Overview

With the launch of Talkdesk VDI Connect, customers will now benefit from optimised media flows when using Talkdesk Conversations within a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment. 

This feature enables a direct audio channel between the hosted virtual desktop and your agents’ workstations to mitigate the risk of high latency, common with transmitting voice traffic over the VDI PCoIP protocol, resulting in reduced voice quality.

In this Preview release, Talkdesk VDI Connect will be made available to customers currently utilising a Citrix Virtual Desktop environment.

Architecture

Network Diagram - High Level

Solution Overview

Pre-requisites for Use

To utilize the Preview release of VDI Connect in Talkdesk Conversations, the following prerequisites should be met.

Agent Workstation

The agent workstation refers to the physical hardware that the agent interfaces with, whether remotely from home or at their place of work.

• The Agent Workstation can be any PC or Thin Client able to support Citrix.
• Workspace/Receiver versions as outlined here.
• Talkdesk VDI Connect is not currently supported on Tablet or Mobile form factors.

Hosted Virtual Desktop

The Hosted Virtual Desktop refers to an operating system running remotely in the customer's Virtualisation environment and served up to the agent through the Citrix Workspace/Receiver application over the PCoIP protocol. 

• The Hosted Virtual Desktop must be running Microsoft Windows.
• The minimum specifications to run Talkdesk Workspace must be in place on the Hosted Virtual Desktop.
• Agents may run Talkdesk VDI Connect with the Talkdesk desktop application or through a supported browser.

Customer Virtualisation Environment

The Customer Virtualisation Environment refers to the centralised Virtualised infrastructure which will serve up remote desktops to agents running the Citrix Workspace/Receiver.

• Citrix can be configured to deploy the Hosted Virtual Desktop in Persistent or Non-Persistent mode
• When running Windows Hosted Virtual Desktops they should be deployed with the following Registry Key Settings configured:
  • Key Path: HKLM\Software\WOW6432Node\Citrix\WebSocketService
  • Key Name: ProcessWhitelist
  • Key Type: MULTISZ
  • Key Value:
    • Talkdesk.exe
    • chrome.exe
    • msedge.exe
• Once the above registry is configured successfully, reboot the VDA or restart CtxHdxWebSocketService to finish the Whitelist setup.
• The existing setup of three different network segments (as mentioned in the Architecture / Network Diagram segment) that are reachable over the internet is good enough to leverage this feature.

Optimising your calls for VDI

How to make optimised calls?

Making or receiving calls within Talkdesk remains identical to the simple experience you have come to expect within the Talkdesk Suite. Agents should continue to use the Conversations application exactly as they do today.

How do we know the status of the direct audio channel?

Talkdesk VDI Connect status is represented by three discrete states:

Enabled and Connected: Successfully connected and with an active Direct audio channel

Disabled: During the startup of Talkdesk Workspace the application was unable to confirm the presence of VDI Infrastructure.

Disconnected: After having been connected to the direct audio channel the connectivity is lost.

How do we know when the direct audio channel is not working?

If, after successful connection, the Direct audio channel encounters a recoverable problem (e.g. poor network connectivity) this will be represented as Disconnected and the Talkdesk Conversations application will operate in Fallback mode. 

To get the application to re-attempt connectivity the user can refresh the browser window or close and reload the Talkdesk Workspace Application. Once connected again the agent will see the toolbar icon revert to Green status.

Fallback Mode

In the case of a failure to connect to the VDI environment at the startup of Talkdesk Workspace, Talkdesk VDI Connect will revert to a Fallback mode.

In Fallback mode the agent calls will be made (and received) without the direct audio channel and instead follow the standard media path. This state will be represented in the Toolbar by a Disconnected notification.

In this mode, calls will continue to be completed however the calls will follow the non-Direct audio path and as a result be subject to reduced call quality as a result of the additional induced latency from the audio running over the PCoIP channel.

Preview Period Limitations

During the preview release the following limitations are in place.

• When VDI Connect is activated all agents on the Talkdesk instance, regardless of whether they are in a VDI environment, will attempt to establish the direct audio channel.
  • For agents who are not in a VDI environment the Talkdesk application will check connectivity at application startup. If Conversations determines it is not in a VDI environment connections will not be attempted and the agent will be informed that VDI is disabled as represented below.
  • While in this state the application will continue to operate but without the direct audio channel. In this state agents will be subject to increased latency and reduced audio quality until such time as the user returns to an environment with connectivity to the VDI environment.

• In any situation where the user has become Disconnected (unstable network connectivity) or started-up in the Disabled state (no VDI environment found). 
  • The agent, to re-attempt connectivity to the VDI environment, will need to either reload their browser window or close and restart the Talkdesk Workspace application. This refresh or reload will force a retry of the VDI Direct audio channel.
  • If the Agent was mid-call during the point of Direct audio channel failure, the call will be disconnected.

Definitions