflow CX virtual agent, go to the conversational flow under Build.
Click the Routes within the page.
Select a route to view the route configuration.
Go to the Parameter presets section.
Add a preset parameter with parameter name call-companion-auth-code and value $sys.func.URL_ENCODE($session.params.call-companion-auth-code). Using the Dialogflow CX system function $sys.func.URL_ENCODE URL encodes the call companion auth code because it might contain values that need encoding.
Go to the Webhook section.
Enable Webhook and select the webhook created for sending the SMS.
Specify the fulfillment tag.
Click the save button on the top.

Enable call companion in conversation profile

For Dialogflow CX to be enabled for call companion support, it is necessary to activate this service in the conversational profile.

In the Dialogflow CX virtual agent, go to the Shared resources and then conversation profile.
Select the virtual agent.
Enable the call companion option and click the save button.

Test call companion

To test call companion, place a voice call into the Contact Center AI Platform queue with the virtual agent assigned.

When the conversation reaches the point where you call the webhook, you should receive the SMS message. From the SMS content, you can open the URL which will open the call companion UI and you can see the conversation as well as interact with the ongoing call. You can interact as regular voice call or with chat.

Using rich content

The call companion interface uses the Dialogflow CX Messenger. This supports the ability to provide rich content, including buttons.