Microsoft Teams: the latest updates
Microsoft's Teams platform is constantly evolving: several updates in the last months that include the use of avatars during meetings, facilitated use of Power Point within the platform, and new chat and channel search experience. Let us now go into detail to see what the enhancements and new features are:
User Experience: what's new?
- New chat and channel search experience: the search part for chats and channels improve, with a new panel opening next to the chat/channel so it can be kept visible while searching
- Zoom in/out options: it will be possible to zoom in on a shared screen sharing during a call or chat
- Show/hide previews in your Microsoft Teams chat list now available
- New features for Microsoft Premium users: users will have the ability to have a recap of the meeting through "recap tabs" in teams made through AI, which will provide meeting highlights.
New functionalities
- Present a local File From the PowerPoint app to PowerPoint Live in Teams: sharing a live PowerPoint presentation (saved only locally) is now improved, thanks to the new access point to the button "Present in Teams" button in the PowerPoint for Windows app
- Avatars for Microsoft Teams: for those who prefer not to be framed during calls, but want a more realistic representation of an old photograph, Teams gives the option of creating an avatar that represents them in a non-static way. Microsoft has expanded availability of avatars to more M365 license types.
- Cloud IntelliFrame: a new way of experiencing online meetings, seeing in an improved way the people present in Teams meetings, to improve collaboration in hybrid meetings
- Whiteboard App in Teams: a new way to manage notes and information, sharing them or working on them independently, all directly within Teams.
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Welcome Microsoft 1°Cloud Region in Italy
That's all anyone has been talking about here in recent weeks, particularly since late May, when Microsoft made public the opening of a new Microsoft Data Center Region in Italy.
Let's get a better understanding of what it is and the implications for Italian companies (and others).
What is the new Microsoft Cloud Region in Italy?
The new cloud region, which will consist of three data centers and will be based in Milan.
The new Lombardy region will join Microsoft's existing network of over 60 regions worldwide and is expected to be one of the largest in Europe, where the company already has 17 others.
Microsoft is actually the latest among the large public cloud service providers to add a region in Italy. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Oracle, in fact, already have their cloud regions in Milan.
The initiative is part of the "Ambizione Italia" program that Microsoft launched in 2018. "Ambizione Italia Cloud Region Partner Alliance" is the project launched in March 2022 that currently brings together a roster of 17 partners committed to the digital development of Italy and at the forefront of Microsoft's new Italian Cloud Region.
4wardPRO, Agic Group, Computer Gross, CoreView, Deda Next, Dylog Italia, Esprinet, Expert.AI, Insight, NTT Data, Porini, Proge Software, SoftJam, SoftwareOne, Studio Informatica, TD Synnex, and ToolsGroup are the companies aiming to start digital transformation processes in a capillary way on companies present throughout the Country. These 17 partners join the founding partners, bringing the total to 31 partners within the project.
Back in 2020, Microsoft said it would invest about 1.5 billion euros over the five-year period 2020-2025 in activities aimed at improving cloud infrastructure, and training on digital skills.
In fact, according to what a joint study by Microsoft and IDC reported, in the next four years, the Microsoft ecosystem in Italy and its customers could produce, in the Italian economy a turnover of about 126 billion euros (more than 20 coming from Lombardy alone) and 237,000 new jobs.
"The Microsoft Partner ecosystem in Italy counts more than 14,000 realities and 400,000 professionals, a real chain of innovation rooted in the territory and with vertical competencies to accompany companies of any size and from any Industry towards transformation scenarios capable of supporting their growth. With this additional Alliance, we intend to give new impetus to the country's digital transition by focusing on Cloud Computing. Accenture, Avanade, Cluster Reply, Engineering, Kyndryl, TeamSystem, and Var Group are the founding partners, but in the coming months the initiative will welcome the contribution of many other players," commented Fabio Santini, Director of Global Partner Solutions Division.
What are the benefits for businesses?
With the new region, Microsoft partners will be able to add locally hosted, low-latency cloud services to their offerings, enabling fast and secure access to data and facilitating sharing scenarios that meet the needs of any industry.
As new businesses are added, they will be the first to take advantage of the Microsoft Cloud, offering their customers certified and reliable solutions to support them in their digital transformation. Access to local cloud services introduces maximum guarantees of data sovereignty, cybersecurity and compliance.
Companies, SMEs and public administrations will be able to access their data and Cloud services on a local basis. This effectively enables the cloud to all those realities that until now have been unable or unwilling to access the cloud for security reasons and/or because it was expressly forbidden by current privacy regulations.
Enterprises will be able to start leveraging the new region using Microsoft Azure or Microsoft 365 already in the coming weeks. Later on, Microsoft will also add other services such as Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
Accenture, Avanade, Cluster Reply, Engineering, Kyndryl, TeamSystem and Var Group will work together with Microsoft to define a common strategy and market initiatives and programs to reach Italian organizations of all sizes and sectors, helping them to reap the benefits of digital.
The start-up phase of the project also includes a very concrete aspect: a shared plan of training and dedicated resources for companies, aimed at promoting the spread of a digital culture functional to the growth of the country. In this scenario, the consultancy contribution of ICT professionals plays a fundamental role. For this reason, the employees of the alliance partners will be involved in an extensive training and certification program with the aim of fostering their upskilling and professional certification in order to transform them into recognized consultants, capable of guiding the innovation choices of Italian companies and accompanying them on their path towards the Cloud, also contributing to projects in line with the six missions of the PNRR.
"Our goal is to help Italian organizations reap the benefits of digital to grow. We work to provide the technology platforms and secure cloud services to support their innovation, including our upcoming first Cloud Region in Italy. In this mission, we are supported by an extensive network of partners in the territory who closely follow public and private enterprises. We are proud to extend our initiative 'Ambizione Italia Cloud Region Partner Alliance' to 17 new partners who join the 14 founding partners: together we provide technologies, resources and skills to support businesses and Public Administration, to accelerate the path of digital transformation, creating innovation in the country," commented Vincenzo Esposito, CEO of Microsoft Italia.
How can we help you?
Mida has been supporting companies, SMEs and public administrations from all over the world for years in the process of migrating their UC to the cloud.
Especially in the field of recording, compliance is a crucial aspect, and we know that sometimes the lack of a national Microsoft Cloud Region has acted as a deterrent for realities that were looking for a secure and compliant system to record business conversations.
As an ISV vertically focused on the world of Unified Communications for almost 20 years, we also have active partnerships and collaborations with several of the Microsoft partners involved in the "Ambizione Italia Cloud Region Partner Alliance" project.
Contact us to find out how we can facilitate the migration of your UC system to the cloud!
Which UC challenges are our partners facing at the moment?
What are the main challenges our partners in the UC ecosystem are facing?
In this article, we are going to analyze the feedback we have from our partners and the actions we plan to take over the next 12 months to adapt our products accordingly.
Recently, our IT Sales and Business Development Manager, Dimitri Pagnin, was interviewed by UC Today to have his say on this topic and our roadmap for 2023.
As per the biggest challenges partners are facing right now, we can summarize them in the following points:
- Move UC from legacy system to the Cloud
To cope with the great UC transition from legacy systems to the cloud, companies are considering moving to cloud-based technologies such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. But are they really ready to face the pitfalls of such a substantial transition with zero impact?
As an ISV that has been involved in UC software for almost 20 years, Mida is aware of the difficulties associated with this challenge and offers its partners a training program to make this journey smoother and, if necessary, gradual.
Thanks to its long experience and collaboration with system integrators and service providers, Mida is able to provide proactive collaboration to its partners, foreseeing any criticalities in the customer's cloud migration process, being able to support them also in a gradual transition. Some of our major partners are system integrators vertically focused on other types of software. It is in this scenario that Mida's experience in telecommunications and UC plays a key role in the migration from traditional telephony to the cloud.
- Adopt UC solutions as-a-service
The purchase of software as a service is now a common trend in many companies. The world's leading software can be purchased in this modality, just think of Microsoft world, Google, Zoom.
Over the years, system integrators and service providers have also appreciated the advantages of the aaS model, which guarantees easier and faster go-to-market. In the transition from legacy systems to cloud UC, it is therefore normal that both look for as-a-service solutions to facilitate the move to the cloud. Mida's business choice in this regard was to maintain the on-premise deployment approach and to complement it with the as-a-service one. This dual choice makes the difference because it allows our partners to have different solutions in their portfolios that meet specific business needs.
What’s Mida’s product roadmap for the next 12 months?
The purpose of the product roadmap in 2023 will be to enhance some existing features in our products and to add new ones.
Part of the roadmap will be devoted to enhancing Mida Compliance Recorder for Microsoft Teams. As of now, it is already a modular recorder that is flexible enough to capture conversations from different sources and collect them into a single system with a single playback station. Just recently, we also integrated video recording for Teams into the product, and recording of Teams chats is also in the roadmap.
Moreover, we will enhance Mida products also for other environments, in order to provide both audio, video and chat recording.
But there are updates regarding also Mida C3 Cloud Contact Center, which has been recently enhanced with WhatsApp integration: it will have also an advanced CRM integration, and barge-in and listen-in functionalities.
Speech-to-text will be integrated both in the recorder and contact center, to satisfy the increasing demand for sentiment analysis and Artificial Intelligence features.
Lastly, Mida's entire portfolio will be available in SaaS mode, which, as we also noted above, is so popular among companies around the world.
Listen to Dimitri Pagnin full interview watching UC Today Video.
Do not hesitate to contact us at marketing@midasolutions.com if you have any questions. We will be glad to talk with you.
Compliance Recorder for Microsoft Teams: 3 must-have features to bear in mind
More and more companies globally are realizing the enormous potential of a compliance recorder for recording and storing business communications.
The choice of recording software for your company is crucial, but if the software concerned is to be implemented on the Microsoft Teams platform, then there are even more aspects to consider.
But what are the main features a recorder for the Microsoft Teams ecosystem must have?
Recording conversations, or part of conversations, is almost mandatory for some sectors, such as finance and healthcare, but it can also prove useful for other sectors. For example, it can be useful for legal purposes or for training purposes, to improve services and customer experience.
Let’s analyze which are - in our opinion- the must-have features of a recorder for Microsoft Teams:
- COMPLIANCE - The main concerns when it comes to recording systems are related to the issue of privacy and the protection of personal data of the persons involved in the recording. The recorder must be compliant with the latest security and privacy regulations (e.g. GDPR and MiFID II) and, if possible, offer a level of flexibility that can also accommodate internal policies. This implies that, for example, the recording files must be stored in the same Country where the conversions took place (the Country of the caller), for a specific period of time, and then be deleted within a time frame defined by the company.
- MULTI-SOURCE RECORDING- When moving UC from legacy systems to Teams, it is likely that one does not want to transfer all communication services to Teams, but wants to keep some services on a traditional PBX, such as Cisco, Avaya or Alcatel. Companies expect a single solution to register all these different sources, but not all vendors of registration solutions for Teams provide this multi-source approach.
- CENTRALIZED STORAGE - Companies are looking for a recorder that allows them to collect conversations and related metadata in the same place, regardless of the technologies involved. This is because - in the case of multi-source recordings - it is incredibly useful for them to have a single repository from which to access files. In addition, there are other features such as automatic file backup, compression (especially useful in the case where not only audio but also video is recorded), and encryption that can be considered pluses, and for some companies fundamental.
“Nowadays, it is inconceivable that customers are forced to move from one application to another to find recordings. They should be available in a unique system to enable managers to streamline their activities.” says Mauro Franchin, our CTO & Founder, “We are proud that our compliance recorder for Microsoft Teams ensures this key aspect and offers all the must-have features sought by companies worldwide.”
Would you like to adopt a Microsoft Teams-certified compliance recording software with these features?
Visit this page and get in touch for any additional questions, or to ask for a customized quote.
Mida and Bludis’s first webinar to discover the new partnership
Last week Mida and Bludis unveiled their new business agreement to propose to Italian companies our forward-future UC solutions to boost their corporate communications. To start off with a bang there is another joint news: our first webinar is approaching.
To introduce to the Italian market this new partnership, our new official distributor, Bludis, has just announced that this webinar is going to take place on the 27th of April.
Together with Bludis, Esprinet Group’s Italian information technology vendor, we aim to help these enterprises gradually move their UC to the Cloud from legacy systems. They can rely on advanced UC features suitable for different environments, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, which are available with a pay-per-use and perpetual license.
Bludis has expanded its portfolio with this professional UC proposition that perfectly fits the specific businesses’ needs regardless of the company size.
Mida Speaker: Marco Cortese, President of Mida Solutions
Here is a brief summary of what to expect from this webinar:
- Mida UC suite Microsoft Teams - including compliance recorder, attendant console, and contact center
- Mida UC suite for Zoom - including compliance recorder, attendant console
- Mida Unified Communication Professional Suite
- Mida Contact Center
- Mida Cloud & UCaaS
- Mida On-Prem Solutions
SIGN UP FOR THE WEBINAR
27th of Aprile at 11.00 am CEST
The webinar will be in the Italian language
It will be a great opportunity to seize, register now by filling out this form.
Streamline agents’ workflow within Microsoft Teams: what you should know
If you are considering enhancing your company's Unified Communication, leveraging the Microsoft Teams platform in combination with third-party UC solutions could be a winning choice for your customer service.
Choosing the right UC system for customer service is not an easy task. Several pivotal points closely related to the perception of service must be taken into account. Nowadays, people are looking for a smooth customer service experience to solve their questions as quickly as possible. How to take your company's communication to the next level? Given this scenario, is Microsoft Teams the best choice?
Regardless of whether you are a service provider, a system integrator, or a company, you should consider Microsoft Teams-certified third-party UC solutions as tools for managing business conversations. Using a single ecosystem to manage customer service can revolutionize the work of your agents.
Microsoft Teams is the thread that weaves together all the tools you need to seamlessly manage your company's communications with your customers. By integrating third-party UC platforms with Teams, agents can increase their productivity by streamlining their journey. They do not have to switch from one application to another and, as a result, they save time and are more efficient.
What should you expect from a UC suite for Microsoft Teams?
As mentioned, it is essential for a company to streamline agent tasks in order to efficiently manage daily conversations for optimal service. Only a well-integrated all-in-one UC system can guarantee this. By choosing Microsoft Teams and integrated third-party UC applications, such as Mida's, agents can count on:
- Customized IVR menus - Your new telephony system will ensure easy and intuitive customization of the service. Goodbye to tedious waiting times thanks to personalized messages that provide valuable information to callers.
- Advanced call distribution algorithms - Conversations should be routed to the most appropriate agent, and identified according to the routing algorithm chosen for the service. This helps to improve service quality, as it increases the number of requests resolved at the first customer service interaction.
- Compliance Recorder - The integration of Microsoft Teams with a recording application can allow conversations from different sources to be stored in a single repository for a specific period of time, in compliance with the latest security and privacy regulations and business requirements.
- WhatsApp and email integrations - A multi-channel customer experience can be ensured in Microsoft Teams thanks to these valuable third-party integrations. In the same user interface, the agent can manage conversations from different channels.
- CRM integration - Companies can provide a more personalized service by relying on CRM integration. Having CRM data at hand makes all the difference. It helps agents to know the customer's background and to support them immediately.
- PowerBI and other BI tools integration - You should choose UC applications that are also integrated with BI solutions. This allows companies to easily integrate UC KPIs and advanced insights with any other business data. These analyses are useful for understanding service weaknesses and discovering how to improve them.
UC Today listed Mida Solutions’ UC products among the 2023 top third-party applications for Microsoft Teams, both with the contact center and compliance recorder.
Choose Microsoft Teams-certified UC solutions now as a hallmark of efficient customer service. Certification guarantees reliability and a high level of quality to embrace this technology as a complete support ecosystem. This will help increase your workforce, whether your agents are in the office or at home.
Would you like to know more about this UC suite? Visit this page!
Out-of-the-box support with WhatsApp integration
WhatsApp is a great leap forward for your customer service. You should adopt it as an additional tool to redefine your approach to service and expand your contact channels. Managers should consider that multichannel service is not just a trend that companies need to address, but a new scenario to harness. In which sense?
Ensuring that customers can choose the most appropriate and convenient channel to contact you is crucial to reach a broader customer base. People now expect to be answered quickly, almost immediately and prefer to use different channels to get a response as quickly as possible.
Let’s analyze together the main pros of adding WhatsApp to your contact center.
WhatsApp in a nutshell
WhatsApp is one of the most popular instant messaging applications. With over 2,24 billion monthly active users, it records 1 billion messages in a single day worldwide and this number is set to grow exponentially every year. This is a huge milestone for this application (source WhatsApp blog) chosen by people all over the world for its friendly user interface that makes it easy to communicate with friends, families, and even businesses.
WhatsApp is available in 180 countries, and 60 languages and it is the 8th most downloaded Android App in the Google Play Store worldwide. It is adopted as a business application by more than 50 million companies worldwide. And surprisingly, 175 million people choose it every day to contact companies and get a quick answer to their questions.
Why integrate WhatsApp
Using WhatsApp as an additional communication tool for your company is a wise choice. It adds value to your company, as your agents can assist with customer inquiries through the most popular instant messaging application. It enables high levels of satisfaction for three main reasons:
- Handle requests in real-time - People are very familiar with WhatsApp. They use it daily for personal purposes and are therefore inclined to choose it to contact companies and get quick answers. Adopting this application for business interactions can really make a difference in your support: it guarantees people what they expect. In other words, it meets their expectations: with personal one-to-one messages, you can quickly provide the information they require.
- Business-centric approach - WhatsApp allows you to provide engaging support by also sharing media, such as images, videos, and documents. All these aspects are essential to serve people in the best possible way. For example, you can immediately send a product catalog or product photos while chatting with a potential customer and have the opportunity to increase sales. It is also useful to share company information, such as order notifications, payment dates, and shipping details.
- Easy integrable tool - WhatsApp can be an integral part of your customer service platform, being successfully integrated with your CRM, your attendant console, and your compliance recorder. All these UC applications can be seamlessly integrated into one cloud-based ecosystem to have everything your agents need to provide satisfactory assistance. To be clearer, the customer's background is immediately available at your fingertips to ensure high-quality service.
What are you waiting for?
Adopt WhatsApp to empower your company to boost customer service, the potential of this application is huge.
Contact our experts now to learn more about integrating our contact center with WhatsApp.
Mida and Bludis: together to boost Italian companies UC
Mida is proud to share with you a new partnership to propose UC solutions to the Italian market. We have just signed a business agreement with Bludis, Esprinet Group’s next-generation vendor of information technology with 28 years of experience in the market. Bludis is specializing in the emerging areas of IT Management, Security, and Communication in Italy.
For Mida and Bludis this is a win-win relationship that will stretch the solution portfolio of Bludis-Esprinet and allow us to intercept a wider range of companies willing to move their communications to the Cloud with professional cutting-edge applications - including compliance recorder, attendant console, and contact center. Together we will propose a future-forward migration with advanced UC features to fulfill any communication requirements.
Through this partnership, we answer the increasingly widespread need for Unified Communication in Italy. We are joining our strengths and our expertise to make the most of Unified Communication solutions for the Italian landscape today. Many Italian companies are showing interest in this adoption and together we are ready to respond to these requests by meeting at our best their needs with flexible solutions.
"The agreement with Mida allows us to enhance our Communication offer, which is a key area in every sector because effective collaborations translate into efficiency for companies. In this sense, the partnership gives us an active role in directing retailers and end users towards Mida’s UC suite of products and services and all the benefits it can guarantee", says Maurizio Erbani, General Manager of Bludis.
"In the post-pandemic world, companies need to adopt professional UC solutions, available in the cloud, that embrace different contexts and technologies. The partnership with Bludis is crucial to support companies with vision and experience towards the new processes needed to grow in efficiency and productivity", says Marco Cortese, President of Mida Solutions.
The partnership is off to a great start: a press release has just been published and a webinar together is already planned for April 27th at 11 AM.
Would you like to know more about this news? Stay tuned by signing up for our monthly newsletter. We will give you all the information.
Microsoft Teams: the latest updates - March 2023
Microsoft takes care to always enhance the user experience of its communication and collaboration experience in Microsoft Teams. Keeping up with these periodic updates to be even more efficient by using this powerful ecosystem is not an easy task. So, let’s go through the most important ones to let you understand how to increase your efficiency within this platform.
Here is a brief summary:
MEETINGS
- Targeted notifications - During meetings, special alerts can be sent to specific participants through a bot. These notifications are private and they are visible as a pop-up on the screen.
- Explicit recording consent - Microsoft Teams now supports the option to expressly ask for the consent of all the meeting attendees to record the online event. Only with their consent the voice and video can be captured. This new feature is important to meet specific privacy regulations.
- Magnify PowerPoint Live Presentations - When PowerPoint Live slides are presented, each attendee can now privately zoom in on the shared content. It allows the person to better read the shared information. There is also a “Sync to presenter” button to resume following the presenter.
CHATS
- @mention new options - As to mention a person in the chat, now it is possible to type “everyone” after @ to send a notification to all the group members to convey a specific message. According to recipient notification settings, he will receive it to be alerted of messages in which they are involved.
Furthermore, in a group chat, by using @ and typing the name of the contact it is possible to quickly add him as a new participant.
- Improved profile cards - In the previous updates, Microsoft released an integration with LinkedIn that allows a fast connection between the contact information in the chat and his social network profile. Being aware of the importance of having a contact background, Microsoft has made available additional details about a teammate in Teams. For instance, it is visible pending meeting invites or birthdays.
- Download file location - Users can choose their preferred location where the file downloaded from Microsoft Teams chats can be stored. This option makes it easier to find download files.
CALLS
- Busy-on-busy call feature - When a person is busy in a call or meeting, he can set up better incoming call management. In his Microsoft Teams settings, new multiple choices will be available for handling these calls, such as “play a busy signal” or “redirect call”. This feature can be customized by administrators and end users.
Stay tuned to read through our article the future Microsoft Teams updates. Meanwhile, discover how our UC solutions can help you improve your communications within Microsoft Teams.
Why is flexibility essential for your contact center?
Choosing the right UC system for your customer service is a priority. Streamlining agents’ workflow allows them to better perform and consequently deliver high-quality support.
In a fast-transforming digital landscape, it is essential to empower employees with an advanced toolkit to deal with the most complex issues and the most sensitive conversations. They should be able to seamlessly assist customers’ requests. Resolving them in a quick and efficient manner increases people's satisfaction. They will enjoy the company's service. Consequently, the adopted solution should be flexible enough to meet customers' and agents’ needs.
Flexibility is a really appealing feature of this UC solution. It comes behind the mere meaning of this word. It gathers different crucial aspects to be considered when you are evaluating a contact center. Let’s go deeper into them.
Why is flexibility a key aspect of modern customer service?
- Accessibility - The hybrid working approach is a scenario that is here to stay and the company should face it with the right UC solution. The contact center tool you are evaluating should ensure this seatless aspect. It needs to be accessible from any location in the Cloud by multiple users just by using their credentials. Furthermore, a unique interface with centralized management and conversation history should be provided.
- Turnkey all-in-one system - Your new contact center solution should include easy-to-use full-featured cloud-based UC applications, such as attendant console, compliance recorder, queue management system, and IVR. It should be also integrated with your CRM system and other business processes to decrease the time wasted by your agents to jump from one tool to another. In this way, all your agents need to smoothly carry out their daily operations is well incorporated in a unique environment, such as Microsoft Teams. Consequently, it lets them be more productive.
- Multi-channel approach - A modern advanced contact center should allow companies to provide multi-channel support letting customers interact with your team across different methods (e.g. calls, chats, emails). The platform your agents should rely on needs to be flexible to collect information from different sources and make it available in the same unified ecosystem, such as Microsoft Teams. As a result, a consistent customer experience is ensured because your agents have all customer information at hand.
- Gradual migration to the Cloud - The solution you are selecting should be flexible enough to guarantee a progressive swift of your Unified Communications from legacy systems to the Cloud. For many reasons, such as financial and organizational requirements, you can prefer to adopt a contact center that grants the coexistence of legacy and cloud technologies. This flexible aspect can be crucial in your evaluation process because it lets gradually scale up licenses and defer migration costs.
- Easy scalability - Your new contact center should be adequately flexible to evolve with your business scenario. It should follow both the growth of your company, the evolution of the market and also meet your customers’ demands. In other words, you should select a UC solution that can be activated with an “as a service” licensing model to allow you to decrease service inefficiencies. In other words, with this approach, you can easily add and remove licenses as required as well as pay only for what your agents really need and use.
Give agents the flexibility they need to provide a top-quality service by adopting the right toolkit. Discover more about our flexible solution, Mida C3 - Cloud Contact Center here. It combines all the highlighted aspects.