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SocialMiner Release 8.5(5)
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What's New in SocialMiner Release 8.5(5)
Upgrading to SocialMiner Release 8.5(5)
Downloading and Installing Language Packs
Cisco SocialMiner is a customer-care system that provides capture, filtering, workflow, queuing, and reporting for social media engagement teams. Internet postings captured by SocialMiner are referred to as Social Contacts. SocialMiner stores the social contacts and groups them into user-defined Campaigns. Each Campaign obtains social contacts from one or more Feeds. SocialMiner presents the social contacts to social media customer care personnel who can review, categorize, and respond to the postings. SocialMiner also produces reporting metrics on the handling of the social contacts.
SocialMiner has one default user, called the SocialMiner Administrator. The SocialMiner Administrator is the Application User who is configured during installation. The credentials for that user allow initial access to SocialMiner. Certain SocialMiner functions are available only to the SocialMiner Administrator—including access to Active Directory on the Administation tab, where the SocialMiner Administrator can set up other users.
Technology and Packaging
SocialMiner is a server software application that is packaged as a software appliance. The appliance runs as one VMWare® virtual machine containing all of the following components:
- Cisco Unified Communications Operating System (Unified OS), an operating system based on Redhat Linux.
- Informix® embedded database. This database contains the SocialMiner Configuration and the SocialMiner reporting data.
- Cassandra datastore. This datastore contains the social contacts.
- Solr indexer. This indexer contains social contact search data.
- Cisco SocialMiner runtime software
- OpenFire server for XMPP BOSH eventing
Setup and administration are done through a browser-based interface that uses OpenSocial Gadgets. SocialMiner is installed with the Shindig gadget container to render the gadgets. SocialMiner gadgets can also be rendered in other standard OpenSocial containers such as Cisco Quad or iGoogle. All system features and setup can be performed by REST APIs.
SocialMiner supports integration with most user-generated content sites using standard RSS. SocialMiner also supports direct integrations to Twitter® and Facebook®. Setup and configuration of SocialMiner to monitor Twitter and Facebook require good working knowledge of those sites. For background information on these sites, review the following Mashable resources:
What's New in Release 8.5(5)
Cisco SocialMiner Release 8.5(5) includes these new features and enhancements:
Customer Chat
SocialMiner 8.5(5) provides basic, single-session (one customer to one agent)chat session that can be used to assist customers in real-time. To enable chat, the SocialMiner Administrator must set up a chat feed.
To implement chat on your website, copy and paste the sample HTML from the saved chat feed and customize it as appropriate for your needs.
A firewall or proxy server can be configured to protect the SocialMiner server during a customer chat session.
A chat alias can be set, enabling agents to create identifiers with which they can represent themselves to customers.
Chat Feed
To support the Chat feature, the Feed gadget now includes a Chat Feed Type. A Chat feed is similar to a Push feed in that it creates a social contact through a web form. Saving a chat feed generates sample code for a click-to-chat form, which you can edit and include on a web page. When you add the chat feed to a campaign, and when a customer enters data on the form and submits it:
- a chat room opens for the customer, who sees "Welcome, please wait while we connect you with an available customer care representative."
- a social contact is generated for the campaign
When the agent reserves the social contact, the chat interface opens (the customer sees "You are now connected with a customer care representative.") and the conversation between the agent and customer begins.
Chat Search
Chat sessions are automatically saved to a database. Users can search the saved transcript using a search API.
Features Restricted to the SocialMiner Administrator
SocialMiner 8.5(5) restricts the following features to the SocialMiner Administrator:
All users can see the Push, Chat, and Twitter Stream Feeds and the Script Filter, and can add them to campaigns. Only the SocialMiner Administrator can add these feeds, edit them, delete them, and upload script filters.
Other changes
Minor updates have been made to the SocialMiner user interfaces, such as the inclusion of icons to indicate the source of the social contact (Facebook, Twitter, Chat, RSS) on the home page.
Users must now enter their full JID format userid (email@example.com) in the User Name field when configuring an XMPP Notifications Server.
Upgrading to SocialMiner Release 8.5(5)
Upgrading using Cisco Unified Operating System Administration
Upgrading using the Command Line Interface
SocialMiner Release 8.5(5) is an upgrade to release 8.5(1). Upgrades are cumulative and must be installed over the base release. This means that:
- You must have installed the base release —SocialMiner Release 8.5(1). SocialMiner 8.5(1) installation is documented in the SocialMiner 8.5(1) User Guide.
- You can upgrade directly from Release 8.5(1) to Release 8.5(5) or from Release 8.5(4) to Release 8.5(5). Release 8.5(5) includes all features and changes of Release 8.5(2), 8.5(3), and 8.5(4). Features added in earlier releases are documented in the appropriate What's New section for each release.
- If you are on Release 8.5(2) or 8.5(3), you must upgrade to Release 8.5(4) before you can upgrade to Release 8.5(5).
After the upgrade to release 8.5(5), you must turn Cisco Secuity Agent (CSA) off.
The steps to turn CSA off appear after the instructions for upgrading using the Command Line Interface. These steps must be performed when using either the System Administration method or the Command Line Interface method to upgrade SocialMiner.
You can upgrade using the Software Upgrades tool in Cisco Unified Operating System Administration. You can also upgrade using the Command Line Interface (CLI).
The upgrade can run unattended and might take over an hour to complete.
Upgrading using Cisco Unified Operating System Administration
Open Cisco Unified Operating System Administration from the Administration tab > Platform Administration. You can also use this URL
where servername is the Hostname or IP address of your SocialMiner server.
- Select Software Upgrade > Install/Upgrade.
- On the Software Installation /Upgrade dialog box:
- If you burned the files to CD/DVD:
- Source = DVD/CD.
- Directory = the directory for DVD/CD. Use forward slashes. For example, if the installation file is located on the root directory of a CD that is on Drive D, type /D.
- Server = leave blank.
- User Name = leave blank.
- Password = leave blank.
- If the files are on a remote file server:
- Source = Remote Filesystem.
- Directory = the path to the files. Use forward slashes. For example, /SocialMiner/Installation.
- Server = the IP address of the remote server.
- User Name = the user name to access the remote server.
- Password = the password to access the remote server.
- If you burned the files to CD/DVD:
- Click Next.
- Choose the iso file from the Software Location field.
- Click Next.
- At the Software Installation/Upgrade screen, select Reboot to Upgraded Partition.
- Click Next.
You see a series of messages as the upgrade installation proceeds.
When the upgrade is complete, verify that the system restarts, the correct version is active, and the server status on the System Administration tab shows green checkboxes.
Turn off CSA by performing these steps.
As a best practice, clear the cache and cookies after the upgrade.
Upgrading using the Command Line Interface
- Download the 8.5(5) Release from Cisco.com and place the file on an FTP or SFTP server. You can also burn the ISO file to DVD.
- SSH to your SocialMiner system and log in with the platform administration account.
- Using the Command Line Interface (CLI), run the command utils system upgrade initiate
- Follow the instructions provided by the utils system upgrade initiate command.
An example of executing the command follows. Note that file names will change with each release.
admin:utils system upgrade initiate Warning: Do not close this window without first canceling the upgrade. Source: 1) Remote Filesystem via SFTP 2) Remote Filesystem via FTP 3) Local DVD/CD q) quit Please select an option (1 - 3 or "q" ): 2 Directory [q]: /FTP/PATH/TO/UPGRADE/IOS Server [q]: FTP_HOSTNAME User Name [q]: FTP_USERNAME Password: ******** Checking for valid upgrades. Please wait... Available options and upgrades in "/FTP/PATH/TO/UPGRADE/IOS": 1) UCSInstall_CCP_8_5_1_UCOS_18.104.22.16800-XX.sgn.iso q) quit Please select an option (1 - 1 or "q" ): 1 Accessing the file. Please wait... Downloaded XXXX MB. Checksumming the file... Downloaded XXXX MB. A system reboot is required when the upgrade process completes or is canceled. This will ensure services affected by the upgrade process are functioning properly. Downloaded: UCSInstall_CCP_8_5_1_UCOS_126.96.36.19900-X.sgn.iso File version: 126.96.36.19900-X File checksum: CHECKSUM Automatically switch versions if the upgrade is successful (yes/no): yes Start installation (yes/no): yes The upgrade log is install_log_2011-03-10.09.52.58.log Upgrading the system. Please wait... 06/10/2011 09:53:00 file_list.sh|Starting file_list.sh|<LVL::Info> ... [Many lines of upgrade scripts running] ... 06/10/2011 11:41:31 upgrade_install.sh|Upgrade Complete -- (0)|<LVL::Info> Successfully installed UCSInstall_CCP_8_5_1_UCOS_220.127.116.1100-XX.sgn.iso The system upgrade was successful. A switch version request has been submitted.
This can take a long time depending on the platform and database size. Please continue to monitor the switchover process from the Cisco Unified Communications OS Platform Command Line Interface (CLI).
The system reboots after the upgrade is complete.
Please verify that the system restarts, the correct version is active, and the server status on the System Administration tab shows green checkboxes.
Turn CSA off
- Access the CLI directly by signing in using the Administrator credentials.
- Enter the command: utils csa disable. You see a message that the system needs to restart, and you are prompted to enter Yes.
- Enter Yes to reboot.
As a best practice, clear the cache and cookies after the upgrade.
Signing In to SocialMiner
To launch SocialMiner, use a web browser* to access the root of the web server. Enter
where servername is the name or IP address of your SocialMiner server.*See SocialMiner Browsers for information on supported browsers.
Entering the URL opens a sign-in page where you type your username and password. The first time you sign in, you must use the credentials established during the installation for the application user.
If you have downloaded and installed language files, the sign in page also has a drop-down for selecting your language.
When you see a "trusted certificate" warning, acknowledge it—for example, by clicking Continue to Web Site in Internet Explorer or I understand the Risk in Mozilla Firefox. This saves the certificate to the browser. For some browsers, you may want to obtain and upload a CA-Signed certificate so that the security warnings do not persist.
A successful sign-in presents the SocialMiner interface to the Home tab. Most users see one other tab: the Configuration tab. The SocialMiner Administrator also sees an Administration tab.
The Home Tab
Reviewing Social Contacts By State
The SocialMiner Home tab is a dynamic "Inbox" for viewing and responding to social contacts. No social contacts appear on this tab until you:
- Configure at least one Feed.
- Configure at least one Campaign.
- Add the Feed to the Campaign.
- Select the Campaign from the drop-down menu on the upper-left.
You can show social contacts that are in specific states (Open, Handled, or Discarded). You can also open Settings to set your chat alias, to show only those social contacts with specific tags, or to enable training mode for a Bayesian filter.
The SocialMiner Home tab is dynamic in these ways:
- A bar appears periodically at the top of the page indicating that there are one or more new social contacts in the campaign. You can click the bar to refresh the results, or click the refresh icon at the upper-right.
- State changes and new tags made by one agent are immediately visible to all agents working in that campaign.
VIDEO: View a video about handling social contacts on the Home tab. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
What is a Social Contact?
The term Social Contact refers to a post collected by SocialMiner. A social contact can be a Tweet, a Facebook wall post, a Blog, or a Forum post.
For example:
- When a customer tweets and the tweet matches the Feed criteria of SocialMiner campaign, that tweet is captured by SocialMiner and stored in the datastore as a social contact.
- An agent's reply to that tweet is captured and saved as another social contact.
- The customer reply to the agent's reply is captured as a third social contact.
A social contact remains in the datastore until it is purged.
SocialMiner stores the following for each social contact:
- Author—the username of the person who posted
- Creation Date—date stored in SocialMiner
- Title
- Description
- Published Date—date it was published on the Internet (Not all feeds have this.)
- Source type—the type of feed that collected the social contact
- Tags—tags applied by SocialMiner users
Reviewing Social Contacts By State
A social contact can be in one of four states: Unread, Reserved, Handled, and Discarded. Use the drop-down on the Home tab to show contacts of only that state:
Show Open - Open social contacts are those in the Unread or the Reserved state. They have not yet been acted on. All social contacts captured by SocialMiner are initially in the Unread state and appear when you Show Open.
Show Handled - These social contacts have been handled by an agent. If the social contacts from an RSS feed, the agent has opened them. If the social contacts are from a Twitter or Facebook feed, the agent has replied to them.
Show Discarded - These social contacts have been discarded by an agent, perhaps because they do not require response. Discarded contacts remain in the system until they are deleted by the next purge.
Working with Social Contacts
A social contact state can be changed by any user at any time by a click of a social contact state button. The name of the last user to change a state appears next to the social contact as soon as the change occurs: for example, Discarded: User2.
State changing can be done by different agents. For example, Agent1 can reserve a social contact, and Agent2 can handle it.
To undo a state change, show the list for that state, locate the social contact, and click the icon again to reverse the state.
For example, if you set a social contact to Handled and then change your mind about handling it:
- Select Show Handled.
- Locate that social contact.
- Click the Handle icon. This removes the social contact from the Show Handled list immediately. The social contact is returned to the Show Open list within a few seconds, with a status of Unread.
Social contact state is universal across the SocialMiner system. For example, if one user handles a social contact, the social contact appears as handled in the browser interface for all other users. This is the case even if the social contact appears in multiple campaigns.
Replying to Social Contacts from the Home Tab
SocialMiner lets you reply to social contacts using Reply Templates. There are three system-defined templates: Cisco Twitter, Cisco Facebook, and Cisco Chat. The SocialMiner Administrator can add custom reply templates.
You can select only one reply template per feed, and you do this on the Add/Edit Feed page for each Feed Type.
- Replying to a Chat
- Replying to a Twitter Social Contact
- Replying to a Facebook Fan Page
- Replying to an RSS Social Contact
Replying to a Chat
When a customer submits a chat form, a new social contact appears in the chat campaign, and the customer enters a chat room and waits for an agent. The agent who clicks the Reply icon for that social contact launches the Chat reply template and enters the chat room where the customer is waiting.
The agent types in the text-entry area and presses Enter.
The customer sees the agent's message and enters a response.
To reply to a chat using the Cisco Chat reply template:
1. Select a social contact generated from a chat. Click the Reply icon. The chat room opens to show the customer's name and any Extension Field data in the left panel.
2. Type a remark in the lower right panel and press ENTER to begin the dialog.
Replying to a Twitter Social Contact
Ways to reply are to:
- direct-message the author of the Tweet.
- create an "@" reply that is viewable to everyone on Twitter.
- configure the feed to respond with the Cisco Twitter reply template, which allows you to follow the recipient of the message if you are not currently following them.
To reply to a tweet using the Cisco Twitter reply template:
1. Select a Twitter Account social contact and click Reply. The Cisco Twitter template opens and provides the following fields:
- Account: Select the Twitter Account from which you are replying. All Twitter Accounts configured on this system appear in the dropdown menu.
- Once the account is selected, the system checks the Follow status of the intended recipient. If the account is not already following the recipient, you can click Follow to begin following.
- For your convenience, the conversation history of the social contact is listed below the selected social contact. You can reply, retweet, or Direct Message to any tweet in the conversation. The social contact that was originally reserved is marked as handled even if you do not reply to the most recent tweet in the conversation. The status of the other social contacts (tweets) in the conversation does not change.
- Select the type of reply: either Direct Message, retweet, or reply. A pop-up text box appears where you can enter your message. Note: You can only Direct Message a Twitter user if the intended recipient is following you. Replies and retweets are posted to the timeline of the Twitter account. A Direct Message is sent directly to the poster of the tweet.
- Enter your reply in the pop-up text box. Text input is limited to 140 characters. The current character count is listed at the upper right of the text box.
2. Click Send to send the reply. This marks the social contact as Handled.Note that the reply template is customizable. The instructions above pertain to the default Cisco Twitter template. If your administrator has provided a custom reply template, the steps for replying may be different.
Replying to a Facebook Fan Page
Ways to reply are to:
- click the link on the social contact to open the post or comment and enter your comment.
- configure the feed to use the Cisco Facebook reply template and respond directly to the Fan Page from SocialMiner.
Facebook accepts content from a Facebook Reply Template only if the person who added the Faceboook Fan Page feed received authorization from Facebook by clicking Get Post Authorization. Facebook ensures that the user is a fan of the page and has permission to post.
1. Select a Facebook social contact. Click the Reply icon.
The Cisco Facebook Reply form opens to show:
- the name of the person who posted or commented on the Facebook page.
- a text area for your comment.
- a Like indicator.
If you have never replied, or if you have previously replied with an Unlike, the template shows Like. If you have previously replied with Like, the template shows Unlike. You can reply without selecting Like or Unlike.
2. Click Send to send the reply. This marks the social contact as Handled.
The instructions above pertain to the default Cisco Facebook reply template. If your SocialMiner Administrator has created and configured a custom reply template for Facebook, the steps for replying may be different.
Replying to an RSS Social Contact
You cannot reply directly to a social contact from an RSS feed. You can, however, tag the RSS contact and set notifications so that an agent receives an email or an Instant Message for the social contact.
Tagging Social Contacts
Tags are labels that allow you to categorize social contacts, to track workflow, and to set up notifications.
For example, all social contacts that mention billing concerns could be tagged with Billing. You could then set up notifications to email social contacts with that tag to Customer Service.
You can tag similar social contacts with the same tag, then use the Settings page to filter the list of social contacts to show only social contacts with a particular tag.
Adding Tags
When you hover over a social contact, you see a text box and a Tag button.
To enter a tag, click the text box and type the tag. Then press Enter or click Tag. The new tags are immediately visible to all users who view that social contact. You can add a maximum of twenty tags to a social contact. Use commas to separate multiple tags.
Social contacts are not duplicated even when they appear in multiple campaigns. When a user tags a social contact in one campaign, the tag appears to other users who are viewing that social contact from another campaign.
Suggested Tags:
A maximum of ten common or recently used tags for the selected campaign appear as 'suggested tags' links to the right of the Tag button. You might need to click Refresh to see newly-added suggested tags. To add one or more of these suggested tags to the social contact. click the link for the suggested tag. These suggestions provide one-click tagging for commonly used tags. The suggestions are specific to the campaign, not to the entire SocialMiner system, and are only updated on a refresh.
Deleting Tags
To delete a tag from a social contact, click the small, grey x at the right of the tag name.
Automatic Tags You can also configure up to ten automatic tags for a feed. All social contacts pulled in for that feed have these auto-tags. See Automatic Tags for Feeds.
VIDEO: View a video about using tags. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
Click the Settings icon at the top right of the Home tab open the Settings page.
Use this page to set your chat alias, to show or hide social contacts by tag, and to enable training for a Bayesian filter.
The default chat alias value "Agent" can be changed to a string of up to 40 characters (stored in the browser as a cookie). Agents are strongly encouraged to change this default value to something that better represents who they are to the customer.
Although tags and Bayesian filters are global (all users can see them), settings are user-specific. Your changes to Settings determine what you see for the campaign but do not do not effect what others see in the campaign.
Training Bayesian Filters
If you have added a Bayesian filter, you can select it on the Settings page to activate training mode.
None is the default on the Settings page. Selecting a Bayesian filter enables filter training and changes the campaign display on the Home tab to show Plus (+) and Minus (-) training buttons for each social contact.
- Click the Plus button to mark the social contact as being in this filter. (This tells SocialMiner: Keep social contacts similar to this one. Do not filter out social contacts like this.)
- Click the Minus button to mark this social contact as "out" of this filter. (This tells SocialMiner: Do not include social contacts like this one.)
To disable training mode, return to the Settings page and select None.
Training settings are user-specific. Your changes to enable training mode do not effect what others see for the campaign.
- Feed States
- Adding and Editing Feeds
- Adding Feeds using the Feed Bookmarklet
- Feed Types
- Polling Interval for Feeds
- Minimum Age for Feeds
- Automatic Tags for Feeds
- Extension Fields in Push and Chat Feed Sample Code
- Deleting Feeds
The Feeds gadget is on the SocialMiner Configuration tab.
A Feed is a stream of social contacts coming from a single source. Setting up feeds is a foundational step for your SocialMiner system. You see no social contacts on the Home tab until you configure at least one feed and add it to a campaign.
Note If your server is behind a firewall, the administrator may need to configure SocialMiner to use a proxy to reach the internet. See Proxy Settings.
Note also that: SocialMiner uses a process called de-duplication to automatically remove duplicate social contacts. For example, if a user configures several overlapping feeds that capture the same result, then SocialMiner does not capture the same social contact twice. The de-duplication functionality relies on the unique URL of the post. For example, each Tweet or blog has a unique URL. Before SocialMiner creates a new social contact in the datastore, it first verifies that the URL of that social contact is not already in the datastore.
Feed States
Icons are used as visual indicators to display the state of each feed. Hover the cursor over the icon to display a tool tip that explains the state.
Adding and Editing Feeds
To create a feed, click Add in the feed list view. To edit the settings for a feed, click its name.
Select the feed type and complete the fields for the feed type. The fields vary by feed type.
Social contacts retrieved by feeds are time-limited by the number of days defined in the Purge Social Contacts older than (days) setting of the Purge Settings tool. (This tool is on the Administration tab and is used by the SocialMiner Administrator only.) The default is to retain social contacts for 30 days.
If you change a feed (for example, to rename it, change the URL, or change the polling interval), you do not need to re-add it to the campaign.
Adding Feeds using the Feed Bookmarklet
Bookmarklets are "smart bookmarks" that include JavaScript. Creating a feed using the Feed Bookmarklet is a one-click method for adding feeds to SocialMiner and eliminates the need to complete fields on the Add Feed form and to copy/paste the URL.
To get and use the Bookmarklet:
1. From the Feed Configuration gadget, drag the Feed Bookmarklet link at the bottom of the gadget to the Mozilla Firefox Bookmarks toolbar. (If you click the Feed BookMarklet link directly, you see a message instructing you to drag the link to the toolbar.) The Feed Bookmarklet remains on the toolbar unless you delete it, although there is no reason to do so.
2. Navigate to a Twitter ad-hoc or saved Search result page or to a website with RSS feeds.
3. From that page, click the Feed Bookmarklet bookmark that you dragged to the Bookmarks toolbar. A message displays if the page has no feeds.
4. If you are prompted to log in, enter your SocialMiner login credentials. You must authenticate once per browser session.
5. For Twitter Searches, a SocialMiner window opens indicating that a feed for the search was saved, along with the Name and URL of the feed. If the feed was not saved, you see a message indicating the problem.
6. For websites with RSS feeds, the SocialMiner window captures all feeds on the page and filters them with icons indicating whether they are standard feeds or possible feeds.
- A green checkmark displays for standard feeds. SocialMiner qualifies RSS feeds as "standard" when their URLs are indicated as such by the website.
- A blue question mark indicates that the feed is possibly an RSS feed, but may not be. SocialMiner qualifies RSS feeds as "possible" when their URLs simply contain "rss", "atom", or "feed".
Note that some URLs may be filtered out of the list even if they meet the above criteria—for example, they will not be captured and displayed if they include embedded scripting.
7. Click the link that you want to add as a feed. The SocialMiner window updates to indicate that the feed was saved, along with the Name and URL of the feed. You see an error message if there was a problem saving the feed.
8. Close and re-open the Feed Bookmarklet for each URL in the list that you want to save. You see an error if you try to save a duplicate feed (a feed with the same Name as one that is already saved).
9. After saving a feed, navigate to the SocialMiner Configuration tab. The feed displays in the Feed gadget list. Feed names are truncated at 85 characters.
10. Proceed as you would with any feed to edit the name, description, polling interval, and minimum age; and to add automatic tags. Bookmarklets created from RSS Feeds default to No Reply Template. Bookmarklets created from Twitter Search default to the Cisco Twitter reply template.
11. Add the feed to a campaign.
Feed Types
SocialMiner supports the following types of Feeds. Each feed type has unique settings, which are described in the sections below:
- RSS and Authenticated RSS
- Facebook Fan Page
- Push Feed - SocialMiner Administrator only
- Chat Feed - SocialMiner Administrator only
- Twitter Account
- Twitter Stream - SocialMiner Administrator only
RSS and Authenticated RSS Feeds
RSS is one of the simplest and most widely-available means for SocialMiner to capture social contacts, because there are many forum and blog sites that support RSS. You can create an RSS feed as described below; you can also create a feed using the Feed Bookmarklet.
SocialMiner supports the following RSS Feed standards:
The Authenticated RSS feed type is similar to RSS but requires basic authentication. The username and password are encrypted and stored in the SocialMiner configuration database.
Although these videos were created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and show an older user interface, they present accurate information.
About Paging from RSS Feeds
SocialMiner does not support the reading of multiple "pages" from an RSS feed. SocialMiner captures the posts that are presented on the first (main) page returned by a site. This limitation prevents the system from capturing posts prior to the current page of results and allows SocialMiner to capture all results going forward as long as the site generates a page or less of results in each interval.
Some sites allow the URL to specify the number of results on a page. If you use this feature to set the number of results to return and you also regulate the polling interval, you can optimize system performance and reduce load on the site, while ensuring all posts are captured.
Configuring RSS and Authenticated RSS
To configure an RSS or Authenticated RSS feed:
- Access the Feed gadget.
- Click Add.
- Select RSS or Authenticated RSS feed type, and enter the following fields:
- Type—Required
- Name—Required
- Description
- URL—Required. This must be a valid RSS Feed
- Username—Username for the feed. Required for Authenticated RSS feed. Not Applicable to RSS Feed.
- Password—Password for the feed. Optional for the Authenticated RSS feed. Not Applicable to RSS Feed.
- Polling Interval—Number of minutes to wait between refreshing this feed.
- Minimum age—The number of hours old a post must be before it is included as a result. This allows you to exclude recent posts.
4. Optionally, provide Automatic Tags for the feed.
5. Click Save to save the feed.
Facebook Fan Page Feed
About Facebook Fan Page Feeds
The Facebook Fan Page Feed type captures all wall posts and comments on wall posts that are posted to a Fan Page.
Fan Pages are public, and no username or password is required to capture the postings on a Facebook Fan Page. This means it is possible to capture postings on Fan Pages operated by a company as well as Fan Pages set up by independent parties or even competitors.
Facebook wall posts and comments are captured by SocialMiner and rendered in a time-sorted stream. This rendering differs from the standard Fan Page layout. The goal of this layout is to ensure that 100% of the wall posts and comments are noticed by the consumer of the results. It is more difficult to achieve this goal when viewing the wall posts and comments directly on Facebook, as they are grouped by wall post instead of time-sorted.
When displayed in SocialMiner, Facebook wall posts and comments are differentiated by the format of the title:
- Facebook post from [first name] [last name]
- Facebook comment from [first name] [last name] for "[post]"
The link in the title provides a direct link to the wall post on Facebook. Note that Facebook does not anchor comments, therefore the link takes the browser to the wall posts to which the comment refers and not directly to the comment.
SocialMiner requires a clean Fan Page "Vanity URL". You will notice that Facebook appends certain parameters to a URL depending on how you navigated to the URL. For example, when you find the Cisco Contact Center Fan Page through Facebook search, you see this URL: http://www.facebook.com/#!/CiscoCC?ref=ts. However the direct URL for the fan page is http://www.facebook.com/CiscoCC. This base URL is what Facebook refers to as the "Vanity URL". The name "CiscoCC" was registered by the administrator of this page.
Note that some Fan Pages that have a number instead of a text name. (This is not common.) These are pages that have not yet registered a Vanity URL. In this case, the URL with the number satisfies the requirements of SocialMiner configuration.
Configuring a Facebook Fan Page Feed
VIDEO: View a video about configuring a Facebook Fan Page Feed. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
To configure a Facebook Fan Page feed:
- Access the Feed gadget.
- Click Add.
- Select Facebook Fan Page feed type, and enter the following fields:
- Type—Required
- Name—Required
- Description
- URL—Required. This must be a valid Facebook Fan page The URL must start with http://www.facebook.com
- Polling Interval—Number of minutes to wait between refreshing this feed.
- Minimum age—The number of hours old a post must be before it is included as a result. This allows you to exclude recent posts.
- Reply template—The reply template to be used for replying to social contacts obtained from this feed. Defaults to the Cisco Facebook Reply Template.
- Optionally, provide Automatic Tags for the feed.
4. When you complete the fields, you must Authorizing the Feed. To do this:
- Click Get Post Authorization to request authorization from Facebook that allows SocialMiner to post to the fan page. This opens Facebook.
- Sign in with your organization's Facebook username and password. Then click Allow to allow the Cisco Facebook Reply Template to post to the Facebook Fan Page.
Successful Authorization creates and saves the feed.
Posted replies will appear as being from the user who authenticated the posting. For example, if the posting was authorized by the Facebook account for Harrison Dental and employee Dr. Lee replies to a social contact, her reply is from Harrison Dental and not from her own Facebook account.
Push Feed
The push feed type allows you to "push" social contacts directly to SocialMiner through HTTP GET requests. A push feed is an interface for generating a social contact through a web form. For example, you might want to create a social contact to test the routing of email notifications. You might also want to create a social contact for a response to a feedback form on your website.
Using the Feed gadget, create a new feed and select the Push feed type.
The SocialMiner Administrator can add, edit, and delete Push Feeds. Non-administrators can only see Push Feeds on the Configuration tab and can use them (add them to campaigns).
1. Enter or edit the following fields.
- Type—Required
- Name—Required
- Description
- Reply template - The reply template to be used for replying to social contacts obtained from this feed.
- Optionally, provide Automatic Tags for the feed.
2. Save the Push Feed.
3. Click the saved Push Feed from the list of Feeds to open it in Edit mode. You see a Sample Code link which contains working HTML code containing the correct IP address and feed id values for the instance you are working on. It also displays the form fields you need to get from the user and some examples of optional fields you can include. The required fields are Title and Author. The optional fields are Description, Tags, and Extension Fields.
In the following example, we use extension fields 'Remarks' and 'Yours'.
<style type='text/css'>span { display: inline-block; width: 100px; }</style> <form action='http://10.86.141.251/ccp-webapp/ccp/pushfeed/100011' method='get'> <span>'''Title''':</span><input type='text' name='title' /><br/> <span>'''Author''':</span><input type='text' name='author' /><br/> <span>'''Description''':</span><input type='text' name='description' /><br/> <span>'''Tags''':</span><input type='text' name='tags' /><br/> <span>'''Remarks''':</span><input type='text'name='extensionField_remarks'/><br/> value='sample value' /><br> <span>'''Yours''':</span><input type='text'name='extensionField_yours'/><br/> value='your value' /><br> <input type='submit' value='Submit'/> </form>
4. Copy the code from the sample code link and save it as HTML. Edit the fields; then click Submit from the HTML form.The code is authenticated against SocialMiner, and a URL to the new social contact is returned. The social contact will appear in the campaign that includes the Push Feed.
If the tags in the Push feed code are associated with notification rules, the notifications will trigger immediately when the social contact is submitted.
You can have multiple independent Push feeds on one SocialMiner system.
The Push Feed must be associated with a campaign in order to activate. As a best practice, create a test campaign prior to testing your Push Feed.
Chat Feed
A chat feed is a variation of push feed that contains sample HTML code for the fields a customer sees in a click-to-chat request form. When the customer clicks to chat and submits the form, a social contact is created and added to the campaign for the chat feed. SocialMiner sets up a chat room for that social contact and logs the user represented by that social contact into the chat room.
The SocialMiner Administrator can add, edit, and delete Chat Feeds. Non-administrators can see Chat Feeds on the Configuration tab and can use them (add them to campaigns).
Using the Feed gadget, create a new feed and select the Chat feed type.
VIDEO: View a video [1] about how to set up a Chat Feed.
1. Enter or edit the following fields.
- Type—Required
- Name—Required
- Description
- Reply template—Select Cisco Chat.
- Optionally, provide Automatic Tags for the feed.
2. Save the Chat Feed.
3. Click the saved Chat Feed from the list of Feeds to open it in Edit mode.
4. Click the Sample Code link to open sample code that contains working HTML with the form fields you need to make the POST request for the chat feed.
5. Save the code from the sample code link locally and modify it as needed.
6. Add the HTML to your website.
- The html code from the Sample Code link includes the SocialMiner server IP address and feed id (100045 in the following example). If you have multiple chat feeds, the Feed ID will be different for each one, so be sure to copy the sample code from the correct chat feed.
- The code also contains form fields Title, Author, Description, and Tags and three extension fields.
- In general, extension fields are a collection of custom name/value pairs that can be added to social contacts and are subsequently displayed in the Agent Chat user interface. The Remarks extension field appears in the form. The name of the field and the value entered by the customer are added to the social contact and are displayed to the agent.
- The two hidden extension fields "extensionField_chatLogo" and "extensionField_chatWaitingText" are special extension fields whose sole use is to customize the Customer Chat user interface – they are not added to the social contact and therefore are not displayed in the Agent Chat user interface. Simply replace "./img/ciscoLogoColor.png" with the location of your logo and replace "Welcome, please wait while we connect you with an available customer care representative." with the text you want the customer to see while waiting for an agent to join the chat..
- The sample code also includes a button to Submit.
Here is an example of the SocialMiner code for a Chat Feed. This example is for illustration purposes only - do not copy and paste from this example as the server address and Feed ID will not be appropriate for your instance. Always use the code from the Sample Code link.
<style type='text/css'>span { display: inline-block; width: 100px; }</style> <form action='https://<SocialMinerServer>/chatproxy/api/chat/form/100045' method='post'> <span>Title:</span><input type='text' name='title' /><br/> <span>Author:</span><input type='text' name='author' /><br/> <span>Description:</span><input type='text' name='description' /><br/> <span>Tags:</span><input type='text' name='tags' /><br/> <span>Remarks:</span><input type='text' name='extensionField_remarks' value='sample value' /><br> <input type='submit' value='Submit'/> <input type="hidden" name="extensionField_chatLogo" value="./img/ciscoLogoColor.png"> <input type="hidden" name="extensionField_chatWaitingText" value="Welcome, please wait while we connect you with an available customer care representative."> </form>
When a user completes and submits the form, a URL to the new social contact is returned. The user sees a chat room with the message "Welcome, please wait while we connect you with an available customer care representative.".
Modifying the Sample code for a Chat Feed
You can:
- modify the content within the span tags
- add additional Extension Fields.
You cannot delete the title or author.
Example of a Modified Form:
In this modified form, The label for Title was changed to My Issue. The label for Author was changed to My Name. Description was removed. The Remarks extension field was removed, and three extension fields were added: My Preferred Language, My Phone, and My Email.
<style type='text/css'>span { display: inline-block; width: 100px; }</style> <form action='https://10.86.141.251/chatproxy/api/chat/form/100051' method='post'> <span>My Issue:</span><input type='text' name='title' /><br/> <span>My Name:</span><input type='text' name='author' /><br/> <span>Tags:</span><input type='text' name='tags' /><br/> <span>My Preferred Language:</span><input type='text' name='extensionField_remarks' value='enter language' /><br> <span>My Phone:</span><input type='text' name='extensionField_remarks' value='enter phone number' /><br> <span>My Email:</span><input type='text'name='extensionField_remarks'value='enter email address' /><br> <input type='submit' value='Submit'/> </form>
Twitter Account Feed
About the Twitter Account Type Feed
VIDEO: View a video about configuring a Twitter Account Feed. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
See also SocialMiner Twitter.
The Twitter Account Feed Type uses the Twitter REST API. This Feed type captures all of the Mentions and Direct Messages for a Twitter account. Twitter Account Feeds include all of the tweets that include "@USERNAME" as well as all of the Direct Messages to the @USERNAME account. This Feed type also captures tweet type, for example retweet or in-reply-to. You can have only one Twitter Account for the same user per SocialMiner system.
The Twitter Account feed is configured using OAuth. During the feed configuration, SocialMiner redirects the user to Twitter to validate the Twitter account. This provides a security benefit, as using OAuth avoids the storage of the user's Twitter account information on the SocialMiner server. Clicking Save opens the Twitter authentication service in a new browser window. (You might need to authorize pop-ups in your browser.) Follow the directions on the screen to authorize SocialMiner to access the Twitter account.
If you are already signed in to Twitter using the same account you entered in the Feed configuration, click Allow.
If you are not signed in at all, you will be prompted to enter the Twitter Username and Password for the account. It is also possible that you are logged in to a different Twitter account, perhaps your personal account. If that is the case, click sign out, then sign in with the correct account and click Authorize app. After you click Authorize app, the browser window closes and you return to the Feed Configuration gadget with your new feed successfully created.
You have now authorized SocialMiner to access all Twitter functionality for this account.
Note that Twitter Accounts are rate-limited by Twitter.
Based on their authorization, Twitter provides SocialMiner with a key to enable access to the account. From this point forward, SocialMiner will be able to use the Twitter account. If any issues arise, you can Reauthorize and Save in Edit Mode.
Twitter provides a list of applications (connections) that have been granted access to a Twitter account. A Twitter user can revoke access at any time. See http://twitter.com/settings/connections.
Configuring a Twitter Account Feed
- Access the Feed Gadget.
- Click Add.
- Select the Twitter Account feed type, and enter or following fields:
- Type—Select the Twitter Account feed type from the dropdown. Required
- Name—The name of the feed. Required
- Description
- Username—Required. A valid Twitter username for the user you will be posting as. Note: Only one Twitter Account Feed per Twitter username per SocialMiner server is allowed.
- Polling Interval—Number of minutes to wait between refreshing this feed.
- Minimum age—The number of hours old a post must be before it is included as a result. This allows you to exclude recent posts.
- Reply template—The reply template to be used for replying to social contacts obtained from this feed. Defaults to the Cisco Twitter Reply Template.
- Optionally, provide Automatic Tags for the feed.
4. Click Save.
Save redirects you to the Twitter authentication service, which allows you to approve the use of this application with your Twitter account. Follow the directions on the screen to enter credentials to authorize access to the Twitter account.
When you edit a Twitter Account feed, you see two buttons: Save and Reauthorize and Save.
If the icon next to a Twitter Account feed is red and the hover text for that icon reports authorization issues, open the Feed to edit it. Click Reauthorize and Save to initiate the Twitter authorization process.
If there is no indication that you need to reauthorize but you want to edit the feed for other reasons—for example, to change the Polling Interval—make the change and click Save.
Twitter Rate Limit
Twitter Rate Limit
Note that Twitter Accounts are rate-limited by Twitter, with the following limits:
- Direct Messages: 250 per day.
- Updates: 1,000 per day. The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semihourly intervals. Retweets are counted as updates.
- Changes to Account Email: 4 per hour.
- Following (daily): 1,000 per day. Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior.
- Following (per account): After an account is following 2,000 other users, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios.
When the Twitter rate limit has been reached, the hover text for the feed warning icon shows text similar to this: "Rate limit reached. Feed will reactivate at 10:39 AM Last successful fetch time was 2 minutes ago, Success rate is 50%.".
Twitter Stream Feed
About the Twitter Stream Feed
Important: Only one Twitter Stream per SocialMiner server is supported. Your server IP will be blacklisted by Twitter if you configure multiple Twitter Stream feeds. If your IP is blacklisted by Twitter, you must delete all Twitter Stream feeds and wait approximately 2 hours to remove your IP from the Twitter blacklist.
The SocialMiner Administrator can add, edit, and delete Twitter Stream Feeds. Non-administrators can only see Twitter Steam Feeds on the Configuration tab and can use them (add them to campaigns).
If you require multiple Twitter Streams, you must discuss this need with Twitter or deploy two SocialMiner systems. If you have more than one SocialMiner system going through a single proxy, or you are using some other software system that uses Twitter Streams through that same proxy, your Proxy will be blacklisted by Twitter.
The Twitter Stream feed type uses the Twitter Stream API or what is sometimes referred to as the "firehose" interface on Twitter to provide realtime access to Tweets. This interface provides different capabilities than the Search API. A benefit of this Twitter Stream is the speed and efficiency of capturing greater tweet volume at faster speeds. There is no polling interval since the interface pushes the Tweets to the SocialMiner server. The Twitter Stream API also provides more meta-data associated with the tweets then the Search API. For example, the Twitter Stream API provides the indication that a Tweet is in-reply-to another Tweet (this is not available via RSS).
There are a couple of downsides to the Twitter stream API. It provides less searching/filtering capability then the search API. The interface supports keyword searching but, for example, it does not support exclusion of keywords. This limited searching capability results in more on-board filtering by the SocialMiner server. Also, the Twitter Stream reply does not provide historical results; therefore downtime in the SocialMiner system could result in missed Tweets. Finally, due to another limitation in the Twitter Stream API, searches in languages that are non-space delimited (such as Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese) return no results. More information on this limitation can be found on the Twitter Developers site.
The Twitter Stream API requires authentication. A Twitter account username and password is required to configure this type of feed. Note: Twitter only allows one Twitter Stream connection per account. If there are unrelated Twitter keyword searches required then you must configure multiple Twitter accounts, since adding unrelated keywords to one stream makes SocialMiner Campaign and Filter configuration difficult.
When Tweets are captured by SocialMiner using the Twitter Stream, the heading in the social contact indicates the type of Tweet. For example, the heading indicates if the social contact is a "Tweet" or "ReTweet" or if it is "in-reply-to". This type of context is not available when capturing Tweets via RSS.
See also SocialMiner Twitter.
Configuring a Twitter Stream Feed Type
VIDEO: View a video about configuring a Twitter Stream Feed. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
- Access the Feed gadget.
- Click Add.
- Select the Twitter Stream feed type, and enter following fields.
- Type—Required
- Name—Required
- Description
- Search Keywords—Required. A comma separated listed of search words to search on. Up to 200 keywords can be defined for a total limit of 2000 bytes.
- Each keyword must be between 1-60 bytes.
- At least one keyword must be defined.
- Commas in the keyword search stand for OR. Spaces in the keyword search stand for AND. You cannot search for exact strings. For example, if you enter "Cisco Telepresence" then the social contact returned contains Cisco and Telepresence in them, but not necessarily the phrase Cisco Telepresence.
- Do Not Use a Space after a Comma. If you use a space after a comma then only the first keyword is matched against.
- Username—Required. A valid Twitter username.
- Password—Required. Password for the Twitter username.
- Reply template - The reply template to be used for replying to social contacts obtained from this feed. Defaults to the Cisco Twitter Reply Template.
- Optionally, provide Automatic Tags for the feed.
4. Click Save to save the feed. Back to Contents
Polling Interval for Feeds
The polling interval controls how often the SocialMiner system requests the feed. A shorter polling interval provides more frequent updates but creates more load on the SocialMiner server and on the sites publishing the feed. Some sites may have recommendations or restrictions on frequent polling and could block an application that polls too frequently.
The default SocialMiner polling interval for feeds is five minutes. Back to Contents
Minimum Age for Feeds
Use the minimum age setting to filter out recent posts.
This feature was implemented for forum sites that publish feeds of "unanswered posts." If you configure the "unanswered posts" feed URL in SocialMiner and set a long Minimum Age, for example 24 hours, the system only captures posts that are both unanswered (based on the RSS feed) and are older than 24 hours (based on the Minimum Age). This offers a simple way to implement the business strategy of light touch forum moderation.
Minimum Age is not applicable for Push Feeds or Twitter Stream Feeds. Back to Contents
Automatic Tags for Feeds
All feeds support the Automatic tags feature, which allows you to specify up to ten tags that are applied to new social contacts for a feed across all campaigns that include that feed.
To add an automatic tag to the feed, enter one or more tags into the Automatic Tags text box (separated by commas), then click Add.
To remove an automatic tag from the feed, click the small x next to the tag name. Back to Contents
Extension Fields in Push and Chat Feed Sample Code
Extension fields are a collection of custom name/value pairs that can be added social contacts using the Push feed and Chat feed sample code. You can add social contact data to email and IM notifications by including extension fields as Notification Body Variables.
You can add a maximum of 100 extension fields, up to one megabyte of information.
Deleting Feeds
Select the checkbox to the left of one or more Feed Names and click Delete. A confirmation dialog box appears. Click OK to confirm deletion of the selected feed(s).
The Campaigns gadget is on the SocialMiner Configuration tab.
The purpose of a campaign is to group social contacts for handling by the social media customer care team. Social contacts are included in a campaign when one or more feeds are configured and are selected to be part of the campaign. When a feed becomes part of a campaign, new social contacts that arrive on that feed are immediately added to the campaign and appear on the Home tab. Optionally, campaigns can also have filters, which are used to narrow or modify the set of social contacts that are added to the campaign.
Social contacts can be discarded, but they are not actually removed from a campaign until they are purged or the campaign is deleted.
VIDEO: View a video about Campaigns, Campaign usage, and Campaign configuration. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
Campaign List
For all SocialMiner campaigns, the Campaign Gadget shows:
- the name of the campaign
- the number of social contacts in the campaign
- a description of the campaign, and
- an RSS feed icon that is a link to the RSS feed from SocialMiner. The RSS feed allows someone to capture all the social contacts in a campaign using a RSS reader.
This list updates in real time. For example, it updates when another user adds a new campaign to the system, and the social contact count increments when new social contacts are retrieved for a campaign.
Add and Editing Campaigns
To add a campaign, click Add in the campaign list view. Fill out the following fields, then click Save to save the new campaign.
- Enter a Name (required)
- Enter a Description (optional)
- Use the arrows in the Feeds and Filters panels to move one or several feeds and filters between the Available and Selected panes. You can save a campaign without adding a feed, but no social contacts will be retrieved for a campaign that has no feeds. Filters are optional.
- Click Save.
Note: Once you click Save, the social contacts for the configured feeds are added to the campaign. Once added, social contacts can be discarded but cannot be removed from the campaign except by a purge. If a feed is removed from a campaign, new social contacts captured by that feed are no longer added to the campaign, but the social contacts previously included are not removed until the purge.
Note: if a feed is accidentally added to a campaign, and the social contacts MUST be immediately removed from that campaign, the only recourse is to delete the entire campaign and recreate it.
Adding a feed to multiple campaigns does not duplicate the social contacts in the datastore. The social contacts for that feed are simply counted in both campaigns.
Deleting Campaigns
To delete a campaign, select the checkbox to the left of one or more campaign names and click Delete. A confirmation dialog box appears. Click OK to confirm deletion of the selected campaign(s).
The purpose of a filter is to modify and take action on social contacts as they enter the system and before they appear on the Home tab, allowing the social media customer-care team to focus on the most actionable social contacts.
Filters are run against social contacts as they enter a campaign. Filters do not run retroactively against social contacts that are already in a campaign.
You create filters in the Filter gadget on the Configuration tab.
You apply filters to campaigns in the Campaign Gadget by moving them between the Available and Selected panes, similar to adding and removing feeds. SocialMiner allows a total of 20 filters, and you can add a maximum of 10 filters to a campaign. Applying multiple filters to a campaign creates opportunities to layer filtering strategies to fine-tune results.
Note: When multiple filters are applied to a campaign, they are processed simultaneously. For this reason, you might have unexpected results for social contacts that have been processed by multiple filters.
Filter States
Icons are used as visual indicators to display the state of each filter. Hover the cursor over the icon to display a tool tip that explains the state.
- A green icon means the filter is working properly.
- A red icon means an error occurred in the filter. Hover over the error icon to display a tool tip with the error text. NOTE that Cisco Support and the SocialMiner Forum on the Cisco Developer Network do not assist with Groovy script issues. Direct all troubleshooting requests to your script developer.
- A blue icon appears during a brief interim state while SocialMiner checks the status of the filter, after which the icon changes to red or green.
Types of Filters
SocialMiner supports three types of filters:
Bayesian Filters
VIDEO: View a video about using Bayesian Filters. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
The Bayesian filter is a trainable filtering technology based on a Bayesian statistical probability model. Bayesian filters are not pre-programmed or configured with business rules. You must apply a Bayesian filter to a campaign and then train the filter to recognize the content of "good" social contacts. When training a Bayesian Filter, you have the option to "train in" or "train out" each social contact in a campaign. After a sufficient amount of training, the filter begins to exclude unwanted social contacts from a campaign. See Train Bayesian Filters on the Home Tab.
The Bayesian filters can be used to for many reasons.
- A filter can take a broad keyword search and narrow the results down to the posts related to a specific brand. For example, a search for "Finesse" could return posts about hair products, Cisco software, and contract bridge. If the purpose of the campaign is to capture posts about the Cisco Finesse, the Bayesian Filter can be trained to exclude the social contacts about haircare and bridge.
- A filter can be trained to look for social contacts with negative sentiment (or positive sentiment), focusing the work of a customer support or marketing team.
- Filters can also be trained to include or exclude social contacts written in specific languages.
The training includes the complete text of the post, not just certain keywords, and therefore offers much more sophisticated filtering capability then a keyword exclusion approach to filtering.
You can train a Bayesian filter using any campaign. Choose a campaign with some social contacts and open the Settings page to select the Bayesian filter you want to train. Then Save and close the Setting page. This puts you in training mode.
The name of the filter you've selected is at the top left of the Home tab, and you see a "+" and "-" button for each social contact. Click the "+" to "Train In" the social contact, indicating that this is the type of contact you would like the Filter to keep in the Campaign. Click the "-" to "Train Out" the social contact, indicating that this is the type of contact you would like the filter to reject.
The training does not impact the campaign until you edit the campaign and move the filter from Available to Selected.
As a best practice, create a test campaign that mirrors an existing "in production" campaign. Add several feeds to the test campaign - some that you know will have relevant posts and some with irrelevant posts. Create the filter and set the test campaign to training mode. The more you train the filter, the better the filter will perform, so it is important to do a significant amount of training before applying your filter to the "production" campaign.
Author Filters
View a video about using Author Filters. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
The Author filter allows you to exclude specific social-contact authors. Social contacts posted by an author identified in an Author filter do not enter a campaign. For example, you may want to filter out your own posts or posts from team members.
Configuring an Author filter keeps your posts from showing up in your campaign and therefore reduces the number of posts you need to handle. It also improves the accuracy of the reporting metrics by excluding your own posts.
Script Filters
A script filter is custom code that system developers can create in the Groovy Scripting language. A script filter can apply tags, can change content, and can integrate with external systems to leverage services such as performing translation or invoking a Klout score for a social contact retrieved from a Twitter Account feed.
You can upload multiple Groovy scripts and attach each to a SocialMiner Script filter. There are examples of script filters in the SocialMiner Developers Guide and on the Cisco Developer Network (CDN).
The SocialMiner Administrator can add, import, edit, and delete Script Filters. Non-administrators can only see Script Filters on the Configuration tab and can use them (add them to campaigns).
SocialMiner runs scripts in Groovy 1.8.
NOTE: During the upload, SocialMiner performs a basic syntactic validation but cannot validate that the script will work as expected. For this reason, test your scripts on a lab system before using them in production. SocialMiner also performs security checks on each script. For example, a script will not run if it will shut down the system, take longer than 30 seconds to execute, or access the SocialMiner file system.
For more on Script Security, refer to the SocialMiner Developers Guide. Scripts errors are visible when you hover the cursor over the filter icons on the Filters gadget. You can also open the Runtime Error logs in the Log Directory to view the list of security breaches. Under the filename runtime/, open the Error-runtime log and search for SCRIPT_FILTER_EXCEPTION.
You will be able to upload scripts that fail the security model and apply them to campaigns, but they will have no effect on the social contacts. The Filters gadget. will show a red (failure) icon for the insecure script.
Adding and Editing Filters
To add a Bayesian filter:
- Click Add.
- Select Type—Bayesian from the drop-down—Required.
- Enter a Name—Required. Name must be unique.
- Enter a Desciption—Some text to describe this filter.
- Click Save.
To edit a Bayesian filter, click the filter's name.
To add an Author filter:
- Click Add.
- Select Type—Author from the drop-down—Required.
- Enter a Name—Required. It must be unique.
- Enter a Description—Some text to describe this filter.
- Authors—Required. Enter an author to exclude from the feed; then click Add, Repeat to add another author.
- Click Save.
To edit an Author filter, click the filter's name.
To add a Script filter:
- Click Add.
- Select Type—Script from the drop-down—Required.
- Enter a Name—Required. It must be unique.
- Enter a Description—Some text to describe this filter.
- Click the Browse/Choose File button—Required. Button name varies by browser. Navigate to the groovy file on your local machine or network. Select it.
- Click Save.
To edit a Script filter, click the filter's name.
Click the Show Source button to open the groovy script file in a separate window where you can review and select/copy (but cannot edit) the source. You can also upload a new script file in Edit mode. If you do this, you can retain or change the Name and Description, as needed.
Deleting Filters
Select the check box to the left of one or more Filter Names and click Delete to delete the filter. A confirmation dialog box appears. Click OK to confirm deletion of the selected filter(s).
System Administration
Only the SocialMiner Administrator, who is the Application User created during install time, can use this gadget on the Administration Tab.
- System Status and Statistics
- Active Directory
- Mail Notifications Server
- Proxy Settings
- XMPP Notifications Server
- Purge Settings
- Reporting Configuration
- RTMT Download Links
- Platform Administration
- System Logs
System Status and Statistics
The top section of the gadget has three sections of system status and statistical information:
- Version Information showing the Application Software Version (the version of SocialMiner) and the Operating System Active and Inactive Software Versions (the version of the Cisco Unified OS).
- Server status for the main services—Datastore, Indexer, Runtime, and Eventing—and for the Hardware profile. You also see the status of the Mail Notifications Server and the external XMPP Notifications Server used for Instant Messaging notifications, if those servers have been configured.
- Two graphical meters showing the number of incoming social contacts per hour and the number of logged-in users. These meters help you determine if the incoming rate of contacts or the number of users are nearing the limits allowed by the server. If a meter is completely red, consider asking users to log out or modifying your feeds to reduce the amount of incoming social contacts.
Active Directory
SocialMiner uses Active Directory to manage and administrate user access to the system. All users, with the exception of the Administration and Reporting users, must be configured on a Microsoft Active Directory server to be able to access SocialMiner.
The Active Directory connection permits users configured on the AD to access SocialMiner. You can configure the connection to allow all users on the AD to access SocialMiner, or to allow access to only a group of users. Multiple, independent groups that require isolated security and permissions should each deploy their own SocialMiner system.
Note: If Twitter Account feeds are configured on the system, all users are able to see Direct Messages to the configured Twitter Accounts and all users can post from these accounts. SocialMiner tracks which users make which posts. Companies that want to restrict who can make posts need to implement that by configuring SocialMiner to authenticate with a specific role. If SocialMiner is authenticated with a specific Active Directory role, then only those Active Directory users with that role can use SocialMiner.
To configure Active Directory, open the Administration gadget and click Edit. Enter or modify the following fields. Click Save when finished.
- Enabled: (checkbox) When checked, the Active Directory connection is active. If not checked, then only the administrator can log into SocialMiner.
- Host: Required if Enabled is checked. Provide the Host name or IP address and Port of the Active Directory server.
- Port: Required if Enabled is checked. Provide the port for Active Directory. The default Active Directory port is 3268. If using SSL the default port is 3269.
- Use SSL: (checkbox). Check to use SSL. Note you must also exchange security certificates with the AD server before SSL can work.
- Manager Distinguished Name: Required if Enabled is checked. Enter the Manager Distinguished Name used to login to the Active Directory server, for example, on a default installation of Microsoft AD, the name is :CN=Administrator, CN=users, DC=MYSERVER, DC=COM. Replace MYSERVER and COM with your respective hostname.
- Manager Password: Required if Enabled is checked. The password for the AD Manager account.
- Role Name: (optional) The Active Directory role or Active Directory group of users who are allowed to access SocialMiner. If this setting is blank or * then all users in Active Directory are allowed access to SocialMiner.
Exchanging Security Certificates with AD
To enable SSL for the Active Directory connection you must first exchange security certificates between the two servers. Enabling SSL is optional, but if you do not enable SSL then username and password information is not transmitted securely between SocialMiner and the Microsoft AD server.
To exchange security certificates:
On the Active Directory server:
- Verify that the Active Directory has the Certificate Services service installed.
- Select All Programs > Administrative Tools > Certificate Authority.
- Expand the domain node and select Issued Certificates.
- Double click the certificate to open it.
- Open the Details tab and click Copy to file.
- An Export wizard appears. In the wizard select DER encoded binary.
- Using the wizard to select a location to save the file.
- Click Finish.
On the SocialMiner Server:
- Open the Cisco Unified Operating System Administration page. The link is available from the gadget.
- Select Security > Certificate Management.
- Click Upload Certificate.
- For the Certificate Name, select tomcat-trust.
- In the Upload File field, select the file to upload by clicking Browse... Select the certificate file you saved from the Active Directory server.
- Click Upload File.
- Restart the Cisco Tomcat service. Using the CLI, run the command utils service restart Cisco Tomcat
Adding Users
The Administration user (configured at install) and Reporting user accounts are the only accounts explicitly configured on SocialMiner. The social media customer care representatives are configured in Microsoft Active Directory. As these users sign into SocialMiner, successfully authenticate against Active Directory, and begin to take actions on the system, their actions are associated with their Active Directory User ID.
Mail Notifications Server
Mail Notifications Server settings allow you to configure the SMTP information for a Mail Notifications Server. You must configure a Mail Notifications server if you intend to use the email notification feature.
To configure the Mail Notifications server, click Edit at the bottom of the Mail Notifications server setting and edit the following:
- Enabled: Check to enable the Mail Notifications server connection
- Mail Notifications Server Host: Required if Enabled is checked. The IP address or Hostname of the Mail Notifications Server.
- Mail Notifications Server Port: Required if Enabled is checked. The port for the Mail Notifications Server. This is set for port 25 by default. The Mail Notifications server may open port 465 instead for SSL/TLS connections. For example, the Gmail SMTP server (smtp.gmail.com) uses port 465.
- From Email Address: Required if Enabled is checked. The email address from which emails are sent.
- Use Authentication: Check to user SMTP authentication to connect to this Mail Notifications Server. The following two fields are editable only when Use Authentication is checked.
- User Name: Required if Use Authentication is checked. The user name for signing in.
- Password: Required if Use Authentication is checked. The password for the User Name.
- Use SSL|TLS : Defaults to unchecked. Check this if a secure connection is preferred and is supported by the Mail Notifications Server. The Mail Notifications Server certificate is not validated for this release. You must check this if you are using the Gmail SMTP server (smtp.gmail.com).
Click Save to save your changes.
Proxy Settings
Consult your Network Administrator for the proxy name and port. The same proxy is used across all feeds.
The link for proxy settings is available in the Administration gadget.
To configure the proxy, click the Proxy Configuration link, and edit the following field. Click Save when finished.
- Enable Proxy (checkbox)—When checked, feeds are accessed through the provided proxy server.
- Hostname—Required when Enable Proxy is checked. The IP address or hostname of the proxy server.
- Port—Required when Enable Proxy is checked. The port for the proxy server.
- Exclusion Patterns—You can add and remove hostname or IP addresses for servers not requiring a proxy.
- To add an exclusion, type the exclusion into the text box and click Add.
- To remove an exclusion, click the red X to the right of the exclusion.
- Wildcards are supported, for example *.cisco.com excludes all servers with a cisco.com hostname and 10.86.* excludes all IP addresses starting with 10.86
Click Save to save the settings and return to the Feed gadget page.
- Proxy changes may take up to 30 seconds to take effect.
- The exclusion list is limited to 255 total characters. There is an additional character per item in the list that acts as a separator.
- SocialMiner should only need to access a proxy server if it sits behind a corporate network firewall and has to use a http/https proxy server for accessing an outside network. You should not need to give SocialMiner a private NAT address, and doing so is not currently supported.
XMPP Notifications Server
XMPP Notifications Server settings allow you to configure an XMPP Notifications Server so SocialMiner can utilize Instant Messaging (IM) notifications. You must configure an XMPP Notifications Server if you intend to use the IM notification feature.
To configure the XMPP Notifications Server, click Edit at the bottom of the XMPP Notifications Server setting and edit the following:
- Enabled: Check to enable the XMPP Notifications Server connection
- XMPP Service Lookup: Check to enable XMPP Service Lookup. When enabled, the User Name's domain is used to connect to the correct XMPP Notifications Server.
- XMPP Notifications Server Host: The IP address or Hostname of the XMPP Notifications Server. Not applicable is XMPP Service Lookup is checked.
- XMPP Notifications Server Port: The port for the XMPP Notifications Server. This is set for port 5222 by default. Not applicable if XMPP Service Lookup is checked.
- User Name: The user name (in full JID format, such as email@example.com), which is used to sign in to the XMPP Notifications Server.
- Password: The password for the above User Name. NOTE: If you change your XMPP password for any reason—intentionally or to comply with network policy—change it here.
Click Save to save your changes.
Purge Settings
Database purges are required to remove old data from the datastore so that the disk does not fill up. Datastore purges occur on a continuous basis (every hour) based on the age of the social contacts and disk usage.
Important! Purge settings take effect as soon as you click Save. If any of the criteria are met, such as Emergency purge when disk usage exceeds (%), the purge starts immediately.
To configure purge settings, click Edit at the bottom of the purge settings tool and edit the following:
DataStore Purge Settings:
- Purge Social Contacts older than (days): Social contacts older than this number of days are purged. Valid values are 1 - 30.
- Important!: SocialMiner will not retrieve social contacts older than this setting.
- Emergency purge when disk usage exceeds (%): Begin an emergency purge if disk usage exceeds this value. Valid values are 60 - 90. When an emergency purge executes, social contacts older than the days specified above are removed. If disk usage is still above the setting for this field, the purge continues removing social contacts (one day at a time) until the disk usage is below the threshold for emergency purge.
Reporting Purge Settings:
- Purge start time (HH:mm 24 hour format): The time, in 24 hour format (00:00 to 23:59), that the purge starts based on the local server time. By default this is set to 01:00 (1am) local server time.
- Purge Social Contacts older than (days): Reporting records for social contacts older than this number of days are purged when the reporting purge starts.
Click Save to save your changes.
Reporting Configuration
Reporting configuration allows you to set or change the Informix password for the reporting user. You cannot change the reporting user's username. It is set to reportinguser.
The reporting user is used by Cisco Unified Intelligence Center (CUIC) and third-party applications to access the reporting database. Details on the tables in the reporting database are available in the SocialMiner Developers Guide.
To set or change the password for the reporting user, enter a new password in each of the password fields and click Save.
This section also displays the Reporting Server and Database information. This information is required for third-party connection to the database. The details include:
- Reporting Host—The hostname to use when connecting to the reporting database.
- Reporting Port—The port for the reporting database server.
- Reporting Server—The Informix server name for the reporting database. When configuring Cisco Unified Intelligence Center, this is the Instance.
- Reporting Database—The Informix database name for reporting.
- Database Type —The type of database (Informix).
- Username—The reporting username is fixed at 'reportinguser' and cannot be changed.
- Password/Re-enter New Password—The password for the reporting user.
When configuring Cisco Unified Intelligence Center, you must select UTF-8 as the character set.
RTMT Download Links
Links are provided to download the Cisco Unified Real Time Monitoring Tool (RTMT). SocialMiner uses the same RTMT as the one used for Cisco Unified Communications Manager.
Details on Installing and Configuring RTMT can be found on the Cisco web site: Installing and Configuring Cisco Unified RTMT
Platform Administration
Platform Administration provides links to the following interfaces of Cisco Unified OS:
- Cisco Unified Operating System Administration—Use tools on this interface to upgrade software and to import certificates.
- Cisco Unified Serviceability
- Disaster Recovery System—Use tools on this interface to back up and restore.
SocialMiner uses the same platform administration tools as Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Detailed online help is available in the tools.
System Logs
The System Logs tool provides links to access the Log Directory of SocialMiner or to perform a System Health Snapshot.
Important! Do not click the System Health Snapshot link unless directed to by Cisco TAC. Accessing this link forces the system to stream all system parameters into a large XML file for download. System performance is impacted while the snapshot is occurring.
Only the SocialMiner Administrator, who is the Application User created during install time, can use this gadget on the Administration Tab.
VIDEO: View a video about configuring Instant Message Notifications. View a video about configuring Email Notifications. Although this video was created for an earlier version of SocialMiner and shows an older user interface, it presents accurate information.
The Notification gadget on the Administration Tab lets you view, delete, edit, and add notification rules. Set up notification rules to send messages in reference to tagged social contacts.
If a reply template is associated with the social contact for which the notification is sent, the person who clicks the link in the IM or email opens SocialMiner to that reply template.
You can also send notifications to a mobile phone using an SMS Gateway service. Here is a list of SMS Gateways by carrier.
Establishing a notification rule for email requires that the administrator has configured a Mail Notifications Server in the System Administration gadget.
Establishing a notification rule for IM requires that the administrator has configured an XMPP Notifications Server in the System Administration gadget.
Notifications are triggered by tags. For email and IM, you have set up tags for social contacts. See Tagging Social Contacts on the Home tab and Automatic Tags.
IM and Email Notifications do not accept replies. The intent is to notify, not to open a dialog.
Auto-tagging or adding multiple tags at the same time (in one operation) generates multiple notifications to the same recipients list.
Using the Notification Gadget you can:
- delete a notification, by checking the box next to the notification name and clicking Delete.
- edit a notification, by clicking the notification's name.
- add a notification, by clicking Add.
To configure a notification, provide or edit the following fields in the Notification gadget.
- Type—Required. The type of notification. Notifications can be:
- Email—Notification is sent over email - A Mail Server must be configured in the System Administration gadget to send Email notifications.
- IM—Notification is sent over IM - An XMPP Notifications Server must be configured in the System Administration gadget to send IM notifications.
- HTTP—Reserved for developer applications that deliver social contact data to an external application.
- Name—Required. The name of the notification.
- Description—A brief description of the notification.
- Campaign—Required. Select a campaign to which you are associating this notification.
- Tag—Required. Enter a tag for this notification and click Add. Repeat for each tag. Notifications are sent when a social contact is tagged with this tag and exists in the Campaign above. To remove a tag, click the x at the right of the field.
- Addresses—Enter an address and click Add to add an address to this notification. Repeat for multiple addresses. Addresses must be in the format email@example.com. Used only for Email and IM Notifications, for which it is Required. To remove an address, click the x at the right of the field.
- Subject—The email subject for this notification. This field is only available for Email notifications. Subject is optional and is blank by default. As a best practice, enter a subject for email notifications.
- Body—The body for this notification. HTML tags are supported for Email Notifications. IM notifications are sent using plain text. The body of the message supports variables so you can customize the information sent in the notification. See "Notification Body Variables" below.
Notification Body Variables
The notification body for emails and instant messages can contain keywords in the syntax ${KEYWORD}. These keywords will be replaced with values from the Social Contact. Keywords are listed here in uppercase, but they are case-insensitive.
Note: By default, the body of the message contains the URL of the social contact—the ${SC_SCREEN_URL}. You can add the following variables to the body of the notification to include the value of the variable in the notification. For Email Notifications, you can also use HTML tags to stylize the notification. IM notifications are sent using plain text.
- ${SC_AUTHOR}—the Social Contact Author (not available in all feeds)
- ${SC_CREATED_DATE}—Date the Social Contact was created in the system.
- ${SC_DESCRIPTION}—The description of the social contact. Typically this is the tweet, RSS post, facebook fan page post, etc.
- ${SC_PUBLISHED_DATE}—The publish date of the social contact (not available in all feeds)
- ${SC_SCREEN_URL}—The URL to the social contact in the results gadget. Clicking this URL allows you to instantly reserve/reply to the social contact.
- ${SC_SOURCE_TYPE}—The feed type of the social contact, for example; RSS, Twitter Stream, Twitter Account, FaceBook
- ${SC_TAGS}—The tags for this social contact.
- ${SC_TITLE}—The title of the social contact.
- ${SC_EXTENSION_FIELDS.<fieldname>}—This variable adds a specific, named extension field for the social contact. You can add a maximum of 100 extension fields, up to one megabyte of information.
- ${SC_EXTENSION_FIELDS}—This variable adds all extension fields that exist for the social contact. They appear in the body in alphabetical order by name, in the format Name: Value. If no value was defined, you see Name: (—). If there are no extension fields, the variable is removed from the message body.
If the body an email notification includes:
- The author of this Social Contact is: <strong>${SC_AUTHOR}</strong> <br />
- The message contents are as follows: <strong>${SC_DESCRIPTION}</strong> <br />
- You can Reserve/Reply to the Social Contact <a href="${SC_SCREEN_URL}">here</a>.
The actual email notification sent would appear as:
The author of this Social Contact is: Joe Somebody The message contents are as follows: This is a TWEET! You can Reserve/Reply to the Social Contact here.
Reply Templates
Only the SocialMiner Administrator, who is the Application User created during install time, can use this gadget on the Administration Tab.
The SocialMiner Reply Templates gadget on the Administration Tab lists all available Reply Templates. The gadget displays the three installed system-provided templates and allows you to configure custom reply templates to be used with the system.
System Templates: The three system-defined templates cannot be edited or deleted. They are:
- Cisco Twitter—Used for Twitter Account and Twitter Stream feeds only, for which it is the default option. This template opens when you reply to a tweet on the Home tab.
- Cisco Facebook—Used for Facebook Fan Page feeds only, for which it is the default option. This template opens when you reply to a Facebook Fan Page on the Home tab.
- Cisco Chat—Used for Chat Feeds only, for which it is the default option. This templates opens the chat room for the agent and displays "You are now connected with a customer care representative." to the customer.
Custom Templates: An administrator can develop custom reply templates and use them for RSS, Twitter, or Facebook feeds. Until you create a custom template, No reply template is the only reply template option for a Push or RSS feed.
To add a custom template:
- Click Add.
- Enter a name (Required).
- Enter the URL for the location of the custom template code (Required).
See also the Custom Reply training lab.
To delete a custom template:
- Select it.
- Click Delete.
- Confirm the deletion.
Reply templates must conform to the OpenSocial gadget standard. Some tips for converting existing HTML pages into OpenSocial gadgets can be found here.
After you have created your Reply Template, host it on a webserver that is accessible by SocialMiner, and use the Reply Template gadget to provide a name for the Reply Template and its location.
Customer Chat
Currently, SocialMiner supports single-session chat between a customer and an agent. The customer is an individual who submits the chat form on your website. The agent is an individual who uses SocialMiner to respond to social contacts in a campaign that is set up with a chat feed.
For a chat to occur, there must be at least one SocialMiner Chat Feed, and the feed must be added to a campaign.
Chat Process
The process flow is as follows.
The SocialMiner Administrator:
- Creates and saves a Chat Feed in SocialMiner, using the Cisco Chat reply template.
- Adds the Chat Feed to a campaign.
- Copies the Chat Feed sample code and pastes it in a text editor.
- Makes changes to the code, if needed.
- Saves the code as HTML.
- Publishes the HTML to a website.
The customer:
- Selects a Click-to-Chat (or similar) link or button on the website, which opens the chat feed form.
- Completes the form and submits it.
By submitting the form, the customer enters a chat room and sees a "Welcome, please wait while we connect you with an available customer care representative." message. The text-entry area of the chat is disabled until the agent joins. The customer has the option to increase or decrease the size of the font in the chat window using the font sizing buttons.
If no agent responds before the defined timeout, the customer chat UI times out and the customer is sent a "Sorry, all customer care representatives are busy. Please try back at a later time." message.
The customer may opt to continue waiting (an agent may still join the chat after the timeout).
- Sets up a chat room and creates a social contact in SocialMiner with the form data, the URL of the chat room, and the URL of the chat reply template that serves as the chat gadget interface.
- Generates a chat, which appears in the chat campaign.
The agent:
The agent clicks the Reply icon for the social contact to enter the chat room and to display the Agent Chat Reply template (similar to the example shown here).
The customer's text-entry area is now enabled, the message "You are now connected with a customer care representative." is displayed on the customer interface, and the conversation begins. The social contact state changes to Reserved.
Chat Behavior
In the Chat Room Interface:
- Each party types a message and presses Enter. The customer's message arrives at the agent immediately. The agent response will take a maximum of five seconds to arrive at the customer, based on the timing of the response in relation to the five-second polling interval.
- The agent sees a time marker next to each customer entry.
- URLs and email addresses are actionable links.
- The agent has an END button to end the chat. The customer ends the chat by closing the browser.
- When the agent ends the chat, the chat room is removed, the customer sees the message "Your conversation with the customer care representative has ended.", and the social contact state changes to Handled.
- Once chat starts, there is no timeout for the agent. There is a five-minute idle timeout for the customer. A customer who does not send a message for five minutes is removed from the chat room.
- Agents who navigate away from a chat - for example, to consult a web page - can reconnect as follows: Select Reply to change the social contact state back to Unreserved. Select Reply again to Reserve the social contact and rejoin the chat.
- Agents who end a chat by mistake can reconnect as follows: Select Show Handled and locate the social contact. Click Reply to rejoin the chat. If the customer has left, you will see a message that you are alone in the room. If the customer has not dropped off, you can continue the chat.
- Agents have the option to save, and subsequently search, the chat session transcript.
Chat Errors
If the server goes down, or if cookies are cleared on the customer side, the customer sees a Connecting to server... message, followed by an Error connecting to server message.
SocialMiner Reporting
SocialMiner maintains metrics on social contact volume and agent activities. These metrics are stored in a SQL database for up to 18 months. The reporting database can be accessed using any SQL reporting tool including Cisco Unified Intelligence Center. Access to this database requires configuration of a reporting user in the SocialMiner system administration.
There are two main categories of reports:
- Campaign Reports - These metrics provide an indication of the total posting volume by customers as well as the responsiveness to customers. These are what could be described as "customer facing" metrics.
- Agent Reports - These metrics provide an indication of the agent productivity. These metrics could be used to evaluate agent speed or they could be used to measure total workload as a basis for staffing forecasts.
The Cisco Unified Intelligence Center templates for SocialMiner are available for download here: http://www.cisco.com/cisco/software/release.html?mdfid=283613136&catid=278875240&softwareid=283733464
Note: For Cisco Unified Intelligence Center releases prior to 8.0(3), you must extract the templates from the zip file before importing them into Unified Intelligence Center. For release 8.0(3) and later, you can import the zip file directly and Unified Intelligence Center extracts all the templates it finds inside the zip file.
The following screen captures are examples of the Cisco Unified Intelligence Center Reports daily reports:
- ASR - Average Speed of Reserved. For the social contacts that were Reserved, this is the average time between capture by SocialMiner and the time they are marked as reserved. This provides an indication of how much time passes before someone first views the customer's post.
- ASA - Average Speed of Answer. For the social contacts that were Handled, this is the average time between capture by SocialMiner and the time they are marked handled. This provides an indication of how of how much time passes before the customer gets a response.
- ASD - Average Speed of Discard. For the social contacts that were Discarded, this is the average time between capture by SocialMiner and the they are marked discarded. This provides an indication of how much time passes before someone chooses to discard the customer's post. Note: "Discard" doesn't necessarily mean the post is disregarded. The distinction between "Discard" and "Handled" depends on how the agents are using SocialMiner. For example, they might mark posts that are read as "discarded" and posts that are responded too as "handled". In this case, discarded means that they were "read".
The complete SocialMiner reporting database schema is documented in the SocialMiner Developer Guide
- AHT - Average Handle Time. For social contacts that were handled by this agent, this is the average time between Reserved and Handled. This provides and indication of how much time it takes this agent to respond to a social contact.
- ADT - Average Discarded Time. For social contacts that were discarded by this agent, this is the average time between Reserved and Discarded. This provides an indication of how much time it takes this agent to discard a social contact.
- ACT - Average Completed Time. For social contacts that were Handled or Discarded, this is the average time between capture by SocialMiner and the first time they were marked Handled or Discarded. This provides an indication of how of how much time it takes for this agent to complete work for a social contact.
Configuring the SQL Connection to the SocialMiner Reporting Database
Connection to the SocialMiner Informix reporting database can be made through JDBC using the following format:
- The reporting database <port> is 1526.
- The <databasename> is "mmca_data".
- The <informixserver> name is based on the hostname of the server with _mmca append to the end of the hostname. Additional, any dashes ("-") in the hostname are replace by underscores ("_").
- The UTF-8 Charset is required to get Cisco Unified Intelligence Center (CUIC) able to connect.
- The content of INFORMIXSERVER is the instance name. Must be lowercase.
- The databasehost can be socialminer with all lowercase and the instances should also be with lowercase.
For example, if your server's hostname is my-server.mycompany.com, then the INFORMIXSERVER name is my_server_mmca. The complete JDBC URL would be:
Note that when authenticating, the informix username is always reportinguser and the informix password is the password you created in the Administration Gadget.
Downloading and Installing Language Packs
Do this only if you require the SocialMiner interface in a language other than English.
A downloadable zip file of internationalized SocialMiner user interface and online help files will be available on cisco.com shortly after the English-language version of SocialMiner 8.5(5) is released.
The filename is SocialMiner-languagePack-8.5.4.zip.
Downloading and unzipping the file gives you 18 language packs with the file extension of ##.cop.sgn. The zip file also contains a Readme.txt with instructions on installing COP files.
Note that the Cisco authorization process for File Download has changed. You may need to access OnRamp to request Software Download Access. (New Account Request -> Request For Myself -> Customer Advocacy -> Software Download and Special File Publishing Access -> Software Download Access)
IMPORTANT: Do not change the name of the files.
|Chinese (Simplified)
|Chinese (Traditional)
|Finnish (France)
|French (France)
|French (Canadian)
|Portuguese (Brazil)
System Backup and Restoration
Cisco SocialMiner supports the Cisco Unified OS Disaster Recovery System (DRS) to perform backup and restoration of the system. You access the Disaster Recovery System by going to the Administration Gadget, expanding the section on Platform Administration, then selecting the link for Disaster Recovery System.
SocialMiner uses the same platform administration tools as Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Detailed online help is available in the tools.
You can manually back up your system using DRS, or schedule DRS to perform automatic backups.
Complete details on using DRS are available in the DRS online help and in this guide: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/drs/8_0_1/drsag801.html.
Quick Manual Backup Instructions
These instructions provide quick instructions to create a manual backup. You can also schedule backups to run automatically. Note that the system is not usable during a backup, and that new social contacts are not collected during a backup. Schedule your backups accordingly.
The online help for the Disaster Recovery System provides complete details on all features of DRS. However, using DRS with SocialMiner is greatly simplified because SocialMiner supports only a single node and only uses network backups.
To perform a manual backup:
Define Backup Device
- Access the Disaster Recovery System by going to the Administration Gadget, expanding the section on Platform Administration, then selecting the link for Cisco Disaster Recovery System.
- Select Backup > Backup Device.
- On the Backup Device List page, select Add New.
- Provide a Device Name for the backup device.
- SocialMiner only supports backing up to a Network Directory, provide the Network Directory details for a server that supports SFTP.
- Provide the Number of backups to store on the Network Directory. The default is two, so only the two latest backups are preserved.
- Click Save, the system verifies the information you entered and saves the backup device.
The backup device is now saved. You do not need to repeat these steps the next time you backup the system unless you want to back up to a different device or change backup device settings.
Backup the System to the Backup Device
- Access the Disaster Recovery System by going to the Administration Gadget, expanding the section on Platform Administration, then selecting the link for Disaster Recovery System. Log in using the platform credentials you supplied when you installed SocialMiner.
- Select Backup > Manual Backup.
- Select the Backup Device you created earlier from the pull down menu in Select Backup Device.
- In Selected Features check SOCIALMINER.
- Click Start Backup.
- A warning appears noting that you may need to use the security password to restore. Click OK. The backup begins.
- The backup page refreshes periodically providing the status of the backup. The page also displays the name of the backup tar file that is being saved to the remote system.
- After the backup completes, wait a few minutes before using SocialMiner so the SocialMiner system can start subsystems that may have been shutdown during the backup.
Restoring from a Backup File
- Access the Disaster Recovery System by going to the Administration Gadget, expanding the section on Platform Administration, then selecting the link for Disaster Recovery System. Log in using the platform credentials you supplied when you installed SocialMiner.
- Select Restore > Restore Wizard.
- Select the backup device from the drop-down menu and select Next.
- Select the backup file you want to restore for the Tar file list drop-down menu and select Next.
- Check SocialMiner in the Select Features section and select Next.
- Read the warning on the page. Optionally select File Integrity Check, then select the Server to be restored (typically the host name of the backed up system). Click Restore.
- The restore page refreshes periodically providing the status of the restore.
- After the restore completes, you must restart SocialMiner for the restoration to take effect.
Design Guidance
- Advanced UI Options
- Command Line Interface
- Deployment Models
- Hardware and Software Specifications
- Obtaining a CA-Signed Certificate
- Ports
- Sizing
- SocialMiner User Accounts and Security
- Twitter Accounts and Security
- VMWare Open Virtual Format (OVF)
Advanced UI Options
The SocialMiner user interfaces are designed to be embedded in other web application user interfaces.
You can add a SocialMiner gadget to Quad using the "Add Application" button on Quad. You can find the specific URL of the SocialMiner gadget by using "view source" on your browser while looking at the gadgets on SocialMiner.
iGoogle If the SocialMiner system is deployed in the Internet deployment model, you can add a SocialMiner gadget to iGoogle using the "Add Stuff" button on iGoogle.
You can find the specific URL of the SocialMiner gadget by using "view source" on your browser while looking at the gadgets on SocialMiner.
If your web site or application doesn't support OpenSocial, then you can add SocialMiner to a web page by using an iFrame. With this technique you can make a frame sized to show one of the SocialMiner web pages (most likely the campaign results gadget).
Command Line Interface
To access the Command Line Interface for SocialMiner:
- SSH to the address for your SocialMiner server.
- Sign in with your administrator credentials.
- Type a ? at the admin: prompt to see the list of commands.
Refer to the Cisco Systems CLI documentation.
Note that most CLI commands do not apply to, or have not been certified for, SocialMiner.
Deployment Models
Version 8.5 of SocialMiner has a single-server all-in-one deployment model. You cannot use a load-balancing split data-center deployment. There is no replication. The solution is not redundant. The best availability solution for SocialMiner would be to back it up at a 2nd location using a scheduled backup. In the event of a site loss, you would restore into a new VM.
The server may be deployed inside or outside the corporate firewall in "intranet" and "Internet" deployment models.
- The intranet deployment model provides the additional security of the corporate network firewalls to reduce risk of an external party accessing the system. This deployment model is required if SocialMiner must access internal sites, for example an internal forum site. The downside of the intranet deployment model is that SocialMiner system cannot be accessed by partners lacking VPN access. It is common for some PR functions to be externally managed by an agency and therefore offering easy access (no VPN) to the SocialMiner system may be very useful. Also, the intranet deployment model does not allow rendering of SocialMiner OpenSocial Gadgets in a public Internet containers such as iGoogle. The intranet deployment model may complicate proxy configuration, however it likely simplifies directory integration.
- The Internet deployment model puts SocialMiner outside the corporate firewall. This deployment model relies on the built-in security capabilities of the SocialMiner appliance. This may be acceptable from a security perspective depending on the system use and corporate policies. For example, in some applications the SocialMiner system handles 100% public postings and therefore there is no disclosure risk associated with a compromised SocialMiner system. The Internet deployment model may complicate directory integration.
SocialMiner may be deployed where some users access the server through a firewall or proxy and others do not. For the customer chat interface, it is possible to prevent the SocialMiner server from being abused or limiting access for those outside the firewall to specific server functionality by deploying it behind a firewall or proxy server.
Hardware and Software Specifications
Cisco will support SocialMiner deployment on any hardware provided SocialMiner is installed within the Cisco provided VMWare OVF.
Possible server options include Cisco UCS servers such as:
|UCS Model
Port 25 is the default port for Email.
Port 465 is used by the mail server for SSL/TLS connections.
Port 443 is used for a secure connection between the SocialMiner user interface and your browser.
Port 80 is used by SocialMiner for unsecure communication with Twitter and Facebook APIs.
Port 7071 is used for unsecure BOSH connections to the XMPP/Eventing server.
Port 7443 is used for secure BOSH connections to the XMPP/Eventing server.
Your firewall configuration may need to be modified to open these ports for SocialMiner.
Obtaining a CA-Signed Certificate
To eliminate browser security warnings each time you sign-in you must obtain an application and root certificate signed by a Certificate Authority (CA).
To do this, use the Certificate Management utility from Cisco Unified Operating System Administration.
Open Cisco Unified Operating System Administration from the Administration tab > Platform Administration. You can also use the URL
where servername is the Name or IP address of the server. Sign in with your Administrator credentials.
To obtain the certificates:
- Select Security > Certificate Management > Generate CSR.
- After the successful generation, click Download CSR.
- Use the CSR to obtain both the signed application certificate and the CA root certificate from the CA.
To upload the certificates:
- When you receive the certificates, again open Cisco Unified Operating System Administration from the Administration tab > Platform Administration.
- Select Security > Certificate Management > Upload Certificate.
- Select the certificate name from the Certificate Name list.
- Upload the root certificate.
- In the Upload dialog box, select TomCat Trust from the dropdown.
- Browse to the file and click Open.
- Click Upload File.
- Upload the application certificate.
- In the Upload dialog box, select TomCat from the dropdown.
- Enter the name of the CA root in the Root Certificate text box.
- Browse to the file and click Open.
- Click Upload File.
You can find detailed explanations in the Security topics of Cisco Unified CM Operating System Administration Online Help.
After you upload the certificates:
- Sign out of SocialMiner.
- Restart the XMPP Service. (SSH to SocialMiner and use this CLI: admin:utils service restart SocialMiner XMPP Server).
- Restart Tomcat. (SSH to SocialMiner and use this CLI: admin:utils service restart Cisco Tomcat).
- Sign in to SocialMiner.
The following table details the sizing limits for a single SocialMiner system.
|Concurrent Admin Users Signed In
|Concurrent Agents Signed In
|Total Feeds
|Total Campaigns
|Incoming Rate of Social Contacts (total per hour)
|Replies per Twitter Account per Hour
| 30
Note: This limit is for a default polling interval of 5 minutes. If the polling interval is set lower than 5 minutes, then the limit is reduced depending on usage patterns.
SocialMiner User Accounts and Security
SocialMiner is designed to minimize the storage of username/passwords to reduce the security risk of a compromised system. There is an administration account for the system setup, but all SocialMiner user access is controlled through Active Directory (AD) authentication. There are no SocialMiner user passwords stored on the SocialMiner System.
Users do not need to be manually set up on SocialMiner in order to access the system. Any user that is authenticated via the Active Directory set-up can use the system. If there is need to limit who can use system then an AD group can be set up in AD and the SocialMiner system can be configured to only allow access from that group.
AD authenticated users have access to all functions on the system, although gadgets access could be blocked by blocking certain URLs.
Twitter Accounts and Security
Access to Twitter for the Twitter Account feed type is done via OAuth. When a "Twitter Account" Feed is created the user is prompted to authenticate with Twitter. The authentication token is stored by SocialMiner granting access to secured information from Twitter such as Direct Messages. This authentication also enables sending and replying to Twitter Direct Messages (DMs) from the account by using the Reply feature on the Home tab.
Note: All SocialMiner users are entitled to use Twitter accounts configured in the Twitter Account feed to read and respond to Direct Messages in that account. They are not required to enter the account password. This supports environments where the social-media care agents are not entitled to know the Twitter account password. Their ability to use SocialMiner is controlled via Active Directory and their ability to invoke post or perform actions on Twitter is controlled by SocialMiner. SocialMiner also tracks which SocialMiner User (AD account) makes each post; therefore it is possible for the enterprise to track which employee posted a tweet when sharing a Twitter account amongst a team.
Twitter Stream feed type passwords are encrypted when stored in the SocialMiner configuration database and are also encrypted when sent to Twitter.
VMWare Open Virtual Format (OVF)
The SocialMiner system supports one standard OVF Appliance. The system requires ESXi version 4.0 Update 1 or ESXi 4.1 .
For details on configuring VMWare and installing the OVF template, refer to Virtualization for Cisco SocialMiner.
Developer Information
Developer information, including the SocialMiner API documentation and a discussion forum, is available on the Cisco developer site: http://developer.cisco.com/web/socialminer.
Training labs are at http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/SocialMiner_Labs.
Copyright Notes
- Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter, Inc.
- Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook, Inc.
- iGoogle is a trademark of Google, Inc.
- VMWare is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc.
- Informix is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp.
The Cisco implementation of TCP header compression is an adaptation of a program developed by the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) as part of UCBs public domain version of the UNIX operating system. All rights reserved. Copyright 1981, Regents of the University of California.
Cisco and the Cisco Logo are trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at http://www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document or Website are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses. Any examples, command display output, and figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.
Copyright 2011 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.