Coach Custom Integration

Coach has excellent support for over 30 call and CRM solutions. For companies who are using self-built or rarer solutions for call dialing and CRM, Coach offers a custom that allows you to get your recordings and associated metadata into the platform. This solution should require approximately two days of setup time by an IT Technician or Developer at your company. This integration is robust, secure, and well-supported by Coach. Contact your CSM to discuss this engagement. 

You can use this integration to upload:

• Call recordings
• Call metadata
• CRM metadata

At a frequency not less than once per hour, upload new assets for Coach to process.

Jump to: 

• Implementation Process
• Directory Structure
• Call Recordings
• Call Metadata Files
• Timing Considerations for Uploads
• Related CRM Object Metadata

Implementation Process

You will be assigned an Implementation Manager to be a resource as you build out the integration internally. The implementation schedule might look like the following:

• Tech Scoping Call - verify recording settings and discuss implementation details like file structure or transfer frequency.
• Kickoff Call - review the requirements, assign roles both internally and with Coach and set out expectations.
• Verification - verify metadata files and recordings match expectations and requirements
• Go Live - Coach will complete the necessary mappings and configuration if no changes are needed. Calls will begin appearing in your instance once the integration is enabled.

Directory Structure

SFTP

Coach will provision credentials to access the SFTP directory. Don’t create directories within the uploaded folder. All files should be automatically uploaded to the data subdirectory.
Coach’s software will move files into an automatically created subdirectory as it processes recordings, and will purge files from your sftp account altogether after they have been present for 7 days.

AWS S3

We will create a bucket for the customer on our S3. Authentication can follow either of the following:

• Coach can provision an IAM user
• The customer can provide the ARN of a user that should be allowed to access the bucket in order to upload

Our software will move files into an automatically created subdirectory as it processes recordings, and will purge files from your sftp account altogether after they have been present for 7 days.

Call Recordings

Supported Media Types

Coach supports all major audio and video formats. You can upload your recordings using any of the following media types: wav, mp3, mp4, m4a, mpg, wma, wmv, webm, aiff, flac, ogg, gsm, webex arf or au.

If you can separate speakers onto different tracks in the media file (e.g. caller on left, contact on right), Coach can plot the conversation accordingly. If it is not possible to separate speakers, Coach uses a technique called Diarization to achieve a similar result, with high accuracy.

Maximum File Size

Individual media files should be no greater than 2GB in size.

Recording File Naming

Recordings should be named according to the following format:
yyyyMMdd-hhmmss_dir_uid.ext

These are defined as follows:

Call Metadata Files

Supported File Types & Contents

Supplied metadata files for individual call records can be XML or JSON. There should be exactly one metadata file per media file. Inside the metadata file, include all fields that have been configured for your Coach instance, which should include a field which specifies the path to the recording file.
Note that you may send as many fields as you wish to be directly indexed in the Coach search engine alongside the call. Coach does not support nested fields.

Example metadata files can be provided on request, though Coach’s metadata parsers can
map to any logically constructed file of the supported types, provided that the fields are
consistently named.

Minimum basic JSON file example, field names and value formatting can vary depending on customer needs:

{"datetime": "2021-05-11T21:59:59Z", "email": "email.of.user@test.com", "filename": "sftp/path/to/recording.mp3", "direction": "outbound"}

Description of example fields:

• datetime - full date and time of start of call, example shown is in ISO 8601, but other formats can be used by request
• email - email of rep (to uniquely identify user). By request another unique user ID could be used such as: pbx number, employee id, extern id from dialer or CRM.
• filename - filename of recording
• direction - direction of recording (e.g. “outbound”, “inbound”, "screenshare" or names that can be similarly mapped to those values)

Alternatively, it’s possible to push call metadata in a batch, as a CSV file. In this case, the system expects one row per call record.

Metadata Fields

Your Coach Implementation Manager will work with you to come up with a specification for which fields to include in metadata. Typically, these fields will include some or all of the following, as well as fields custom to your workflow:

• Caller ID
• Contact name
• Contact phone number
• Company name
• Opportunity ID
• Opportunity amount
• Call direction
• Call time
• Call duration
• Call disposition
• Call stage
• Call outcome

Example metadata files can be provided on request, though Coach’s metadata parsers can map to any logically constructed file of the supported types, provided that the fields are consistently named.

Once you have created your first metadata file, contact your Coach Sales Engineer to complete the mapping (your field names to user facing names, and types of fields) on the Coach side. Once this is done, you can begin uploading metadata on a regular basis.

Metadata File Naming

There are two options for naming individual metadata files, which depend on whether or not you are also uploading recordings.

When you are uploading recordings and metadata

Metadata files must be named identically to the corresponding media file, with the exception that ext should be replaced with “csv,”"xml,""json," or "yml," depending on the type of the metadata file that you are providing.
For example, alongside 20171012-140253_joe_baducci.wav, you might provide 20171012- 140253_joe_baducci.xml.

When you are uploading only metadata

If your recording source generates unique ids:

If your recordings are being ingested by Coach from another source (e.g. your dialer’s API), and you are supplying only metadata via the SFTP upload, then your metadata files should if possible be named to use a unique id that references your calls. In this case, your metadata files should be named id.ext (where ext is the extension - csv, yaml, xml, json - and id is the id which references the recording). For example, RingCentral files have names like ringcentral_BXyT30eVTWlZjUA; if you were uploading XML, the accompanying metadata file for this recording would be named BXyT30eVTWlZjUA.xml.

If your recording source does not generate unique ids:

In the case that your recording source does not generate unique ids, Coach’s matching system will associate your metadata with call recordings. The more fields that are provided that are common to the two systems, the higher the probability of accurate matches. Talk to your Coach Sales Engineer about what is needed.

Batch Metadata Naming and Matching

If using the batch metadata approach, the CSV uploaded must have a unique name. We suggest using the timestamp at which the file was generated. The same considerations apply for fields as discussed above in the context of individual metadata files, i.e. a unique id or filename referencing the recording is preferred for an accurate match.

Timing Considerations for Uploads

Frequency of Uploads

Simply put, the more frequently you upload, the faster the Coach users in your organization will be able to interact with calls. Generally, you may expect up to around 30 minutes of processing delay after upload before call recordings surface in the platform.

Calls Suppressed Until Metadata is Ready

Coach requires certain metadata to be present before calls can be surfaced in the platform. Therefore, call recordings will not be processed until an accompanying metadata file is uploaded.

Updates to Metadata

It is common, in some workflows, for reps to update call metadata significantly after the completion of the call. Coach’s software will process metadata updates when a new version of a metadata file is uploaded, as long as the file naming convention is kept; the media file does not need to be re-uploaded in this circumstance.

For example, suppose 20181012-140253_joe_baducci.wav and 20181012- 140253_joe_baducci.xml were uploaded at 14:05. Coach might process them at 14:08.

At 14:15, Joe Baducci then makes some updates to the metadata in your CRM system, so your software would then upload a new instance of 20181012-140253_joe_baducci.xml to your sftp folder, leading to an update of metadata in the Coach system. Such updates can be made up to 48 hours after the call date/time. Metadata updates made after 48 hours will not be processed.

Related CRM Object Metadata

It is possible (but not required) to upload additional source metadata describing objects ancillary to the call records. These should be provided as CSV files. Supported objects are:

• Contacts
• Leads
• Opportunities
• Cases
• Accounts

In all cases, provide the unique identifier of the object in your system, along with standard fields. Updates are supported by simply providing the same record in a subsequent upload. Deletions are not supported; however, if you merge records internally (e.g. duplicate contacts) and wish to reassign the new object to calls that use the now defunct object, you can upload an update to call metadata as described above.

If uploading objects in this way, you may make use of the CRM functionality in Coach’s Smart Alerts system; additionally, this allows you to upload ids to CRM objects in provided call metadata as opposed to literals for things like contact names, emails, etc. If taking this approach, ensure that you have uploaded the objects prior to new call metadata. Coach will always prioritize ingestion of batch CRM object metadata files over call metadata.