Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan)

Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan) (Multi-Region BCP) provides a secondary NiCE CXone system as a backup. You can switch to this backup system when you experience issues with your primary system. For example, you could experience an outage, regional failure, or planned maintenance. Multi-Region BCP helps you minimize the impact of unforeseen events. It also ensures that you maintain essential operations during such events. Your organization must opt in to Multi-Region BCP for each NiCE CXone tenant High-level organizational grouping used to manage technical support, billing, and global settings for your NiCE CXone system..

Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan) must be set up by your NiCE CXone Account Representative. After initial setup, you can start syncing data from your primary system to the secondary, Multi-Region BCP system. This lets you quickly switch to the Multi-Region BCP system if an emergency arises, like an outage. When you switch to the Multi-Region BCP system:

Contact The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. traffic automatically begins routing to the Multi-Region BCP system. However, Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan) currently only supports the voice channel Various voice and digital communication mediums that facilitate customer interactions in a contact center..
The sync process pauses, ensuring that no data is lost or overwritten in the Multi-Region BCP system.
When users log in, they are redirected to the Multi-Region BCP system. They can check which system they're logged in to, to be sure which one they're working in.

The terms "system" and "tenant" could be used interchangeably.

When to Switch to a Multi-Region BCP System

You control when you switch from your primary to Multi-Region BCP system. If an issue arises, you're not obligated to wait or work with NiCE Support. Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan) was designed to help you continue business operations during disasters. However, you could choose to switch at any time, like if a service is slow or unstable.

You can sign up for platform status alerts in the NiCE CXone Customer Community Arrow pointing outside of a box. . You may want to identify a specific Multi-Region BCP administrator who signs up for these alerts. These can help you react quickly during emergency scenarios where you want to switch to the Multi-Region BCP system.

Switching to the Multi-Region BCP system is a manual process; if an outage or emergency occurs, NiCE CXone does not automatically switch to your Multi-Region BCP system. In the event you are unable to switch to the Multi-Region BCP system, your Account Representative can do so for you.

Synchronization Between Systems

After Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan) is enabled, you must initiate data synchronization. This syncs data like users and points of contact The entry point that an inbound contact uses to initiate an interaction, such as a phone number or email address. to the Multi-Region BCP system. Data syncs from the primary to the Multi-Region BCP system. This ensures that your Multi-Region BCP system is up-to-date when you need it. It also makes administration easier since you only need to administer your primary system. Also, if you switch to the Multi-Region BCP system, the sync does not occur. This is because the primary system is inactive; it also means your Multi-Region BCP setup will not change when it's enabled.

Currently, data syncs on a daily basis. When you enable the sync, your system performs the synchronization each day at the same time that you enabled the sync.

If you make changes in your Multi-Region BCP system, like creating a new skill Used to automate delivery of interactions based on agent skills, abilities, and knowledge., that new skill will not sync to the primary system. The sync is only one-way, from primary to Multi-Region BCP.

Data That Can Be Synced

The following table shows which data can be synced, and which application the data comes from:

Omnichannel Routing (ACD)	Admin	Studio
Agent Settings (Omnichannel Routing (ACD) Users)	Roles	Files
Business Unit Settings	Teams	Scripts
Campaigns	Users (Employees)
Dispositions
Hours of Operation
Points of Contact (voice)
Skills

Exceptions: employee data that does not sync

Certain data about employees do not sync to the Multi-Region BCP tenant:

Views
Groups
Scheduling Unit
Location
Login Authenticator
Multi-Factor Authentication
Custom Attributes
Access Keys
Divisions

You can choose to enable a default or custom sync. A default sync includes all available data. A custom sync lets you control which data you do or do not want to sync.

Entity Correlations

When data syncs to the Multi-Region BCP system, the IDs do not necessarily remain the same. Despite that, the correlation between entities on both systems is maintained when data syncs to the Multi-Region BCP system. For example, the user Ichabod Crane is assigned the role of Administrator - Sleepy Hollow. The user ID of Ichabod Crane is not necessarily the same in both the primary and Multi-Region BCP systems. The role ID of Administrator - Sleepy Hollow is also not the same. Even though the IDs are not the same, Ichabod Crane still has the same role in both the primary and Multi-Region BCP systems.

Because the IDs of entities in the Multi-Region BCP system are not the same, this impacts your Studio scripts. When a script syncs, it retains any unique IDs you've used in the script. For example, you may have referenced a specific skill ID in the script. In this scenario, the script would be referencing the ID of the skill in your primary system. This means you need to update any unique IDs in the Multi-Region BCP version of the script.

The Set Up Multi-Region Business Continuity Plan (Business Continuity Plan) page has a checklist to help script developers update scripts.

Your Multi-Region BCPsystem is meant to let you handle emergencies. It's not meant to be a complete copy of your primary system. Your apps and features may be enabled in the Multi-Region BCP system, but they won't include data or configuration as part of the system sync.

An administrator can manually configure settings in the Multi-Region BCP system. However, those configurations only exist in the Multi-Region BCP system and won't impact your primary system.

User Access and Syncing

All users are synced to the Multi-Region BCP tenant, but access to the tenant is controlled per user with the Multi-Region BCP Type setting. This setting in the NiCE CXone employee profile lets you define Multi-Region BCP tenant login rights for each user. You can choose between three types of:

No Access: The user account does not have access to the Multi-Region BCP tenant. By default, all employees have no access.
Single Access: The user account can only access whichever tenant is active. So, they can only log in to the Multi-Region BCP tenant when you've switched to the Multi-Region BCP tenant and it's active.
Multiple Access: The user account can choose which tenant to log in to. This type of access should be given to administrators, who you want to be able to log in to the Multi-Region BCP tenant at any time. These users will have an updated login page. When logging in, a selector will let them choose between the primary and Multi-Region BCP tenant. This selector will also show which tenant is currently active. This will help them easily know whether the Multi-Region BCP tenant is active or not.

Access is given to each individual employee; you cannot give access at the team or role level. You can give access to many users at one time with the employee bulk upload process. Or, you can edit an individual employee profile on the Multi-Region BCP tab.

You may want to limit access to specific users for the following reasons:

Currently, only the voice channel is supported in the Multi-Region BCP system, so you only need enough agents to handle your voice contacts.
The number of users you give access to the Multi-Region BCP system may have billing implications. For example, you may not want 10,000 user accounts constantly sitting in your Multi-Region BCP tenant. Contact your Account Representative for more information about billing.

Considerations for Voice Points of Contact

Remember, Multi-Region BCP currently only supports the voice channel. This means that when you enable your Multi-Region BCP tenant, other channels are unavailable, like digital channels, SMS, email, and so forth.

Keep in mind the following about your voice channel in your Multi-Region BCP system:

Only voice points of contact The entry point that an inbound contact uses to initiate an interaction, such as a phone number or email address. that you sync to your Multi-Region BCP system can continue to function when you switch to the Multi-Region BCP system.
When you switch to your Multi-Region BCP system, only voice points of contact in the Multi-Region BCP system continue functioning.
- When you switch to the Multi-Region BCP system, your primary system is inactive, including those voice points of contact.
- After switching to the Multi-Region BCP system, calls route through the Multi-Region BCP server cluster.
- If your primary server cluster had an outage, then comes back online while you're using your Multi-Region BCP system, your voice calls still route through the Multi-Region BCP server cluster. Also, the voice points of contact in your primary stay inactive since Multi-Region BCP is enabled.
- If your primary server cluster had an outage, then comes back online while you're using your Multi-Region BCP system, you don't automatically switch back to the primary system. You must manually switch between systems.
If you deactivate a point of contact within 12 hours of the sync process, this update may not sync until the next day.

Impact on NiCE CXone Users

Your users likely cannot log in to your primary system. This depends on the situation, like whether there is an outage or maintenance, and whether you've switched over to the Multi-Region BCP system. If you've switched to the Multi-Region BCP system, then users with Single Access or Multiple Access can log in. Types of access are explained in the User Access and Syncing section of this page.
If users are actively logged in and handling a contact The person interacting with an agent, IVR, or bot in your contact center. when a disaster occurs, the interaction continues unless there is a complete outage or outage for that channel Various voice and digital communication mediums that facilitate customer interactions in a contact center..
After you've switched to the Multi-Region BCP system, users need to log out and log back in again to continue handling contacts.
- Voice contacts route to the Multi-Region BCP system, so they need to switch to the Multi-Region BCP system.
- The login experience changes, depending on the user's level of access:
  - Users with Multiple Access see a system selector.
  - Users with Single Access are automatically directed to the login page for the Multi-Region BCP system.
  - Users with No Access are unable to log in.
Depending on the NiCE CXone features and products you have set up, users may notice that certain features aren't available. This is because your Multi-Region BCP system is meant to let you handle emergencies. It's not meant to be a complete copy of your primary system.

Quality Assurance for a Multi-Region BCP System

The Multi-Region BCP system is kept in a "warm" state. This means it's always ready for you to switch over to it.
Security and performance are consistent for your primary and Multi-Region BCP system. The Multi-Region BCP system is backed by the same service level agreement (SLA) as your primary .
NiCE provides the same technical support for both the primary and Multi-Region BCP system.
The Multi-Region BCP system is hosted in a different region than your primary system. This ensures that regional issues don't impact your ability to continue business operations.