Redacting PII from Genesys Cloud Media API Transcription Streams in Java

What You Will Build

• A Java service that subscribes to Genesys Cloud real-time transcription WebSockets, intercepts incoming transcript events, applies regex patterns and a machine learning classifier to detect sensitive data, replaces matched tokens with [REDACTED] placeholders while preserving ISO 8601 timestamp boundaries, and forwards the sanitized payload to the Genesys Cloud transcript storage API.
• This implementation uses the Genesys Cloud Java SDK for authentication, standard Java WebSocket APIs for event streaming, and java.net.http.HttpClient for storage API submission with exponential backoff retry logic.
• The tutorial covers Java 17+ with production-ready error handling, scope validation, and offset-preserving text replacement.

Prerequisites

• Genesys Cloud OAuth confidential client registered in the Admin Console
• Required OAuth scopes: analytics:transcripts:read, analytics:transcripts:write, websockets:subscribe
• Genesys Cloud Java SDK v2.18.0 or higher
• Java 17 runtime environment
• External dependencies:
  • com.mypurecloud.api:genesyscloud:2.18.0
  • com.google.code.gson:gson:2.10.1
  • org.slf4j:slf4j-api:2.0.9
• Network access to api.mypurecloud.com (or your regional endpoint)

Authentication Setup

Genesys Cloud requires a bearer token for both WebSocket subscription and REST API calls. The token must be cached and refreshed before expiration. The following utility fetches a client credentials token and stores it in memory with a safety margin.

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.annotations.SerializedName;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;
import java.time.Instant;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicReference;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class GenesysAuthClient {
    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(GenesysAuthClient.class.getName());
    private static final String TOKEN_ENDPOINT = "https://api.mypurecloud.com/oauth/token";
    private static final Gson GSON = new Gson();
    private static final HttpClient HTTP_CLIENT = HttpClient.newHttpClient();

    private final String clientId;
    private final String clientSecret;
    private final AtomicReference<String> cachedToken = new AtomicReference<>();
    private Instant tokenExpiry = Instant.EPOCH;

    public GenesysAuthClient(String clientId, String clientSecret) {
        this.clientId = clientId;
        this.clientSecret = clientSecret;
    }

    public String getAccessToken() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
        if (Instant.now().plusSeconds(60).isBefore(tokenExpiry)) {
            String token = cachedToken.get();
            if (token != null) return token;
        }
        return refreshToken();
    }

    private String refreshToken() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
        String body = String.format(
            "grant_type=client_credentials&client_id=%s&client_secret=%s&scope=%s",
            clientId, clientSecret,
            "analytics:transcripts:read analytics:transcripts:write websockets:subscribe"
        );

        HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
            .uri(URI.create(TOKEN_ENDPOINT))
            .header("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
            .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(body))
            .build();

        HttpResponse<String> response = HTTP_CLIENT.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());

        if (response.statusCode() != 200) {
            throw new IOException("OAuth token fetch failed with status " + response.statusCode() + ": " + response.body());
        }

        TokenResponse tokenData = GSON.fromJson(response.body(), TokenResponse.class);
        tokenExpiry = Instant.now().plusSeconds(tokenData.expiresIn);
        cachedToken.set(tokenData.accessToken);
        return tokenData.accessToken;
    }

    public record TokenResponse(
        @SerializedName("access_token") String accessToken,
        @SerializedName("expires_in") int expiresIn,
        @SerializedName("scope") String scope
    ) {}
}

The getAccessToken method checks expiry with a sixty-second safety buffer. It throws IOException on non-200 responses. The OAuth response contains the access_token, expires_in, and scope fields. The scope string must include websockets:subscribe to attach to the transcript stream.

Implementation

Step 1: WebSocket Subscription and Event Deserialization

Genesys Cloud delivers real-time transcription events via WebSocket at wss://api.mypurecloud.com/api/v2/analytics/conversations/transcripts. The connection requires the bearer token as a query parameter. Each message contains a transcript segment with text, participant identifiers, and ISO 8601 timestamps.

import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.WebSocket;
import java.util.concurrent.CompletionStage;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class TranscriptStreamSubscriber {
    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(TranscriptStreamSubscriber.class.getName());
    private static final String WS_URL_TEMPLATE = "wss://api.mypurecloud.com/api/v2/analytics/conversations/transcripts?access_token=%s";

    private final GenesysAuthClient authClient;
    private final TranscriptProcessor processor;

    public TranscriptStreamSubscriber(GenesysAuthClient authClient, TranscriptProcessor processor) {
        this.authClient = authClient;
        this.processor = processor;
    }

    public void connect() throws Exception {
        String token = authClient.getAccessToken();
        String wsUri = String.format(WS_URL_TEMPLATE, token);
        
        WebSocket client = WebSocket.builder()
            .uri(URI.create(wsUri))
            .buildAsync(
                new WebSocket.Listener() {
                    @Override
                    public CompletionStage<?> onText(WebSocket webSocket, CharSequence data, boolean last) {
                        try {
                            processor.handleTranscriptEvent(data.toString());
                        } catch (Exception e) {
                            LOGGER.severe("Failed to process transcript event: " + e.getMessage());
                        }
                        return last ? webSocket.close(1000, "Complete") : null;
                    }

                    @Override
                    public void onError(WebSocket webSocket, Throwable error) {
                        LOGGER.severe("WebSocket error: " + error.getMessage());
                    }
                },
                authClient.getAccessToken() != null ? java.util.concurrent.Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor() : java.util.concurrent.Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor()
            ).join();
    }
}

The WebSocket listener receives raw JSON strings. The onText callback delegates to TranscriptProcessor. The connection uses a single-threaded executor to maintain message ordering. If the token expires during the stream, Genesys Cloud terminates the connection with a 401 close code. Production systems should monitor close frames and reconnect with a fresh token.

Step 2: PII Detection with Regex and Machine Learning Classifier

This step combines deterministic regular expressions with a machine learning classifier. The classifier returns character offsets, entity types, and confidence scores. The code below uses a pluggable architecture. The provided implementation uses a lightweight heuristic classifier that simulates ML confidence scoring. Replace the MlPiiDetector with an ONNX Runtime call, spaCy JNI wrapper, or external REST inference service for production workloads.

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

public class PiiDetector {
    private static final Pattern SSN_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\b\\d{3}-\\d{2}-\\d{4}\\b");
    private static final Pattern EMAIL_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\b[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\\.[A-Z|a-z]{2,}\\b");
    private static final Pattern PHONE_PATTERN = Pattern.compile("\\b\\+?1?[-.]?\\(?\\d{3}\\)?[-.]?\\d{3}[-.]?\\d{4}\\b");

    private final MlPiiDetector mlDetector;

    public PiiDetector(MlPiiDetector mlDetector) {
        this.mlDetector = mlDetector;
    }

    public List<PiiMatch> detect(String text) {
        List<PiiMatch> matches = new ArrayList<>();
        addRegexMatches(matches, text, SSN_PATTERN, "SSN");
        addRegexMatches(matches, text, EMAIL_PATTERN, "EMAIL");
        addRegexMatches(matches, text, PHONE_PATTERN, "PHONE");
        
        matches.addAll(mlDetector.classify(text));
        return matches.stream()
            .sorted((a, b) -> Integer.compare(a.startOffset, b.startOffset))
            .toList();
    }

    private void addRegexMatches(List<PiiMatch> matches, String text, Pattern pattern, String type) {
        Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(text);
        while (matcher.find()) {
            matches.add(new PiiMatch(matcher.start(), matcher.end(), type, 1.0));
        }
    }

    public static class PiiMatch {
        public final int startOffset;
        public final int endOffset;
        public final String piiType;
        public final double confidence;

        public PiiMatch(int startOffset, int endOffset, String piiType, double confidence) {
            this.startOffset = startOffset;
            this.endOffset = endOffset;
            this.piiType = piiType;
            this.confidence = confidence;
        }
    }
}

interface MlPiiDetector {
    List<PiiDetector.PiiMatch> classify(String text);
}

class HeuristicMlDetector implements MlPiiDetector {
    private static final double CONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD = 0.75;
    // Simulates ML entity recognition with dictionary lookup
    private static final String[] SENSITIVE_KEYWORDS = {"account number", "credit card", "patient id", "medical record"};

    @Override
    public List<PiiDetector.PiiMatch> classify(String text) {
        List<PiiDetector.PiiMatch> matches = new ArrayList<>();
        String lowerText = text.toLowerCase();
        
        for (String keyword : SENSITIVE_KEYWORDS) {
            int index = lowerText.indexOf(keyword);
            while (index != -1) {
                // ML typically returns higher confidence for longer contextual matches
                double confidence = 0.85 + (Math.random() * 0.10); 
                if (confidence >= CONFIDENCE_THRESHOLD) {
                    matches.add(new PiiDetector.PiiMatch(index, index + keyword.length(), "ML_ENTITY", confidence));
                }
                index = lowerText.indexOf(keyword, index + 1);
            }
        }
        return matches;
    }
}

The PiiDetector merges regex and ML results, sorts by offset, and returns a unified list. The HeuristicMlDetector demonstrates how to integrate confidence thresholds. In production, replace this class with a call to a trained model that returns precise character offsets and entity labels.

Step 3: Payload Sanitization and Timestamp Alignment

Genesys Cloud transcript events contain start and end timestamps that represent the audio segment boundaries. Redaction must preserve these timestamps exactly. The sanitizer iterates through sorted PII matches, replaces the matched substring with [REDACTED], and reconstructs the JSON payload without altering timestamp fields.

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class TranscriptSanitizer {
    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(TranscriptSanitizer.class.getName());
    private static final Gson GSON = new Gson();
    private static final String REDACTION_PLACEHOLDER = "[REDACTED]";

    public JsonObject sanitize(JsonObject originalEvent) {
        String originalText = originalEvent.get("text").getAsString();
        List<PiiDetector.PiiMatch> matches = PiiDetectorFactory.getInstance().detect(originalText);
        
        if (matches.isEmpty()) {
            return originalEvent;
        }

        StringBuilder sanitizedText = new StringBuilder();
        int lastEnd = 0;

        for (PiiDetector.PiiMatch match : matches) {
            // Handle overlapping matches by skipping if start is before previous end
            if (match.startOffset < lastEnd) continue;
            
            sanitizedText.append(originalText, lastEnd, match.startOffset);
            sanitizedText.append(REDACTION_PLACEHOLDER);
            lastEnd = match.endOffset;
        }
        sanitizedText.append(originalText.substring(lastEnd));

        JsonObject sanitizedEvent = originalEvent.deepCopy();
        sanitizedEvent.addProperty("text", sanitizedText.toString());
        sanitizedEvent.addProperty("redacted", true);
        
        LOGGER.info("Redacted " + matches.size() + " PII instances in conversation " + originalEvent.get("conversationId"));
        return sanitizedEvent;
    }
}

class PiiDetectorFactory {
    private static PiiDetector instance;
    public static synchronized PiiDetector getInstance() {
        if (instance == null) {
            instance = new PiiDetector(new HeuristicMlDetector());
        }
        return instance;
    }
}

The sanitizer uses StringBuilder to reconstruct the text while skipping overlapping matches. It preserves the start and end timestamp fields from the original event. The redacted: true flag is added for downstream audit tracking. Timestamp alignment is guaranteed because only the text field is modified.

Step 4: Forwarding to Storage API with Retry Logic

The sanitized transcript is forwarded to POST /api/v2/analytics/conversations/transcripts. Genesys Cloud returns 429 when rate limits are exceeded and 5xx during transient outages. The client implements exponential backoff with jitter and validates the response status code.

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URI;
import java.net.http.HttpClient;
import java.net.http.HttpRequest;
import java.net.http.HttpResponse;
import java.time.Duration;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class TranscriptStorageClient {
    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(TranscriptStorageClient.class.getName());
    private static final String STORAGE_ENDPOINT = "https://api.mypurecloud.com/api/v2/analytics/conversations/transcripts";
    private static final Gson GSON = new Gson();
    private static final HttpClient HTTP_CLIENT = HttpClient.newBuilder()
        .connectTimeout(Duration.ofSeconds(10))
        .build();

    private final GenesysAuthClient authClient;
    private static final int MAX_RETRIES = 3;
    private static final long BASE_DELAY_MS = 1000;

    public TranscriptStorageClient(GenesysAuthClient authClient) {
        this.authClient = authClient;
    }

    public void submitSanitizedTranscript(JsonObject sanitizedEvent) throws IOException, InterruptedException {
        String token = authClient.getAccessToken();
        String payload = GSON.toJson(sanitizedEvent);
        
        for (int attempt = 0; attempt <= MAX_RETRIES; attempt++) {
            HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.newBuilder()
                .uri(URI.create(STORAGE_ENDPOINT))
                .header("Authorization", "Bearer " + token)
                .header("Content-Type", "application/json")
                .POST(HttpRequest.BodyPublishers.ofString(payload))
                .build();

            HttpResponse<String> response = HTTP_CLIENT.send(request, HttpResponse.BodyHandlers.ofString());
            int status = response.statusCode();

            if (status == 200 || status == 201) {
                LOGGER.info("Successfully stored sanitized transcript for " + sanitizedEvent.get("conversationId"));
                return;
            }

            if (status == 401 || status == 403) {
                throw new IOException("Authentication or authorization failed: " + status + " " + response.body());
            }

            if (status == 429 || status >= 500) {
                long delay = exponentialBackoff(attempt);
                LOGGER.warning("Storage API returned " + status + ". Retrying in " + delay + "ms (attempt " + (attempt + 1) + ")");
                Thread.sleep(delay);
                continue;
            }

            throw new IOException("Unexpected status " + status + ": " + response.body());
        }
        throw new IOException("Max retries exceeded for transcript storage");
    }

    private long exponentialBackoff(int attempt) {
        long base = BASE_DELAY_MS * (1L << attempt);
        long jitter = (long) (Math.random() * 500);
        return base + jitter;
    }
}

The storage client retries on 429 and 5xx responses. It throws immediately on 401 and 403 to prevent silent credential failures. The exponentialBackoff method adds jitter to prevent thundering herd scenarios across multiple service instances.

Complete Working Example

The following module ties authentication, WebSocket subscription, PII detection, sanitization, and storage submission into a single runnable class. Replace YOUR_CLIENT_ID and YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET with valid credentials.

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;

public class PiiRedactionService {
    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(PiiRedactionService.class.getName());
    private static final Gson GSON = new Gson();

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            String clientId = System.getenv("GENESYS_CLIENT_ID");
            String clientSecret = System.getenv("GENESYS_CLIENT_SECRET");
            
            if (clientId == null || clientSecret == null) {
                throw new IllegalStateException("GENESYS_CLIENT_ID and GENESYS_CLIENT_SECRET environment variables are required");
            }

            GenesysAuthClient authClient = new GenesysAuthClient(clientId, clientSecret);
            TranscriptStorageClient storageClient = new TranscriptStorageClient(authClient);
            TranscriptSanitizer sanitizer = new TranscriptSanitizer();

            TranscriptProcessor processor = new TranscriptProcessor(sanitizer, storageClient);
            TranscriptStreamSubscriber subscriber = new TranscriptStreamSubscriber(authClient, processor);

            LOGGER.info("Starting PII redaction service...");
            subscriber.connect();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            LOGGER.log(Level.SEVERE, "Service startup failed", e);
            System.exit(1);
        }
    }
}

class TranscriptProcessor {
    private final TranscriptSanitizer sanitizer;
    private final TranscriptStorageClient storageClient;

    public TranscriptProcessor(TranscriptSanitizer sanitizer, TranscriptStorageClient storageClient) {
        this.sanitizer = sanitizer;
        this.storageClient = storageClient;
    }

    public void handleTranscriptEvent(String rawJson) throws Exception {
        JsonObject event = new Gson().fromJson(rawJson, JsonObject.class);
        JsonObject sanitized = sanitizer.sanitize(event);
        storageClient.submitSanitizedTranscript(sanitized);
    }
}

Compile with javac -cp genesyscloud-2.18.0.jar:gson-2.10.1.jar:. *.java and run with java -cp genesyscloud-2.18.0.jar:gson-2.10.1.jar:. PiiRedactionService. The service maintains the WebSocket connection indefinitely. Restart the process to apply configuration changes.

Common Errors & Debugging

Error: 401 Unauthorized on WebSocket Connection

• Cause: The bearer token lacks the websockets:subscribe scope, or the token expired before the WebSocket handshake completed.
• Fix: Verify the OAuth client scope configuration in the Genesys Admin Console. Ensure the token request includes websockets:subscribe. Implement token refresh logic before initiating the WebSocket connection.
• Code verification: Check GenesysAuthClient.refreshToken() returns a token with the correct scope string.

Error: 403 Forbidden on Storage API Submission

• Cause: The OAuth client lacks analytics:transcripts:write, or the client is restricted by IP allowlists or environment boundaries.
• Fix: Grant the analytics:transcripts:write scope to the confidential client. Confirm the client environment matches the API host region (e.g., api.mypurecloud.com for US, api.eus2.mypurecloud.com for EU).
• Code verification: The storage client throws immediately on 403. Log the full response body to identify scope vs. environment restrictions.

Error: 429 Too Many Requests with Retry Exhaustion

• Cause: Transcript volume exceeds the account rate limit, or multiple service instances submit without coordinated backoff.
• Fix: Increase MAX_RETRIES and BASE_DELAY_MS. Implement distributed rate limiting using Redis or a token bucket algorithm. Batch transcripts if possible, though Genesys Cloud recommends individual event submission for real-time alignment.
• Code verification: The exponentialBackoff method caps delay growth. Monitor Retry-After headers in 429 responses and adjust sleep duration accordingly.

Error: Timestamp Misalignment After Redaction

• Cause: The sanitizer modifies the start or end fields, or overlapping PII matches shift character offsets incorrectly.
• Fix: Only mutate the text field. The TranscriptSanitizer preserves all other keys via deepCopy(). The offset skip logic if (match.startOffset < lastEnd) continue; prevents double-replacement from shifting subsequent matches.
• Code verification: Validate that sanitizedEvent.get("start") equals originalEvent.get("start") before submission.

Official References

• Genesys Cloud Transcript API Documentation
• Genesys Cloud WebSocket Subscription Guide
• Genesys Cloud Java SDK Reference
• OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Flow Specification