I've picked out my key highlights of the May 2015 release, including a section on the forthcoming "integration accelerators"; an addition which we are very excited about!

This latest release of Oracle Service Cloud provides a wealth of new features and capabilities across the platform in the areas of Cross-Channel Contact Centre, Policy Automation, Knowledge Management and underlying application functionality.

Below, I've picked out my key highlights of the May 2015 release, including a section on the forthcoming "integration accelerators"; an addition which we are very excited about!

Cross-Channel Contact Centre

There have been multiple new additions/enhancements to the Contact Centre in the May 2015 release:

• Social Monitor Enhancements- Following the introduction of the private message feature delivered in the February 2015 release, the May release continues to improve conversation monitoring by providing agents the ability to quickly navigate from social post to incident. This feature helps improve agent productivity by allowing agents to quickly determine if a social post has been addressed.

• Collaboration SME Support- Agents can now collaborate directly with subject matter experts anywhere in the organisation. The new Collaboration Service feature allows anybody in the organisation to login to Collaboration via a web browser or supported mobile device and provide support towards a first contact resolution.

• Customised Login Screen- Through a configuration setting, the login screen banner area can now point to a webpage URL. By default, the banner area will promote Oracle releases, webinars, and events. However, customers can elect to have their own branding in this area.

Other small enhancements have been made to some of the Message Templates and Techmail in this release.

Policy Automation

Organisations using Policy Automation as part of their Service Cloud implementation will now be able to deploy their own policy models to the mobile app using a revamped OPA Hub. OPA for Mobile is Pre-integrated with all Oracle Applications and provides a guided decision making experience that works on both iOS and Android devices.

Knowledge Management

Oracle have announced the anticipated release of Oracle Service Cloud Knowledge Advanced, bringing key capabilities from the Oracle Knowledge product into Oracle Service Cloud. More information about Oracle Knowledge (formerly InQuira) can be found here.

This edition integrates a variety of Core Authoring and Intelligent Search features:

• Advanced knowledge authoring offers WYSIWYG authoring/HTML creation, flexible templates, versioning, audit history as well as streamlined relationships between knowledge articles in multiple languages.

• Intelligent Search offers highly precise search results from deep within large documents and articles from multiple content sources.

Before anyone starts planning on how to use this new functionality, we must highlight that the Knowledge Advanced feature is not yet generally available and will only be available on a limited basis to select Service Cloud customers.

Platform Enhancements

There have been multiple new improvements to the Oracle Service Cloud platform in the May 2015 release, all of which will help developers to enhance the functionality of your Service Cloud implementation and integrate Service Cloud with other applications:

• Connect v1.3- New API operations return consolidated metadata for ROQL, Connect Web Services for SOAP & Connect PHP.

• Connect REST API- The new API allows customers to integrate with the Service Cloud platform using REST web services.

• Publish Business Events to External Subscribers- The framework has been enhanced to allow customers to broadcast events to applications outside Oracle Service Cloud. Organisations can publish Business Events to External Subscribers via an asynchronous service allowing parallel processing of business events that serve multiple subscribers.

• Federation with External Identity Provider- Organisations can now use external identity providers (IdP) to log in to Oracle Service Cloud and other service provider (SP) applications such as Oracle Sales Cloud and Oracle Policy Automation Cloud Service. IdP allows agents to login once and be authenticated across several SP applications. Single logout is also supported.

Service Cloud Integration

The May release introduces three new integration accelerators, EBS Back Office and Case Management, Field Service and Siebel Case Management, designed to help your organisation reduce the cost and risks associated with integration.

In particular, the Siebel Case Management accelerator is very exciting for all co-existence customers or Siebel customers looking to enhance their customer service across all channels.

This accelerator package will eventually feature sample code, workflows and documentation for delivering a seamless integration between Siebel and the Customer Portal of Oracle Service Cloud.

I used the word “eventually” in the previous paragraph because, as we understand, the sample code for the accelerator is still a few weeks away. However, we will endeavor to update this post when the code/any updates become available!

Documentation for the Service Cloud accelerators is available here.

Learn More

If you would like some more information about any particular feature in the May 2015 release, or would like to learn more about how Oracle Service Cloud can help enhance your customer's experience, why not contact us, or call us now on +44 2032834315, to discuss how your organisation can benefit from using a customer experience focused application such as Oracle Service Cloud.

Boxfusion Consulting are a Specialised Oracle Service Cloud Implementation partner.