Release Notes

High Availability

The Voice Recording Solution now supports High Availability (HA) at the machine/server level. In this setup, two SIP trunks are configured on CUCM in HA mode, each pointing to one of the two VRS servers. If one VRS server becomes unavailable, Call Manager automatically redirects call events to the second SIP trunk, ensuring a seamless user experience. Since VRS servers have limited storage capacity, a third server, known as the Replay Server, has been introduced to provide centralized storage. The Replay Server is equipped with higher storage capacity, and an rsync job runs on both VRS Servers (A and B) at regular intervals to transfer recorded files to the Replay Server. This ensures a unified and seamless interface for users accessing recordings from the Replay Server.

Additionally, to prevent storage issues, a configurable retention period is implemented, allowing automatic deletion of older recordings from VRS Servers A and B after a specified number of days.

Screen Recording

A significant enhancement has been introduced: Screen Recording. As the name suggests, this feature captures and records the agent’s screen activity during customer interactions in contact centers. A dedicated Screen Recorder utility is installed on the agent's computer, functioning as a local recording tool. When an agent accepts a call on Cisco Finesse, screen recording automatically starts, capturing all on-screen activities. The recording continues throughout the call, and once the call ends, the recording stops. The recorded video file is then stored on the agent's computer before being securely transferred to the VRS Server via SFTP. Within the VRS User Interface (UI), a call activity entry is created that includes both Audio and Video Play buttons. This allows users to listen to the audio call and view the corresponding screen recording seamlessly.

For video playback, an intuitive and feature-rich video player is available, offering a variety of controls to enhance accessibility and usability, ensuring a smooth and efficient review experience.

Pause and Resume Voice Recording

To enhance security and ensure PCI DSS compliance, a new Pause and Resume Recording feature has been introduced. This functionality allows agents to temporarily pause recording during specific portions of a call and resume it as needed. When a customer shares sensitive information, such as an address or account details, the agent can pause the recording to prevent storing confidential data. This functionality is controlled via dedicated APIs that enable both pausing and resuming the recording in real time.

When administrators review the recording in the VRS Interface, they will observe that the paused sections are muted, indicating that the agent utilized the Pause and Resume Recording feature. This ensures compliance with security regulations while maintaining a seamless recording experience. This feature is fully supported by solution and can be utilized seamlessly with Cisco or Expertflow Contact Center.

Audit Logs

To enhance security monitoring, compliance, operational insights, and troubleshooting, a new feature called Audit Logs has been introduced. This feature ensures that all user actions performed within the Voice Recording Solution Web Application are properly logged and displayed on a dedicated Audit Logs page.

The system accurately records key user activities, including login, logout, playback, and download of recordings, along with essential details such as:

• Date and Time of the action

• Description indicating whether the action was successful or failed

• Username of the user who performed the action

To facilitate easy access and analysis, the Audit Logs page includes a search and filter menu, allowing users to refine logs based on Action Type, Username, Date, and Time. Additionally, a pagination control is available, enabling users to customize the number of logs displayed per page (10, 25, or 50 entries).

Voice Recording Encryption

To enhance security and protect voice recordings from unauthorized access, Recording Encryption has been introduced in this release. This feature ensures that all voice recordings between the agent and customer are encrypted before being stored in the file system or backend, preventing unauthorized users from playing or accessing them directly from the server. On the Backend, all recordings are securely encrypted and can only be decrypted when accessed through the VRS Web Application. When a valid user logs into the application and plays a recording, the system decrypts the file in real-time and presents it to the authorized admin or user.

Access to recordings is strictly controlled and granted only to authorized users through Web Application and APIs, ensuring compliance with security and data protection standards. It is fully supported by solution and can be utilized seamlessly with Cisco or Expertflow Contact Center.

Archival Service

To optimize storage management and enhance the Voice Recording Solution, a new feature called Archival Service has been introduced. This service is particularly useful when VRS Server storage exceeds its limit or becomes too high. The Archival Service runs a scheduled job that automatically identifies and transfers recordings older than a configurable number of days from the VRS storage system to a designated SFTP server. This ensures that contact center recordings are securely archived while preventing storage-related issues on the primary VRS servers. Once a recording is archived, the Play and Download buttons for that call activity are removed from the frontend. Additionally, the archived recordings are greyed out, visually indicating that they have been successfully moved to the archival storage.

Previously, this feature was only supported for Cisco Contact Center. With this release, Archival Service is now also compatible with EFCX Contact Center, providing expanded functionality and flexibility.

Container/Component Level Failover

VRS High Availability does not support container-level failover. As a result, if a component on one server experiences downtime, the corresponding component on another server will not be notified of the downtime.

Same Subnet

VRS Servers must Reside on the Same Subnet for High Availability Mode.

Frontend Failover

When a failover occurs, user on the frontend will not receive any notification about the failover. Additionally, it must refresh the page or re-login to play and download recordings.

Failover during call

Failover during an ongoing call is not supported. Therefore, if the server goes down during a call, the recording will not be saved in the system.

Keepalive and APIs

If the keepalive service is down on one server and the backend APIs are down on the other server, the Virtual IP will become inaccessible.

Recorder and Mixer Binding

The Recorder and Mixer components lack High Availability. Consequently, if the Recorder is recording during a call and its Mixer fails, the alternate Mixer on the other VRS Server won't be able to mix the streams.