Glossary

The acronyms and definitions in this glossary define terms as used in the Customer Care Framework product. There might be cases where a term has another meaning in another context. Those contexts are not discussed in this document.

Glossary of Acronyms

AC – Admin Console – The CCF administration console that is the visual interface for CCF operation.

ACL – Access Control List – A list that specifies the rules for access to a particular resource. Microsoft Windows NT implements user-based ACLs, which specify the resources available to a particular user. An entry in an access control list (ACL) is an access control entry (ACE). There are two types of access control list, discretionary and system.

ACD – Automated Call Distribution – A system whereby phone calls are routed to agents or otherwise handled.

AIF – Application Integration Framework – A framework that enables companies to integrate and communicate electronically with other business processes and trading partners. The Application Integration Framework supports business-to-business (B2B) and application-to-application (A2A) integration scenarios.

API – Application Program Interface – A set of routines that an application uses to request and carry out lower-level services performed by a computer`s operating system. These routines usually carry out maintenance tasks such as managing files and displaying information.Developers make requests and program calls to the operating system through APIs.

BLL – Business Logic Layer – The software layer that does the actual work related to business processes. In CCF, it is built in and nearly invisible.

CCF – Customer Care Framework.

CMS – Content Management Server – A family of Microsoft server software for the development, deployment, and management of enterprise Web content for Internet, intranet, and extranet Web sites.

SSP – Self-Service Portal. An obsolete feature of CCF; the portal is sometimes referred to in namespace code as CSS.

CSR – Customer Service Representative – The generic term for the agent. A customer service representative (CSR) provides service to the customers of the organization or business unit through the opening and resolution of cases, among other activities.

CTI – Computer Telephony Integration – The method of allowing servers and other computer components to handle telephone-transmitted information.

DAL – Data Access Layer. Layers or tiers of software code that include the programmed methods for interacting with databases.

DBA – Database Administrator – The user who has control over the database operations and functions. The DBA does not inherently have control over the data itself.

DBO – Database Owner – The creator of the original database and who has control over all functions, objects and data. The DBO would own individual databases on a database server.

DDA – Data-Driven Adapter – adapters that act as interfaces for hosted applications.

DLL – Dynamic Link Library – Collections of executable routines stored in secondary memory as .dll files until a running program calls them to be loaded and run in primary memory.

DOM – Document Object Model – A W3C specification that describes the structure of dynamic HTML and XML documents so as to allow them to be manipulated through a Web browser.

DTC – Data Transaction Coordinator, Distributed Transaction Coordinator – A component of Microsoft Transaction Services, a transaction manager that coordinates transactions that span multiple resource managers.

DTS – Data Transformation Service. A SQL Server component used to import, export, and transform data from different data sources. Commerce Server provides a set of DTS tasks that you use to import data into the Commerce Server Data Warehouse.

EIF – Enterprise Instrumentation Framework – A Microsoft technology that enables applications built on the .NET Framework to be instrumented for manageability in a production environment. The framework provides an extensible event schema and unified API which leverage existing event management, logging, and tracing mechanisms built into Windows.

FQDN – Fully Qualified Domain Name – A domain name that expresses all levels of the name. CCF uses FQDN in the context of namespaces such as Microsoft.Ccf.Csr.WebServices.AgentCredentials.

HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol – The protocol used to transfer information on the World Wide Web.

ID – Integrated Desktop – The control interface that presents the CCF operations to the call center agent. Agents perform their tasks through the ID.

IIS – Internet Information Services – Microsoft Web server software that utilizes the HTTP, FTP and other protocols to deliver World Wide Web documents.

ISAPI – Internet Server API (see API). An application programming interface (API) that resides on a server computer for initiating software services tuned for Windows operating systems.

LDAP – Lightweight Directory Access Protocol – A software protocol that enables anyone to locate organizations, individuals, and other resources such as files and devices in a network. LDAP is part of the X500 standard.

LOB – Line of Business – Applications that are critical to business operation such as accounting, inventory management, and so on.

MFC – Microsoft Foundation Classes – A library of C++ classes that wrap the Windows APIs.

MMC – Microsoft Management Console – An interface and infrastructure that allows the addition and use of management tools called snap-ins. These allow configuration and management of servers.

MOSS – Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

MSMQ – Microsoft Message Queuing – A technology that allows applications running at different times to communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily offline.

NAT – Network Address Translator – A process that converts between intranet and private network IP addresses and Internet IP addresses.

PBX – Private Branch eXchange – An automatic telephone switching system that can operate outside of the public telephone system.

UI – User Interface – The visual reference the user sees and interacts with to control the computer or program.

UNC – Universal Naming Convention – A method of identifying files by name without having to know the location of the file.

RPC – Remote Procedure Call – A method for client machines to access routines on servers indirectly. RPC operates through sub-routines called stubs that do the handling for the transfer. RPCs can be synchronous or asynchronous.

RTC – Real Time Communication – The principal of using computers and networks to facilitate voice, video, and data communication between disparate groups as if they were in the same space.

SA – System Administrator – The user in charge of the configuration and operation of the CCF framework and the associated servers and databases. The SA would normally have permissions over the database server machines and the databases they contain.

SD – Security Descriptor – Objects on a machine or network have access control information attached to them known as security descriptors. This security descriptor controls the type of access allowed to users and groups and is automatically created along with the container or object.

SI – Systems Integrator – Often a developer, an SI usually builds the individual solutions or components used with CCF.

SID, Sid – Security Identifier – Sometimes used interchangeably with SD.

SMS – Systems Management Server.

SPx* *– Service Pack, where x represents the service pack version number.

SPN – Service Principal Name – The name by which a client uniquely identifies an instance of a service. Each instance of a given service must have its own SPN.

SPS – Sharepoint Portal Server. A secure, scalable, enterprise portal server built upon Windows SharePoint Services. You can use it to aggregate SharePoint sites, information, and applications in your organization into a single, easy-to-use portal. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 relies on Windows SharePoint Services to provide basic Web hosting and document storage functions.

SSO – Single Sign-On – A session authentication process that allows users to create a single set of credentials that can be used to access multiple sites or applications network-wide.

TAPI – Telephony API – An API specifically related to telephone communication functions (see API).

TTL – Time to Live – The amount of time that a DNS record is kept in cache.

TSAPI – Telephony Server API (see API). Set of functions that allow programming of telephony server in a device-independent manner, giving personal telephony to users.

WCF – Windows Communication Foundation – A set of .NET technologies that allows communication among Web services and systems. 

WF – Windows Workflow Foundation. A .NET framework component that provides tools and programming models for development of Windows-based workflow enabled applications.

WMI – Windows Management Instrumentation.

WSBF – Web Service Binding Framework.

WSDL – Web Services Description Language – A specific XML grammar set and protocol for describing network services as sets of endpoints with messages being passed within those endpoints. WSDL documents are composed of sets of definitions.

WSE – Web Service Enhancements – An add-on for Visual Studio 2005, designed to simplify the development and deployment of secure Web services.