Microsoft Teams has had a whirlwind 18 months, seeing its daily active users more than triple to 145 million since the pandemic broke out.
It’s bundling into the Office 365 package no doubt helped its popularity soar as many business customers of all sizes already used the ubiquitous software and, when they needed a collaboration platform to communicate remotely, many saw the logic of using the one already part of their package.
However, this doesn’t always mean integrating Teams into business operations has been smooth sailing for every organisation that deployed it.
We’ve gathered industry specialists to discuss the importance of integrating Teams into business apps and workflows, the challenges that come with that, and how easy is it exactly for organisations to integrate the platform themselves.
Panellists are from Evolve IP, Ribbon, LogMeIn, Luware and Anywhere365.
Why is it important to integrate your business apps and workflows with Microsoft Teams?
Gijs Geurts
Gijs Geurts, CEO Anywhere365:
“Microsoft has become the second-largest UCaaS provider in the world. An important reason for their enormous growth is the unique adoptability by enterprise users.”
“It makes their lives easier if you integrate workflows and necessary business apps into the platform that they are already familiar with. Also, from a management perspective, it enables an unparalleled efficiency and workforce productivity”
Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware:
“Integrated apps for Teams can leverage Teams as experience hub, telephony solution, and powerful business application. In enterprise telephony and customer service, integrated contact centre apps offer an abundance of benefits: the agent has everything in one client and therefore training of a different client is not needed.
“It’s not yet another web application but everything an agent needs is directly in Teams. In a contact centre scenario, those agents can easily add or find internal experts for additional questions or transferring the call.”
John Ryan
John Ryan, Senior Manager, Enterprise and Channel Marketing at Ribbon:
“Organisations are already using Teams for video conferencing, file sharing and chat. It makes the most sense for IT staff to integrate their business apps and processes with their collaboration platform. Teams seamlessly integrates existing workflows so employees can communicate contextually within one place.”
What challenges are organisations facing when integrating with Microsoft Teams?
Jeff Martis
Jeff Martis, UCaaS and International Solutions-Product Development, Evolve IP:
“The biggest challenge is around expectations. Many businesses are familiar with their front desk personnel handling multiple calls, juggling them on side cars with blinking lights; managing archives of documents with different saves for version control; doing things a certain way because that’s how it’s always been done.
“With MS Teams, things are simpler. End users can be more efficient in their daily tasks, documents are stored and shared securely in the Microsoft cloud and the biggest hurdle that organisations face is convincing their users that it really is that simple.”
John Ryan, Senior Manager, Enterprise and Channel Marketing at Ribbon:
“Employees that are used to legacy applications like Skype for Business might have some hesitancy moving to a new platform. Plus, IT staff supporting an organisation’s move to Teams Direct Routing might find it challenging as it involves SIP Trunking, PSTN and PBX features, and other aspects they are unfamiliar with.”
Mike Sharp
Mike Sharp, Chief Product Officer, UCC, at LogMeIn:
“Microsoft offers a robust set of solutions, but some of them are more advanced than others. Most organisations using Microsoft Teams are compelled by capability or uptime/quality concerns to look elsewhere for telephony and PBX solutions. This risks creating a disjointed experience for users who need to navigate between multiple applications to communicate on the phone, or for leaders to understand how their teams are performing without access to call or contact centre analytics functions”
“Without proper integration, some users may even lose access to these collaboration functions entirely when they are away from their primary work devices – something that is increasingly common with employees working fully or part-time remote.”
How have you adapted your product portfolio to integrate with Microsoft Teams and what features/benefits do you offer?
Philipp Beck
Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware:
“Luware has built a completely new, cloud-native solution based on the Extend integration: Luware Nimbus. Employees use Teams as their central experience hub with everything in one place and one single sign-on. Luware doesn’t need access to the call – the call and media stream stays inside the customer’s Teams tenant and thus, everything from security to encryption is covered by Microsoft. Delays and jitter are reduced to a minimum and highest audio and video quality is ensured.
“Employees can benefit from all Teams calling functionality (because it’s a normal Teams call), including voice suppression, conferencing, hardware and headsets, and on hold.”
Gijs Geurts, CEO Anywhere365:
“Through the past 10+ years, we have worked almost exclusively in conjunction with Microsoft UC platforms. And not just for the contact centre. We take Teams to internal helpdesks, receptionists and other heavy inbound and outbound communicators in an enterprise. With Anywhere365 they can use Teams as a single presence system.
“Our solutions are powered by the full Microsoft Ecosystem, including Azure, Sharepoint, Dynamics 365, and PowerBI for reporting.”
Mike Sharp, Chief Product Officer, UCC, at LogMeIn:
“GoToConnect is a robust UC solution, with industry-leading uptime and best-in-class PBX and telephony capabilities.
“The integration of GoToConnect and Microsoft Teams allows users to make calls and access their full phone system capabilities directly from inside of the Teams user interface on any device. That seamless integration offers a range of benefits for businesses who rely on these functions, including improved availability and reliability, reduced costs, cloud infrastructure, improved PBX administration tools, and improved customer support.”
John Ryan, Senior Manager, Enterprise and Channel Marketing at Ribbon:
“We’ve adapted our product portfolio to integrate with Teams Direct Routing. Our Microsoft-certified voice networking portfolio of Session Border Controllers (SBC) and gateways securely connects to any service provider for dial tone, enabling native Teams calling.”
“Our portfolio also helps integrate with legacy equipment like PBXs and contact centres to protect existing investments or smartly transition to a single unified platform”
Jeff Martis, UCaaS and International Solutions-Product Development, Evolve IP:
“Evolve IP has been an early adopter and promoter of Microsoft Teams and one of the first providers to successfully deploy Direct Routing for a platform-level Teams experience. This means that not only can Evolve IP be your CSP (Cloud Solution Partner) and help administer your O365 needs, but we will also be your HPBX provider and connect you to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephony Network) for domestic or international calling on our Cisco (formerly Broadsoft) platform.
“We offer all the Microsoft Teams features around persistent chat, file sharing, O365, app integrations, MS Teams Phone system features. We also offer the benefits of our Cisco platform including call recording, auto attendants, and contact centre. This also enables us to support hybrid hosted scenarios where Teams users and non-Teams users are in the same solution.”
How easy is integration with Teams? (For example, do you need to be a coder, is it DIY or do you need to provide professional services?
Philipp Beck, CEO of Luware:
“Using Microsoft’s APIs, solution providers and software developers can build loosely – and deeply – integrated apps.
“To integrate with existing business applications and proprietary tools, Microsoft also offers Power Automate. This automation and integration tool enables no-code and low-code integrations using standard connectors to many third-party applications such as CRM and ticketing tools”
John Ryan, Senior Manager, Enterprise and Channel Marketing at Ribbon:
“Integration with Teams can be difficult, depending on the complexity of your existing implementation. Organisations may have existing endpoints that require a specific skillset to integrate the endpoints with a SBC connecting legacy voice assets.
“It may be worthwhile leveraging a system integrator or similar partner that has experience having Teams interoperate with an existing phone system.”
Jeff Martis, UCaaS and International Solutions-Product Development, Evolve IP:
“It depends on what you’re looking to do. Many of our voice integrations including recording, contact centre and CRM integrations are available off-the-shelf.
“More complicated integrations or customised workflows may require customer knowledge of APIs or the Microsoft Power Platform. Of course, if customers are unable to perform this kind of work themselves, professional services are available”
from UC Today https://ift.tt/35ZgPn8
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