Mida is now an ISO 27001 certified company
Mida is proud to officially announce the ISO 27001 certification, recently issued by DNV GL, one of the leading global auditors which has helped enterprises in more than 100 countries, since 1864, to increase the security and the sustainability of their business activities.
Concomitantly with ISO 27001, we renewed also ISO 9001 certification, which confirms the quality of our managing processes.
ISO 27001 in a nutshell
ISO 27001 is the international standard that dictates the standards and requirements to be met to implement an ISMS, Information Security Management System. According to the ISO 27001 international guidelines and best practices, companies must implement a framework of processes, policies, procedures, and technologies in order to securely handle and monitor information and cope efficiently with potential risks.
Why ISO 27001 is a must-have
During the certification process, an external auditor performs a series of legal, technical and physical checks on all areas of the company (digital and physical documentation, hardware and software, and personnel skills). This comprehensive audit assesses whether it is necessary to increase data protection on all company assets. All internal and external risks, cyber and non-IT, are assessed according to the current ISO 27001 requirements to obtain a comprehensive and central view of corporate security.
This certification process mainly helps to:
- identify security vulnerabilities and threats that companies need to be aware of;
- increase resistance to technological and non-technological attacks and understand how to respond to the most common threats;
- provide a central and unified management structure for information security to improve protection.
Mida ISO 27001 certification
The ISO 27001 certification is a great achievement for us, as we have always dedicated great attention to the protection of information. This certification proves that in all our processes, information is always protected the data categorized as confidential is only accessible to a limited number of stakeholders: only authorized Mida employees have access to this information and technical protection process against computer fraud is in place.
During the certification process, no non-conformities were detected and DNV GL stated that no follow-up audits were necessary. The audits highlighted Mida's strengths in this area:
- high awareness of the employees interviewed on data protection issues;
- use of tools for analysing the vulnerability of systems to avoid risks;
- willingness to increasingly integrate data management systems.
Check Mida’s ISO27001 Policy or talk to us if you want to have more details on how we are committed to protect the security of our information and those of our customers.
Mida on the track to InnoTrans 2022
After two postponed editions due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, finally, the most important international trade fair for transport and mobility technologies is approaching. InnoTrans is a global landmark event for those who work in these sectors: it is a unique opportunity to both network and keep up to date with industry news.
SAVE THE DATE: September, 20th - 23rd, International Congress Center ICC Berlin from 09:00 am to 6:00 pm.
What to expect from the event
InnoTrans has finally reached its 13th edition and will gather together the global community of transportation and mobility professionals. This prominent event, organized by Messe Belin, takes place every two years and covers the entire 200k square meters of the fairground of Berlin.
Running since the late 90s, this international fair has been welcoming an increasingly worldwide audience of experts, decision-makers, associations, opinion leaders, institutions, and all-size companies determined to leverage the show as a stage to discuss together new technologies and innovations in the transportation market.
The main aim of this edition is to improve transport efficiency by winking at sustainability: InnoTrans 2022 will focus on the future of mobility based on eco-friendly technologies to cope with the current climate change.
This year, the event will be sub-divided into five trade fair segments, spanning over 42 halls:
- Railway Technologies
- Railway Infrastructures
- Public Transport
- Interiors
- Tunnel Constructions
Materials, components, systems, products, and complete vehicles will be showcased to the 160.000 international attendees expected at InnoTrans 2022. In 2018 the audience came from 149 countries and there were 3.062 exhibitors from 61 countries. Big numbers that keep increasing year by year!
What to expect from Mida at InnoTrans
Our experts will present to attendees our best-selling recording solutions for the transportation environment, Mida Voice and Video Recorder.
Mida has been providing telecommunications solutions for the transportation industry for 18 years, developing software products such as professional recording, logging systems, and voice-over IP services. This voice recording system supports all relevant communication technologies involved in this critical sector.
Our reliable product has been chosen for imposing railway and transportation projects in Europe, North Africa, and Middle East. Among the reasons why it was preferred to the competition, its modular approach is the most prominent one, as it can address the requirements of different scenarios. Mida Voice Recording System ensures:
- scenario reconstruction;
- service continuity;
- centralized or distributed architectures;
- all traceability requirements;
- unified view of all communications collected from different sources;
- secure communication repository;
- search and play console ”Mida Playback Station” accessible from any device.
Get your ticket here to join our team there and talk with our experts about Mida trusted voice recording system. Stop by our booth #520, hall 4.1 to find out the main technologies supported, the key integrations, the most relevant features, and the highlights of the product.
Brand new look & feel for Mida Supervisor Console
As our customers and partners know, our mission is to provide value-added innovative technologies that can have a decisive impact on enterprises' communications.
This is more than a matter of new features, new integrations with third-party applications, or higher security levels achieved- which are all undoubtedly integral parts of any software product research and development process. The User Experience and the graphical appearance of the application are just as important.
As anticipated in this article, we have already started the process of renewing our applications providing them with a brand new user interface, more intuitive and attractive than the previous one. This project touches the entire Mida portfolio, as we wanted to ensure graphical continuity between the different applications, to allow the end-user to rapidly take advantage of the new interfaces, and quickly become familiar with them.
Mida's philosophy behind this entire renewal process is to make available at agents’ fingertips what they really need, removing from the UI complexities and unnecessary information. Gathering too much information on the same page can make agents’ daily activities less efficient, that’s why we would like to limit it to the minimum. A smooth user experience can make a difference in the business growth processes because it positively influences the increase of agents’ performances and- consequently- the quality of the service provided.
After having renewed the User Interface of Mida Attendant Console and Mida Recorder, the time has come for Mida Supervisor Console: Mida's technical team has worked hard to translate the advanced features of this UC application into the new easy-to-use layout.
Its new appearance allows supervisors to monitor operators’ KPIs in a fast and intuitive way. The application main page is now organized into three main areas:
- on the left, the navigation menu allows moving between the various sections of the console;
- in the middle, the dashboard of the selected tab shows the main indicators associated with it;
- on the top right corner, the settings menu allows supervisors to navigate to the application settings page or log out from the system.
With this new extremely intuitive UI, this console is the perfect application for all those requiring a turnkey and ready-to-use solution to monitor all the contact center and agents’ activities. Keeping these KPIs constantly monitored, empowers companies with actionable analytics, essential to improve the efficiency of their services:
- Mida Supervisor Console shows real-time data and some charts showing data measured on average over a period of time, which can be defined from the system settings.
- It allows the supervisor to take direct action on the contact center operations: including, for example, forcing agents login and logout, changing in-service and out-of-service call treatment etc.
To go deeper into the new look and feel of Mida Supervisor Console and discover how this UC solution helps companies to improve their service, get in touch with us here.
Mida Compliance Recorder in MS Teams Certification Program
Mida Compliance Recorder for Microsoft Teams has officially entered in the Compliance Recording for Teams Certification Program- this extra product certification comes as a confirmation of the product reliability in terms of quality, compatibility and security.
Mida Compliance Recorder for Microsoft Teams is the cloud recording solution that helps you to capture, safely archive and quickly retrieve all your business conversations.
Mida Compliance Recorder is designed specifically for Microsoft Teams as it is based on Microsoft Graph APIs. The solution allows organizations to capture any conversation transiting in the organization’s Teams client. Either it comes from a Teams user or from an external PSTN number.
Its flexible structure allows organizations to decide where to host the application: possibilities include on-Premises, hybrid and (public or private) cloud deployment models (including Azure, AWS, Google Cloud).
Configuration variables allow you to define recording policies, which can be assigned according to users (selective recording), or on a total-recording basis. Moreover, users can be assigned different privileges, allowing supervisors to decide information access criteria: standard users normally will access just to their records, while team leaders will access also to their teams’ recorded conversations.
In extremely regulated verticals, such as critical communications or financial services, compliance regulations often require specific procedures and precautions, like the recording, storage and compliant surveillance of voice and communications. Therefore organizations often find it challenging to use Microsoft Teams for their business recordings as it may not cover all the requirements properly.
Mida Compliance Recoder relies on a web-based platform, called Playback station, which acts as a dashboard for recording analysis, listening and comparison. Recordings retrieval is made super easy allowing users to search for files using user-defined tags but also additional searching parameters based on advanced call metadata (e.g. Date, Time, telephone extension or number etc.).
The protection of recordings is guaranteed by an anti-tampering signature which prevents them from unwanted attempts of alteration or corruption.
Mida Compliance Recorder is designed to guarantee enterprises with easy-to-prove adherence to advanced compliance regulations such as GDPR, MiFIDII and PCI. Automated recording, controlled by policies set up for user or user group allows enterprises to be compliant with the recording, retention and deletion procedures they must be compliant with.
The solution is the easy, reliable and compliant platform for enterprises willing to move corporate recordings to the cloud. Mida Solutions can provide support both for cloud-to-cloud and on-Prem to cloud transitions.
Do you want to get in touch with us to define your transition plan to Teams? Just contact us via this form and we’ll get back to you in a flash!
UCaaS: more than just a license model
In recent years, new communication and collaboration platforms have become popular, and new licensing models have emerged to allow companies to purchase software applications in their preferred mode. Let’s analyze together the current scenario.
To understand the massive success of Unified Communications as a Service, we should take a step backward, to piece together the most significant changes that happened within the UC market in the last couple of years.
Since 2020, having their entire workforce working remotely, companies faced a breaking point with the past: this unexpected change in working habits has highlighted that the previous communication and collaboration solutions weren’t appropriate for the remote and the hybrid work reality. To continue carrying out their daily activities efficiently, employees needed applications integrated into a unique hub, accessible from different devices and not bound to the “old” enterprise UC infrastructure.
Decision Makers and IT Managers were suddenly forced to face this new working reality that, in a short time, turned out to be a real breakthrough. They started to take into consideration cloud-based UC platforms, like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. These two platforms, created for communication and collaboration purposes, then evolved into more complex and complete ecosystems integrated with many third-party software applications, to allow employees to gain access again to the software they needed.
Being both Teams and Zoom purchased as Software as a Service after the Pandemic, SaaS started to be perceived as “the option” for businesses to access cloud-based applications. It goes without saying that when scouting for UC applications to add on top of these platforms, businesses were encouraged to maintain the same approach.
What is UCaaS?
The Unified Communications as a Service is a licensing model that allows companies to activate subscription-based Unified Communication services, paying a fixed monthly or annual fee for using the software. UCaaS infrastructure lets businesses personalize their modern workplace by choosing between telephony and voice, video and audio conferencing, and real-time messaging solutions.
What are the main advantages?
The benefits for businesses are many. Here we have summarized the most relevant ones:
- Easy transition to a cloud-based UC platform - UCaaS supports companies in moving their voice communications to the Cloud allowing them easily to integrate the new UC system within their cloud communications platform, be it Microsoft Teams or Zoom. Setting up the new UC system will be very very fast, and also adding new products or features at a later date will be really easy.
- Flexibility, scalability, and affordability - UCaaS ensures a flexible, scalable, and cost-saving approach to let companies make the most from their UC because:
- Firstly, with its monthly or annual operating cost, UCaaS allows companies to rapidly increase or decrease the number of licenses or add/remove UC applications as needed, avoiding cost/service inefficiencies. This scalability, for example, will not be possible buying perpetual licenses, due to the higher activation costs.
- Secondly, some solution providers allow companies to decide whether they want the services to be hosted in the company cloud, or in the solution provider’s cloud. This is an attractive alternative for companies that do not want UC applications to be hosted in a cloud space managed by a third party. This may be for several reasons, including security or accounting reasons, or internal policy regulations. Buying UCaaS hosted in the company cloud may be considered “the cloud evolution” of the old on-Premises, while retaining all the advantages of the pay-per-use approach.
- Less technical expertise required - With the UCaaS, companies can focus their efforts on their core business because this licensing model offloads software safety, updates, and maintenance to the solution provider. This means that the company’s IT staff has fewer technical aspects to take care of. This approach is a good alternative for companies that do not have an internal IT team or do not want them to be responsible for the new UC system setup, implementation, and maintenance.
For all these reasons, activating UC solutions as a service for Microsoft Teams and Zoom environments can be very beneficial for companies purchasing new cloud contact centers or recording applications. Do not hesitate to contact us to talk with our experts about how to implement UCaaS within your business.
Be Connected Day: the Italian phygital event about the future of Microsoft Modern Workplace
What do you know about Microsoft Modern Workplace and how to leverage it to enrich corporate communication? If you would like to become more familiar with these topics, in mid-June, you should attend the free and most popular UC event in Italy focused on the Microsoft ecosystem.
SAVE THE DATE: Be Connected Day - BCD will take place on June 15th in CUBO in Torre Unipol, Bologna from 8:30 to 18:30.
Don’t worry if you are not able to t come to the venue, the 9th edition of this event is in a hybrid format, so you can follow it on Live Streaming comfortably from where you prefer.
Please note that BCD is targeted to an Italian audience so presenters will use Italian as main language - only some keynotes by Microsoft representatives will be in English.
Be Connected Day is the Italian conference, organized in collaboration with Microsoft Italia, about the digital communication landscape that gathers together IT Managers, UC experts, and companies that will use (or are already using) Microsoft’s Modern Work applications for their daily activities. This event has the aim to shed light on the Teams potentialities and take a sneak peek at intelligent conversations, hybrid meetings, and modern collaboration within this platform. As some employees will continue working remotely and some others in the office, companies should be able to combine both scenarios by empowering their team with the right software and applications in an all-in-one Cloud workplace. The core features of this new way of collaborating must include extreme flexibility and ensure an improved experience for everyone within the company.
How to redesign business communications through Microsoft solutions? Some inspiring suggestions will be shared with participants at this one-day conference during specific sessions that will cover 4 main topics:
- Business Decision Maker (BDM) track - In the morning there will be speeches primarily aimed at the business leadership (e.g. CEO, CTO, VP), focused on Strategic Thinking and emerging UC market trends. Managers and decision makers should harness these themes to better understand the new employees' expectations and how to meet their working needs. This track will be a good opportunity to get interesting food for thought for establishing new corporate norms and practices to securely get the most out of new Microsoft Teams technologies. These tips will help companies create new business operating models and be aware of future strategies.
- Communication (COM) track - During the afternoon, sessions dedicated to immersive, interactive, and inclusive digital experiences for modern meetings and communications will be scheduled. The COM track will allow attendees to go deeper into the Artificial Intelligence topic, the Metaverse environment, and the Microsoft Mesh technology to discover how to exploit them in relation to Teams platform. These speeches will also give room for thoughts on what devices and voice applications companies might pair with Teams to provide a better experience.
- Security (SEC) track - Being aware of how to protect digital assets and corporate data is an essential requirement that companies must fulfill. This track, which will take place in the afternoon, will give important tips to help companies implement security tasks resulting from the current modern workplace. The “Zero Trust Security”, the “Threat Protection” models, and the “Red Team vs Blue Team” strategy will be explained by experts to help attendees understand which Microsoft approach is best to protect their information.
- App Integration and Development (APP) track - Microsoft Power Platform, its code, low-code, and no-code development environments, and Microsoft Viva will have no more secrets after BCD. In the afternoon, speeches about efficiency, automation, innovation, and how to increase employee collaboration within Microsoft ecosystem will be covered. The speakers will give attendees helpful suggestions on how to optimize workflows and how to handle and share corporate knowledge.
The agenda of all these track sessions has not been published yet on the official event website but it will be soon available to let people organize at best their own agenda.
In addition to these useful tracks, those attending the physical event will have the chance to meet the sponsors that are supporting the event, including Mida Solutions, at the venue. We will present our professional UC applications for Microsoft Teams and the advanced features and integrations with third-party applications they enable for companies that adopt them.
Stopping by Mida’s booth, visitors can discover all the advantages of having a contact center and a recorder integrated with Microsoft's most popular communication and collaboration platform. Attendees can seize the opportunity to address questions to our sales and tech people and get suggestions on how to improve corporate communications thanks to this UC suite. Mida team will explain also the integrations between this suite for Teams and the main CRM tools, such as Dynamics365 and Salesforce, and the Business Intelligence platform Power BI. These integrations are an added-value companies can count on to provide a top quality customer service, as they allow on the one hand to immediately access to caller’s information, and on the other hand, to obtain relevant UC insights (e.g. about agents' performance and infrastructure costs).
Have we convinced you to attend Be Connected Day next month? Get your ticket here for free!
Commsverse 2022: the Teams conference you should attend
Commsverse is the biggest annual independent Microsoft Teams conference organized since 2019 by a small group of members from the Teams community. The event gathers the main IT Professionals, industry experts, and global UC vendors to discuss the latest news about Microsoft most popular collaboration and communication platform.
Commsverse is among the UC technology events you should attend to get inspiring suggestions and practical takeaways about the adoption of Teams as the hybrid workplace enabling platform. Today Teams is chosen by more than 115 million people as the professional tool to daily handle business conversations and smoothly manage teamwork with colleagues and collaborators around the world.
Keeping always updated on how to get the most of this platform isn’t an easy task and attending dedicated events - whenever that is possible- is always a good idea. Commsverse is a great opportunity for visitors to address their questions to some of the biggest experts and technology vendors in the world. Takeaways may even include strategic advice to empower business communications via Teams new features and third-party software integrations. During the 2-day event, vendors welcome Commsverse attendees to their booths - either they are visiting virtually or in-person- to present the peculiar advantages of integrating their third-party applications to Teams.
SAVE THE DATE: Commsverse will be on June, 29th-30th.
Like it was for the last edition, the event will have a hybrid format so, if you can’t reach Mercedes-Benz World in Surrey, UK, you can still participate virtually for free by following the recorded sessions and visiting the exhibitors’ online booths. There you will find white papers and product documentation to download and video contents to watch. This opportunity allows you to decide how to participate in the event without missing the chance to strengthen bonds between IT professionals and UC vendors and listen to 55 experts.
Commsverse has organized 60 sessions on-demand that cover these main topics:
- Calling & Contact Center
- Deploy & Operate
- Extend & Automate
- Meetings & Collaboration
- Strategy & User Adoption
The complete agenda of Commsverse sessions is already available on the event official webpage, for attendees to create their own favourites agenda.
What to expect from Mida Solutions?
Mida will be one of the 40 exhibitors that will welcome you in the venue. Stopping by our booth #14 you will have the chance to speak with our sales and tech team of professionals to discover our UC suite for Teams, which comprehends contact center, attendant console, and compliance recorder. The most interesting added-value for enterprises and channel partners lies in the professional features and in the integrations of the suite with the main CRM tools, such as Dynamics365 and Salesforce, and with the most popular Business Intelligence tool, Power BI.
Leverage the chance to learn more about this topic during the event, by speaking with one of our representatives. We will be happy to answer any questions you may have and help you understand if our solutions suit or do not suit your business needs and which are the advantages/ disadvantages of the migration of UC to MS Teams. Seize also the opportunity to ask for a live demo to watch our solutions in action.
Have we convinced you to attend this event?
Get your ticket here to become part of this tech community, expand your Teams’ knowledge and make new connections.
Visit our virtual booth here.
Connect, Extend, Power: features and business opportunities behind labels
From discussions with customers and partners, we realized that there is still quite a lot of confusion about how a contact center can be integrated with Microsoft Teams. Over the last couple of years, many UC companies have launched on the market their contact center solutions for Microsoft Teams and some common adjectives used in their products’ presentation are “fully integrated”, or“native” to Microsoft Teams.
This is definitely one of the aspects that generate confusion and ambiguity as, despite the fact that contact center solutions use different integration approaches, they all (or almost all) claim to be “completely” integrated into Teams.
Integration models: Connect, Extend, Power
Yet there is a classification, defined by Microsoft itself on this page which is a good starting point in shedding light on the different approaches and their main differences.
Microsoft differentiates contact centers in Connect, Extend, and Power depending on how contact center solutions can be integrated with Teams. It should be noted, however, that on this official page Microsoft lists all the providers offering contact center solutions “that are integrated into Teams using one of the Connect, Extend, or Power integration models”, without specifying which type of integration each of them uses. Probably in the future, Microsoft would make a distinction between providers using one or another approach, which would definitely help clear up any remaining doubts.
In this article, we want to unfold the different approaches and highlight the peculiar pros and cons for customers.
Connect: the certified approach that uses SIP connectivity
Contact centers developed using the Connect model leverage Direct Routing to connect the contact center solution to the PSTN and to Microsoft Teams. In terms of technology they then use SIP connectivity and Graph APIs to retrieve the presence from Teams.
There is not just a single way in which connected contact centers integrate into Teams. To our knowledge, here are the different possibilities:
- Third-party client: the connection to Teams is used to retrieve just users’ presence status and the contact center solution is a third-party client or website, managing in a proprietary mode voice communications, video, screen share etc.
- Microsoft Teams client: the contact center leverages Teams as a telephony solution, which means that Teams becomes actually the PBX within the architecture managing communications. In this case, providers may also offer the opportunity to manage calls via a third-party app within Teams.
This last approach is the one we have decided to adopt in Mida Solutions’ C3 Cloud Contact Center for Microsoft Teams, as in our opinion, from a business perspective, it provides several crucial advantages for enterprises (see the following paragraph). Moreover, the SIP connectivity allowed our customers to count on a MS Teams integrated contact center solution since 2019, long before Teams became so popular as UC platform.
Business advantages
- INTEGRATION WITH OTHER PLATFORMS
Among the advantages of the Connect approach probably the most remarkable advantage is that customers can use an existing contact center solution and integrate it with any other communication platform or telephony system besides Teams (eg. Cisco phone system, Skype for Business, Avaya etc.), in a relatively simple and quick way. This is a consistent pro for companies using multiple communications and telephony systems, who want to gather in a single solution multiple contact center departments. The connected contact center uses the same advanced functionalities across all the communication platforms, providing users with these same contact center functionalities.
- AGENTS CAN ROUTE CONTACT CENTER CALLS TO ANY EMPLOYEE
Another key aspect is that any employee can receive contact center calls (using Microsoft Teams client). When an external call is routed via SIP trunk to the SBC and then to the contact center, then it is served by a contact center agent who can route the call to any Teams’ user, no matter what kind of license is associated with that user (i.e. no need to purchase Microsoft E5 or Phone System licenses for all the employees).
With the Connect approach call handling differ according to the contact center integration:
- With third-party client - The contact center software routes the incoming call to an available agent in the standalone contact center client using any modality that the solution offers (e.g. voice, video, chat, screenshare). From the user-perspective this option does not differ much from a non-Teams call handling.
- With Microsoft Teams - The contact center software routes the incoming call to Teams using Direct Routing – the agent receives a normal Teams call and manages it via the standard Teams UX. Optionally the solution provider might provide additional data and functionalities, available through a dedicated Teams app (e.g. operator’s dashboard). From the user perspective, this option does not differ much from a standard Teams call, making it very easy and straightforward for any employees to manage contact center incoming calls.
Mida C 3 Cloud Contact Center actually allows both options, so incoming calls can be managed in our standalone contact center, or they can be managed by agents (i.e. Teams users) using Teams native options or our Attendant Console App for MS Teams.
What is perhaps not immediate and deserves an ad hoc clarification is the fact that the Mida approach does not simply replace the PBX with Teams. This integration via Direct Routing allows enterprises to obtain advanced features and additional integration for their Teams contact center:
- leverage on the integrations of the Mida contact center with the main CRM applications on the market (Salesforce, Dynamics);
- define and change, when needed, the logics behind call routing in the contact center
- define and change, when needed, IVR in Microsoft Teams;
- collect any data related to the conversations passing through the SBC for KPI analysis (available in different formats, including Power BI reports);
- provide supervisors with real-time and historical advanced reports on operators’ activities and performances of the services managed;
- provide agents with basic real-time and historical reports on their performances.
Another key aspect to analyze in the Connect approach regards the compliance with Privacy regulations: de facto the call is managed by the contact center solution and either stays there (third-party client) or is sent to Teams (Microsoft Teams client). So in terms of security and encryption of conversations the solution provider must directly ensure the adequate management of these aspects.
According to some privacy regulations, like GDPR, it is also important to define where the solution provider hosts the service geographically. Regarding this aspect, we can either host the solution at the customer’s premises (in the cloud or locally) or at our premises (again, in the cloud or locally).
| Connect | Extend | |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | SIP connectivity Presence API |
MS Graph API Cloud Communication API |
| User client | Third-party client or Microsoft Teams |
Microsoft Teams |
| Connectivity/PSTN | Direct Routing (SBC) | Direct Routing (SBC) or Calling Plans |
| Call management | Call transit through the SBC and arrives in the contact center, which transfers it to Teams over a SIP trunk connection. | Call arrives in Teams and stays in the customer’s tenant. The contact center tells Teams to whom to transfer the call. |
| PROS for customers |
|
|
| CONS for customers |
|
|
Extend: integration via Cloud Communications API
This approach allows the integration to MS Teams via Cloud Communication API (part of Graph APIs) for presence status, call functionality, and call handling. Extend Contact Centers are entirely built on and exclusively for MS Teams: agents use Teams as their client application.
Call connectivity is managed via Direct Routing, as per the connect approach, or MS Calling Plans. Call handling is very straightforward: the call and media stream stay inside the customer’s Teams tenant so everything from security to encryption is covered by Microsoft itself. Conversations stay in the same location as the customer's Teams tenant so, as a consequence, call handling is also compliant with the business’ approved GDPR and internal data policies.
Business perspective
Relying on a service provider offering an extended contact center is the option for enterprises willing to fully leverage their investment in the Microsoft ecosystem, thus accepting - to date- substantial compromises in terms of call management functionalities and integration with other applications.
“How come we have these limitations if the Extend model is an API-based integration?” This is a legitimate question, companies may ask themselves when scouting for this type of solution.
Being developed exclusively for Teams, and having the aim to adopt Teams as a single experience hub, the extended contact center is not conceived to be integrated with any other communication or telephony platform. This is a major deterrent for companies having currently in place multiple systems, which they do not want or are not ready to replace at once with Microsoft Teams.
Secondly, the dependency on Microsoft to release APIs is a double-edged sword for service providers offering the Extend approach: on the one hand, the integration with MS Teams is ‘native’ by definition, but on the other hand, it is binding for everything concerning the product development.
Furthermore, being developed from scratch, from the pricing point of view an extended contact center may have higher market prices than a connected solution, as it is logical to assume since service providers have had to deal with larger initial investments into the solution’s design and development.
Mida Solutions’ philosophy towards the Extend model is very pragmatic: we constantly and carefully monitor Microsoft Cloud Communication API updates and new releases, as improving the customer experience within our contact center for Teams is one of our goals.
We will evaluate the Extend model as soon as we perceive that it allows us to deliver extra value to customers, compared to the current contact center solution built on the Connect model.
The way we see it, “Native” is nothing more than a label, if that does not imply that the solution provides all the call management features you expect from a professional contact center solution.
Power: Teams functionality in the contact center through SDKs (not available yet)
The Power approach will allow service providers to use Microsoft Teams SDKs to bring Teams functionality into their contact center solution. This third integration approach is the more complex and complete one and will make it possible for agents to manage calls directly from the Teams tenant: thanks to MS SDKs the contact center does not have to guide Teams on what to do with incoming calls - the contact center logics will already be present in Teams.
‘Power’ is not available yet, and there is no planned release date available - about this integration approach Microsoft's official source still shows a date in the past - end of 2021.
Do you want to know more about the Connected contact center solution we have developed for Microsoft Teams and how it works? Please visit the product page or contact us directly through this form!
Microsoft Teams updates - Spring 2022
Microsoft continues improving Teams user experience by unveiling new features every month. These periodic updates allow meetings to run smoother and chats to be more efficient, making it possible for people daily using Teams as a collaboration and communication tool, to carry out their activities at their very best.
Keeping up with the monthly Teams updates is not an easy task. You may have missed some of the latest updates and that’s why, as we usually do, we have summarized in this article the most important features in MS Teams this Spring.
TEAMS MEETINGS
- Send automated calendar invite for webinars - When a virtual meeting has been set up, the invite is automatically added to the attendees’ calendar after they have registered. This is a very useful reminder for people, to help them not to miss webinars they are interested in.
- Customize domain for webinar communications - In order to let attendees immediately identify communications coming from a webinar they have registered to, it is now possible to personalize the domain sender with the tenant’s name. This new option allows organizations to make their communications more efficient.
- Set the meeting room capacity and its notifications - Now it is possible to set a maximum number of participants for each Teams meeting room. When the capacity limit has been exceeded an automatic banner will appear at the top of the screen to let participants know. An additional notification in the panel can be activated to inform the attendees that the room reservation has expired and others are waiting for the room.
- Pin or hide video during meetings - Depending on the speakers’ preference and needs during a presentation, they can decide to make their video more visible on the meeting stage, increasing its size. They can also decide to pin or hide it to reduce distractions during calls while still having the video available for other participants.
- Turn off the notification during meetings - Another new feature to limit distractions is the option to turn off Teams’ notifications during all the meetings or mute them only during the current meeting.
TEAMS CHAT
- Pin a message in the chat - As people usually receive many messages throughout the day, there is now an option to highlight one of them in the chat by pinning it at the top of the conversation window. This makes an important message more visible even if others arrive later. By clicking on the pinned message there is the possibility to jump back to the original conversation to easily retrace what was written.
- Change chat message space - Users can now personalize their chat window by choosing how many messages they want to see at one time in the conversation. By default, the chat density is set up as a comfort mode but the spacing between messages can be decreased, by using the compact mode, in the personal settings tab. This option can be useful for small monitor or laptop or if the user prefers to limit the number of scrolls in the chat at the minimum.
- Add description text in the images - To make Teams more accessible for visually impaired and blind people now it is possible to add Alt text to the images sent in a conversation by just right-clicking the image and selecting the ‘Add alt text’ option. Thanks to this new feature, when these users activate the immersive reading tool, available in Teams chat, they can understand which are the images shown.
TEAMS FOR EDUCATION
- Use the Parent Connection - Teams is often chosen in Schools and Universities to support remote education and Microsoft always strives to reach students' potential. This spring update allows teacher to quickly match parents/guardians with students, allowing them to connect directy in a click. Teachers can go through the parents' list and chat or call them to quickly discuss matters and work together to increase students’ progresses. This new feature allows a more iterative updates back and forth to help manage & track student’s progress.
- Take advantage of Assignments - Educators can rely on the Assignments area in Teams to upload documents for students, set deadlines, and choose to be notified when tasks are completed. To personalize this education experience, teachers can also activate additional notifications to be informed when an assignment is published, modified, returned, or failed.
What do you think about these new features? Are you going to try some of them?
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UC Partner Summit 2022: the new event powered by Today Digital
UC Partner Summit is the new annual expo and conference that gathers some of the greatest range of industry experts and thought leaders from across the B2B marketplace to discuss what is new in the Unified Communications and Collaboration and Customer Experience fields. During the event, attendees can collect information about the latest insights and trends, exchange strategic advice to offer innovative solutions to customers, and discover new vendors in the market.
SAVE THE DATE: This new digital event will run from the 25th to the 28th of April.
Why attend this event?
After two successful editions of UC Summit, Today Digital has decided to leverage the virtual platform Tech Summit to host a new annual conference dedicated to UC global experts. The new partner-focused event will comprehend:
- EXHIBITORS VIRTUAL SPACES - Leading market enterprises and vendors will have the opportunity to present themselves and their products through a customized virtual booth. During the event each exhibitor will share product resources, company presentations, or exclusive video contents. This will be a great opportunity for market vendors to know more about each other and eventually get in contact directly to discuss potential future partnership opportunities.
- EXHIBITORS VIDEO INTERVIEWS - Exhibitors have been interviewed by Today Digital about what is now dominating the conversations between them and their existing partners. Starting from this point they then present the most popular channel products and services in their portfolio. This is an important occasion for companies to have their say on how they are shaping their relationship with existing customers, which are their expectations when onboarding new companies to their partner program, and which are the potential concurrent advantages for final customers.
- ONLINE ACTIVITIES - Exclusive keynotes and sessions from the greatest industry leaders will be provided at this event. Here are some examples of the main topics discussed:
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- UCaaS into the digital workplace
- Co-Selling Business Model
- The evolution of the Customer Experience in the current era
- Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience
- How to evolve your sales teams
- Partner led discussions
- Operating in a consolidating market
All these contents can be watched for free during the four-day event but if attendees can’t watch them in real-time, they can do it later on-demand.
Why visit Mida Solutions’ virtual booth?
This is a more than legitimate question. Here’s why we’re anticipating in this article some of the upcoming contents we’re currently preparing for our virtual booth:
- Product documentation about UC suites for Teams and Zoom. As anticipated during some recent events, like Enterprise Connect 2022, we have made our trusted suite of UC applications - including contact center, attendant console, recorder- available in Microsoft Teams and Zoom. These applications can really complete the picture of Teams and Zoom as professional environments: these third-party applications allow enterprises to host in the same platform collaboration, UC, and even customer services. Thanks to advanced call features and CRM integration operators can make their best to efficiently handle conversations, while managers are assured that they are always stored, archived, or deleted in compliance with the relevant regulation. These documents will help potential partners to understand the value Mida products can add to their offering.
- Product overview about Mida new advanced call reporting solution, Mida Call Analytics. This analytics application is integrated with Power BI and Excel and compatible both with Mida suite for MS Teams and Mida suite for Zoom. It helps companies easily understand how to improve their services, by analyzing their UC data, available in a set of ready-to-use reports or customizable ones. The integration with Power BI makes it possible to cross-referencing any UC data with other business-related data. Our active partners leverage this product to address the requests coming from companies willing to identify weaknesses in their UC system in order to transform them into opportunities.
- Partner documentation and video contents that explain how to become Mida’s partner and why to join our global network. Mida allows UC vendors, system integrators, or service providers to expand their portfolio with a complete suite of advanced voice applications. Their technical and sales teams will be trained by Mida engineers and will become familiar with the solutions through dedicated training sessions, support, and white-labeling documentation. This will make them ready to meet customers’ requirements across the globe.
What are you waiting for? The event is approaching, sign up now here for free and enjoy UC Partner Summit 2022.