Call Center CRM Solutions

Call centers are offices that make use of phone facilities to assist client companies engaged in fields as diverse as healthcare, education, law and market research. As the call centers function round the clock, and its employees communicate with customers in a completely virtual environment, the risk of getting stressed out is great. Like any employer, call centers too are expected to keep their employees happy. Only if they are happy can they make the customer at the other end of the phone line happy. Moreover, the sustenance and reputation of a call center depends basically on its relationship with customer companies. Hence call centers view Customer Relationship Management [CRM] as a top priority area and offer a wide range of in-house CRM consulting services. This is seen to increase productivity, efficiency and effectiveness.

An effective CRM program trains the call center employees on a consistent basis to build a good and everlasting relationship with the customer [companies]. Before developing CRM programs, call centers make use of the knowledge and understanding of their employees about customer requirements. Based on this, they develop modules and train them to use a wide variety of information and communication technology tools to accomplish a strong relationship with their customer companies.

An effective in-house CRM will ensure that the call center?s business functions make both the employees and customers happy and comfortable as members of a cohesive team.

One of the most important objectives of using CRM is to make the call center more profitable, reputable and sustainable in today?s highly competitive global market.



Call Center Solutions provides detailed information on Call Center Solutions, Call Center Software Solutions, Call Center CRM Solutions, Call Center Management Solutions and more. Call Center Solutions is affliated with Outsourcing Call Centers.

Microsoft CRM Customization programming email activity attachment

 Microsoft CRM is now on the scene and it is increasing its market share, due to Microsoft Business Solutions muscles and marketing strategy. It is tightly integrated with other Microsoft Business Solutions products such as Microsoft Great Plains, Solomon, Navision. Being relatively inexpensive in comparison to competitors, like Siebel, Oracle - Microsoft CRM opens you the door for worldwide operations automation. In this small article we would like to give you, software developer, some hints on Microsoft CRM customization.

Today's topic is Activity of email type programming - you usually deal with these customizations when you improve Microsoft Exchange CRM connector. How do you create email attachment - this is the main discussion topic. Well use C#.Net.

In Exchange handler/event sink you create Activity of email type in MS CRM and one of the tasks is transfer the attachment(s) from the body of the incoming email to the attachment(s) in the Activity. You can realize it through direct access to Microsoft CRM DB. Lets see C# code:

1. First we are getting access to the letter via ExOLEDB:

CDO.Message iMessage = new CDO.MessageClass();

CDO.IBodyPart iPrt;

iMessage.DataSource.Open(bstrURLItem, null, ADODB.ConnectModeEnum.adModeRead,

ADODB.RecordCreateOptionsEnum.adFailIfNotExists, ADODB.RecordOpenOptionsEnum.adOpenSource, "", "");

2. Next we come through the attachment list, get their names and save their bodies into temporary catalogue:

for(int i = 1; i ";

strXml += "Activity 1";

strXml += "" + attachmentNumber + "";

strXml += "" + emailId.ToString("B") + "";

strXml += "";

// Create the activity attachment

Guid attachmentId = new Guid(activityAttachment.Create(userAuth, strXml));

log.Debug("Create Attachemnt ID: " + attachmentId.ToString("B"));

UploadFileToDB(attachmentId, filename, filesize);

return attachmentId;

}

catch (System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapException e) {

log.Debug("ErrorMessage: " + e.Message + " " + e.Detail.OuterXml + " Source: " + e.Source);

}

catch (Exception e) {

log.Debug(e.Message + "" + e.StackTrace);

}

return new Guid();

}

5. Main problem, however is attachment body adding to MS CRM database. Main requirement is attachment must be encoded as BASE64 stream and its length must be specified correctly together with Nine Type and file name of the file it will be knows as an attachment in activity. Lets look at the C# code:

public void UploadFileToDB(Guid attachmentId, string filename, long filesize) {

string contentType = "application/octet-stream";

try {

Hashtable mimes = LoadMimeDB(Environment.SystemDirectory + "/Albaspectrum/ContentType.txt");

if (mimes != null) {

string tmpContentType = GetMimeType(mimes, filename);

if (tmpContentType != null && !tmpContentType.Equals(""))

contentType = tmpContentType;

}

byte[] memoryData = new byte[filesize];

FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);

BinaryReader reader = new BinaryReader(fs);

reader.Read(memoryData, 0, (int)filesize);

reader.Close();

fs.Close();

OleDbCommand command = conn.CreateCommand();

command.CommandText = "UPDATE ActivityMimeAttachment SET FileSize = (?), MimeType = (?), FileName = (?), Body = (?) WHERE ActivityMimeAttachmentId = (?)";

command.Prepare();

command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("FileSize", filesize));

command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("MimeType", contentType));

command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("FileName", new FileInfo(filename).Name));

command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("Body", Convert.ToBase64String(memoryData, 0, (int)filesize)));

command.Parameters.Add(new OleDbParameter("ActivityMimeAttachmentId", attachmentId));

log.Debug("Prepare to upload attachemnt " + attachmentId.ToString("B") + " in ActivityMimeAttachment");

command.ExecuteNonQuery();

memoryData = null;

}

catch (Exception e) {

log.Debug(e.Message + "" + e.StackTrace);

}

}

6. File ContectType.txt is matching list of the files extensions and their mime-type in the following format:

asc application/pgp-encrypted Armored Encrypted file (PGP)

asd application/astound Autosave file (Word for Windows)

asm PC ASM File

asn application/astound

etc.

Happy customizing, implementing and modifying! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Boris Makushkin is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Moscow and Europe and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Microsoft CRM SDK, C#, VB.Net, SQL, Oracle, Unix developer.

borism@albaspectrum.com