Configuring the Desktop Agent
Overview
The Desktop Agent enables several advanced features:
- Agent View: a supervisor feature to monitor agent screen activity in real time using the web interface.
- Recording pop-up: the agents can control various aspects of the recording using the popup toolbar: on-demand keeping, start/stop recording, muting.
- Screen recording: while recording the agent phone call, the Desktop Agent can capture the screen of the agent desktop computer.
- Auto-pause for PCI DSS: the Agent Desktop application can detect if the agent navigates to configured web sites or starts using a specific application, and automatically pause the recording to avoid capturing sensitive data.
Prerequisites
The Agent Desktop application can only be installed in Windows desktop operating systems.
Most of the Verba Desktop Agent functionalities rely on the Voice recording. For the Voice recording configuration see Step 3 at this article: Configure
The Agent View feature requires the host name of the desktop PCs to be resolvable from the Media Repository server.
The Windows user names of the users have to match to the Verba user ID. The extensions of the user have to be associated to the Verba user.
For the installation steps of the Verba Desktop Agent see: Installing the Verba Desktop Agent
If the desktop screen recording is required, then the Media Foundation (Windows Server 2012 or newer) / Desktop Experience (Windows Server 2008 R2) feature have to be enabled on the Media Repository server where the Desktop Agent uploads the recordings to.
The auto-pause feature only supports:
- Chrome,
- FireFox,
- Internet Explorer,
- Edge (from v9.7.2),
- and Opera (from v9.7.2) browsers.
Configure the Desktop Recorder Configuration Profile
Since usually, multiple Desktop Agents are installed, and all of them needs the same configuration, the Desktop Agent should be configured at profile level.
Step 1 - In the Verba web interface go to System \ Configuration Profiles then select the Default Desktop Recorder Configuration Profile.
Step 2 - Click on the Change Configuration Settings tab. Expand the Desktop Agent section.
Step 3 - Under the Basics section provide the Recording Server hostnames with the correct port (HOSTNAME:PORT) at the Recording Service(s) setting. If there are multiple Recording Servers, then they can be separated by comma.
The ports for the different recording services are:
Verba Passive Recorder Service (SfB/Lync, Passive): 10000
Verba Unified Recorder Service (Cisco, IPTrade, Speakerbus, Avaya, SIP): 10031
Verba Cisco Central Recorder Service (Cisco legacy): 10003
Step 4 - Under the Verba Connection section provide the Verba Web Interface URL at the MR HTTP API Server URL setting.
Step 5 (Optional, only for Screen Recording) - Under the Storage Management section. For more information, see Configure media file upload
Step 6 (Optional, only for Agent View) - Under the Basics section set the Enable Silent Monitoring setting to Yes.
Step 7 (Optional, only for PCI DSS) - Under the Auto-Pause section web URLs and Windows controls can be configured.
Auto-Pause can be configured based on web URLs and Windows controls. When web URLs are configured, the Desktop Agent going to stop the recording when the URL opened in a web browser. When a Windows control is configured, the Desktop Agent going to stop the recording when the focus is on the specified control.
For the web URL based auto-pausing specify the URLs at the Auto-Pause Recording on URL setting. This option only works when the browsers emit specific Windows events which are recognized by the application.
The application currently supports:
- Chrome,
- FireFox,
- Internet Explorer,
- Edge (from v9.7.2),
- and Opera (from v9.7.2) browsers.
It works with partial match using regular expressions. This is much more flexible than simple matching, but care must be taken not to type something that is not meant. For example, "facebook.com" as a regular expression matches on anything that contains the word "facebook" followed by any character and the word "com", as the "." has a special meaning. "facebook.com", "facebookocom", "facecbookxcom" would all match on the expression. In this example, the correct way would be to escape the "." character with a backslash signifying that the "." no longer means "any character", but a simple ".". In conclusion the correct input to mute on "facebook.com" would be "facebook\.com". To make sure the expression used is correct use this online tool for testing called RegExr.
For the Windows control based auto-pausing specify controls at the Controls to be Discarded in Focus setting. The format is: process_name|parent_class|parent_id|parent_caption|control_class|control_id|control_caption|mute_voice. The process_name and mute_voice (0/1) parameters are mandatory. For example, NOTEPAD.EXE||||||Notepad|1 for not recording when the notepad is started. Properties can be checked by Spy++ or WinSpy++ tools.
Step 9 - If there are already installed Desktop Agents, then a notification banner appears on the top. Click on the click here link, so you are redirected to the Configuration Tasks tab. Click on the Execute button to execute the changes.Step 8 - Save the changes by clicking on the icon.
Configuring new Desktop Agent installations
The configuration has to be sent down to the new Desktop Agent installations. The following steps describe how to apply the configuration on the new agents:
Step 1 - In the Verba Web Interface go to Administration > Verba Servers menu.
Step 2A (if the Desktop Agent does not have database access) - If the Desktop Agents do not have database access, then they have to be added to the server list manually.
Click on the Add New Verba Server link. Provide the hostname at the host name setting, set the Role to Desktop Recorder, set the Configuration Profile then click Save.
Step 2B (if the Desktop Agent has database access) - Select the computer from the list.
Step 3 - Go to the Change Configuration Settings tab.
Step 4 - Select Use configuration only from the central database, then click Start.
Deploying multiple Verba Desktop Agents
It is also possible to deploy multiple Verba Desktop Agents using pre-created configuration. For the details, see: Deploying Multiple Verba Desktop Agents
Starting the Verba Screen Capture Multiplexer Service
If the desktop screen recording is required, then the recorded video files have to be multiplexed with the recorded audio files. This is done by the Verba Screen Capture Multiplexer Service on the Media Repository (or Single) Server. The Media Foundation (Windows Server 2012 or newer) / Desktop Experience (Windows Server 2008 R2) feature have to be enabled on the server.
Step 1 - In the Verba web interface go to Administration > Verba Servers > Select your Media Repository (or Single) Server > Click on the Service Activation tab.
Step 2 - Activate the Verba Screen Capture Multiplexer Service by clicking the icon.
Step 3 - Click on the Service Control tab.
Step 4 - Start the Verba Screen Capture Multiplexer Service by clicking the icon.
Configure extensions
After finalizing the configuration of the recording services, make sure you have added the extensions you want to record to the Verba extension list. This can be done manually (Extension list) or using Active Directory Synchronization.