{"id":92089,"date":"2023-05-26T06:52:03","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T06:52:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techrepublic.com\/?p=4099878"},"modified":"2023-05-26T06:52:03","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T06:52:03","slug":"azure-communication-services-microsofts-powerful-tool-for-call-automation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=92089","title":{"rendered":"Azure Communication Services: Microsoft\u2019s powerful tool for call automation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
Image: Monkey Business\/Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Microsoft has slowly been expanding the business capabilities of its Azure<\/a> platform, adding services and application programming interfaces that can be used to provide a set of message-driven workflows. Much of this development builds on its Service Bus backbone, and the tooling used to run both Azure Functions and the Azure App Service.<\/p>\n

SEE: <\/strong>Get an in-depth understanding of Microsoft Azure online<\/a> with this training bundle from TechRepublic Academy.<\/p>\n

Building a message-based, event-driven architecture on Azure makes a lot of sense. It\u2019s an effective and portable way of building distributed applications that can scale both up and out as needed.<\/p>\n

One growing set of APIs are Azure\u2019s Communication Services<\/a>, which bridge distributed computing and voice communications, linking code to public telephone networks and other communication services, like Teams<\/a>. It\u2019s a powerful tool, with support for voice and video calls \u2014 both over the internet and through the telephone network \u2014 as well as text via chat, SMS and email.<\/p>\n

Jump to:<\/p>\n

Automating Azure Communication Services<\/h2>\n

The Azure Communication Service APIs make it easy to plug these technologies into your code, giving apps direct access to your customers and users. What\u2019s perhaps most interesting about these tools is they let you build your own custom call center applications, adding multichannel communications to customer service and sales tools or as part of a support platform.<\/p>\n

Where things get interesting is when you add support for call automation<\/a>, making voice a direct part of your workflows. Instead of integrating your applications into a digital call center, you\u2019re able to build a dedicated tool to route and assign telephony and web calls appropriately.<\/p>\n

With this dedicated tool, you\u2019re not limited to pre-call routing; your code can handle moving calls from one endpoint to another \u2014 for example, when escalating a customer support issue. There\u2019s also support for click-to-call applications, either through the web or through an app, enabling quick video and voice connections from user apps to support desks.<\/p>\n

In addition, developing code for the automation APIs is simple enough. As well as REST APIs, you\u2019re able to use C# or Java<\/a> libraries to add functionality to new and existing applications.<\/p>\n

SEE:<\/strong> Develop highly marketable coding skills<\/a> with this training bundle from TechRepublic Academy.<\/p>\n

These are integrated with Azure\u2019s event infrastructure, which lets you build business logic around a call. This allows you to build tooling to manage and triage call queues, so if a call from a valued customer is passed into a queue it can be prioritized or routed to a specialist operator.<\/p>\n

Adding automation to your code<\/h2>\n

The C# and Java SDKs<\/a> are probably the most likely ways to build enterprise communications workflows. They both offer the same features, from setting up calls to working with existing calls and managing recording a call.<\/p>\n