Making Unified Communications Better At Your Company

It doesn’t matter what platform you deploy: if it’s not easy to use, you’re not going to get your ROI!

Facilitating and improving communication between people has been the core of CTI’s business for decades. Today’s Unified Communication tools, like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex, and Google Meet, offer tremendously sophisticated tools for collaboration and presentation. But one lesson has stayed constant: your system must be easy to use.

“If it’s not easy to use,” notes Kent Foster, CTI’s Subject Matter Expert on UC, “your people won’t adopt it, and you’re not going to get a return on your investment.” It also has to work well with people outside your organization. “Along with ease of use, our clients are looking for interoperability,” says Foster, “whether it’s wanting to Bring Your Own Device, BYOD, into a Teams Room, or being able to call Zoom Rooms from Teams, or a Teams Room from Zoom.”

There’s also a tremendous demand for implementing face tracking and audio to create a front-row view. Foster says, “That’s really been driven by the pandemic; everyone was at home and talked face-to-face. But now, with people back in conference rooms, you’re looking at their ear holes or the back of their heads. That’s not a quality experience for anybody who’s not in the room!”

Listening To Your Needs

Here at CTI, the process begins with an interview. “We try to help clients figure out what the best solution would be for them.” says Foster, “We discuss what they’re doing today and what they would like to see and try to put all that together.”

What are they doing today?
What is their scheduling system?
What flow would they like to see?
How do they connect to everything else in the world?

If you haven’t selected a UC platform, Foster suggests you “Interview your users! Find out what platform people use the most for video calls in your conference rooms. I think that always points people in the right direction. I always tell people whatever you use the most needs to be your base platform.” Even if your team doesn’t use video, it’s easy for CTI to set up a system so you can use the dial pad and make calls from your Teams Room or Zoom Rooms.

You Can Communicate Directly Between Teams, Webex, and Zoom!

Calling between UC platforms has traditionally been a challenge, but Foster says, “Today there is pretty good interoperability between Teams, Zoom, and Webex.” Microsoft Teams Rooms Direct Guest Join supports direct calls with Cisco Webex and Zoom. With Zoom Interop, Zoom Rooms can join Teams meetings.

Foster adds, “It’s a little murky sometimes, but it can be done, and I think it’s only going to get better as we move forward. The experience has to get better. People are demanding it.”

With Poly, Cloud CVI for Teams, and BlueJeans out of (or exiting) the video meetings market, there’s also a demand to migrate to a new platform. Having fewer platforms to support should help speed up the process of making platformers interoperable. Replacing Poly, BlueJeans, and CVI, along with aging SIP phone installations, is one of the places CTI finds extensive deployment of Pexip.

Is It The Equipment, The Network, Or The Configuration?

“Things have gotten easier to administer since tools have gone cloud-based, and everyone is picking their own platform.” says Foster, adding, “communicating -between- platforms has become more challenging,” as anybody that’s had issues calling clients on another platform can testify. Fortunately, communications between Teams, Zoom, and Webex has improved.

Smaller rooms, such as a huddle room with a video bar and control unit, are close to plug and play, though Android-powered devices tend to be behind other platforms for features and sometimes more.

One of the challenges, especially on Teams, is joining Teams Rooms to the domain and accidentally pushing regular Windows updates to those systems. “Room images,” says Foster, “are maintained by Microsoft and the vendors. They’re treated differently than a standard Windows desktop and don’t get the same updates.” CTI can use several tools from Microsoft, such as Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer or Microsoft’s What If to check for conditional access policies prior to installation to overcome any environmental issues before installation. With that tool, we can test DNS, network, and Teams sign-in.

Is AI The Future of Unified Communications?

“The next jump I see coming is AI,” says Foster, “Right now, it’s more of a buzzword. I see companies using the term, but its true potential, in the near future, is really in troubleshooting and using AI agents to assist customers in fixing problems. I only see that progressing and getting better. If an AI can competently manage level one and level two tech support, it should speed up the entire process. I can see AI going further and being a huge asset, whether it’s room calibration, network analysis for QoS, or the quality of calls. I just see it becoming more of a factor in everything moving forward.”

AI isn’t ready to fix your UC problems today, no matter what platform your organization uses. CTI is ready, with a core group of talented, experienced, and certified technicians, programmers, engineers, and Design Consultants ready to listen. We can design and integrate your next system or improve the one you already have.