WAS v8.5 > WebSphere applications > Communications enabled applications

Communications Enabled Applications concepts

CEA is a programming model that provides the ability to add dynamic web communications to any application or business process.

We can take advantage of integrated telephony and collaborative web services to extend the interactivity of Enterprise and web commerce applications. With the CEA capability, Enterprise solution architects and developers can use a single core application to enable multiple modes of communication. Enterprise developers do not need to have extensive knowledge of telephony or SIP to implement CEA. The CEA capability delivers call control, notifications, and interactivity and provides the platform for more complex communications.

Using this simplified programming model for adding web-based communications, Enterprise developers can do the following:

• Enable any application to add communications support; for example, click-to-call integration

• Enable shared sessions between end users and the company
• Push relevant session data for application use; for example, customer phone numbers
• Deliver automated notifications and instant messaging support
• Provide enterprise-grade security, scalability, and high availability
• Integrate with customer private branch exchange (PBX) systems

CEA has two main services, telephony access and multimodal web interaction:

• Telephony access allows you to create a unified communications environment from within business applications to increase the efficiency of processes, reduce communications errors, and optimize business interactions in real time. CEA provides telephony access through a REST interface, through a web services client, and using click-to-call widgets.
• Multimodal web interaction allows you to provide session linking (shared sessions) between users browsing the same website from different locations. With session linking, users can interact dynamically in collaborative ways, such as cobrowsing or coshopping web sessions. Commerce web sites can use this service to provide product or customer support, while protecting information on the internal site. Commerce sites can use the collaborative shopping experience to attract more customers to their sites. With a combination of click-to-call functionality and multimodal interaction, we can support two-way synchronized text forms between the user and a customer service representative (CSR).

Deprecated feature: CEA Dojo widgets encapsulate various user interfaces that are based on the CEA Rest API. These widgets are deprecated. We can also obtain the source for these widgets from developerWorks ..

CEA is based on SIP-enabled services that use Representation State Transfer (REST) servlets and web services in a converged HTTP and SIP application. CEA includes a library of Dojo-style widgets for use in web applications. Dojo widgets are prepackaged components of JavaScript and HTML code that add interactive features that work across platforms and browsers. CEA widgets are extensible, allowing developers to customize them to handle more advanced tasks.

The CEA samples package includes three different sample applications used to explore the telephony access and multi-modal web interaction services. To learn more, see the information on accessing the samples and setting up the communications enabled application samples.

Subtopics

• CEA call flow
  In a Web telephony session, users can make phone calls using the ClicktoCall widget in their Web browsers. The call flow diagram illustrates the CEA call flow.
• CEA collaboration flow
  A CEA Web collaboration session allows dynamic interaction between users sharing linked browser sessions. Users connect their Web sessions using the CEA collaboration widget. Use the collaboration flow illustrated in this topic to understand how live Web collaboration works.
• CEA iWidgets
  An iWidget is a browser-oriented component designed to work within the framework defined by the iWidget specification. Such a component only occupies a portion of the overall working canvas and is typically designed in a way that makes it easy for the canvas assembler to connect the iWidget to other iWidgets on the canvas.
• Collaboration Dialog
  The Collaboration Dialog allows two users to share information over linked browser sessions. Use this topic to understand how the Collaboration Dialog works.
• Collaborative two-way forms
  We can use attributes to customize web-based two-way forms.
• REST APIs in CEA
  We can use the CEA feature to integrate either web telephony or web collaboration into applications using a REST API. REST is a network architecture that defines how resources on the Internet are accessed. REST is not a standard, but uses common Internet standards such as HTTP and HTML.
• Directory conventions
  References in product information to app_server_root, profile_root, and other directories imply specific default directory locations. This article describes the conventions in use for WAS.

Related concepts:

Access the samples
CEA call flow
CEA collaboration flow

Related

Set up the communications enabled application samples
Samples documentation

Related information:

SIP Servlet Specification 1.1

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