As business leaders plan for permanent and often hybrid workplace options for their employees moving forward,  there is a corresponding issue to address: What technology kits do they need, based on their workstyles, responsibilities, and locations to ensure optimal employee productivity and satisfaction?

Many organizations already had developed “personas” for their employees. Typically, they include four to eight types of workers, and each type corresponds with necessary hardware, licenses or software, and services. Post-COVID-19, however, these personas have largely become moot, and IT leaders must re-examine their persona classifications to accommodate for changes.

Why? Well, workstyles have changed, along with the applications and end-user equipment needed. People assume that the same work role has the same workstyle. That’s not always the case. Changing requirements are largely driven by so many people working from home, but it’s also driven by the improved quality and capabilities of technology. For example, video applications have become reliable with functional quality.

But the level of video and audio quality requirements will vary, based on the job description and the location of the worker. For example, noise cancellation headphones and a high-quality video camera may be significantly more important at a noisy, kid- and pet-filled home office than at a more quiet, private company office.

Those who think they can wait it out, and at some point, things will go back to the way they were will be disappointed. The workplace will not go back to the way it was pre-2020, when just 34% of employees worked from home, compared to 87% at the end of 2020. Moving forward, only 12.4% of companies have mandated employees will return to the office full time. The rest will be required to work from home (38.3%), work part-time in the office (9%), choose where they want to work (36.4%), or are unsure (3.9%). And in the contact center, only 6% of companies have said they will not allow work from home, and 20.9% are still evaluating. The rest will have agents work from home full- or part-time.

Key Technologies

The number of technologies to consider has increased, as well. For example, with video so widely used, IT leaders must evaluate who needs lighting, backdrops, or high-quality video cameras. Then there are the additional end-user devices: Who needs handsets, headsets, mobile phones, monitors, laptops vs. thin clients, executive desk systems, small room video hardware, or webcams? Who needs business-grade Internet access, access through a VPN, licenses for team collaboration or UCaaS? And who pays for what?

Companies are investing in many of these areas in 2021 (see chart below), but which employees get what—and what level of sophistication?

Issues to Consider

Given the changing workplace of the future, as well as the new technologies available, consider these issues when developing your personas:

• Who will decide who’s coming to the office and who stays at home? And who, then, pays for the technology kit that supports employees? As stated, the same work role does not always have the same workstyle. For example, location matters when it comes to workstyle. If I work from home, I may need a high-quality video camera for webinars I conduct because I can’t leverage the commercial grade cameras we have at the office.
• Make sure to show empathy to employees. Some can’t handle the thought of returning to the office; others don’t appreciate the work invasion into their homes—and their productivity is affected by working in an undesirable location. Others have equal productivity and equal interest working in either location. Select the location on what will be best for both the employer and employee—but recognize the persona and corresponding IT kit may be different when employees with the same work role have different locations.
• With WFH becoming more of an option (for the employer and employee), what are the rules of engagement? From the employer’s perspective, will WFH employees be required to have a dedicated office (vs. a dual-purpose bedroom or kitchen), or if they don’t have the space, are noise-cancellation headphones and virtual backgrounds sufficient? If so, consider these requirements for the personas.
• Persona development is much harder than it seems on the surface. You can’t have a persona for every employee, but one size doesn’t fit all, either. Typically, six personas can be used as a framework that covers multiple metrics, including work role, work location and surroundings, workstyle, level at the company, and more.
• What are the financial considerations? Do you want to simply give employees stipends and tell them to select products from a pre-approved list? Allow them to decide how to spend their stipends without limitations (and if so, how do you handle the customer service agent who bought earpods rather than noise-cancelling headsets?)

I preach this in so many walks of life, but here…data is key. You have to understand the different types of positions you have in your company, the nuances of the work location and surroundings, preferences of employees, technologies required to do their jobs, and opinions of employees to develop a solid set of personas. So, gather the data from your employees and their supervisors. Spend some time evaluating the findings, and then make your buying decisions based on the final set of personas.

Poly has developed a pretty slick and unique tool to help organizations identify personas and associated technologies to complement them. You can learn more about the six personas Poly identified through analysis of 5,000 enterprise users, as well as access the profiling tool for your organization, here.

Persona-based buying makes life significantly easier. Once an employee is placed into a persona, you can automate the purchase of equipment and licenses, as well as the IT support required to get them started.

*This is a contributed blog entry from Robin Gareiss, an analyst with Metrigy Research.

How do you provide a consistently great collaboration experience in a work-from-anywhere world?

Microsoft Teams added 95 million new users in 2020 and – from March to June of that year – showed 894 percent growth¹. The driving force was the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, with people suddenly working at home turning to Microsoft Teams meetings to stay connected and collaborate in real time. Our hats go off to the IT Leaders who kept your teams together during this huge surge in video-powered virtual meetings. But what happens now?

Today, as employees are beginning to return to the office, the expectation for video conferencing continues in a new model of hybrid work. In this new reality, some people work at the office, some remotely, and others alternate between the office and home on different days of the week. Maintaining the consistent collaboration experience employees have grown accustomed to presents IT with a new set of challenges:

• How do you equip in-office spaces and remote workers with the right audio and video devices to maintain – or improve – the level of communication and collaboration that employees now expect?
• How do you create meeting equality? By that we mean connecting spaces, people, and devices to provide the same meeting experience for those in the room and those who aren’t.

Regardless of where employees are calling in from, two things remain certain: every meeting now has video, and at least one remote participant.

Helping Everyone Look and Sound Professional

If workers don’t feel like technology equals, the consequences can be severe. Poor audio and video quality can hurt the professional image of individuals and your entire brand. Lack of compatibility and interoperability with Microsoft Teams in meeting room equipment can complicate meetings with customers and partners. And remote employees on the far end of calls can become less productive and engaged.

How do we make remote workers not feel like second class citizens? That’s what our products aim to solve. Making everyone feel like they look and sound their best and like they are in the room.  Empowering people to not just show up to meetings, but to show off in them.

The answer starts with a robust collaboration platform like Microsoft Teams, but it doesn’t end there.  Pairing Microsoft Teams with the right audio and video solutions—for both group and personal workspaces—ultimately determines how your employees experience and show up in virtual meetings.

Professional-grade headsets, speakerphones, and external video cameras are the equalizers that elevate the virtual meeting experience for everyone in a Microsoft Teams meeting—no matter where they work. To find the right equipment, support, and services to create meeting equality, take these key steps:

1. Deploy Microsoft-Teams Certified Equipment

Microsoft Teams certification is a badge of quality for select audio and video equipment. It tells you that Microsoft and its partners have worked together to optimize these devices for high quality user experiences with Microsoft Teams, and that both Microsoft and the device manufacturer stand behind your solution.

2. Match Equipment to Different Workspaces, User Needs

Research shows that 92% of employees can be categorized into six distinct workstyles that represent how and where people work in today’s enterprises.² By understanding these workstyles, you can better match individuals with the audio and video solutions they need for meeting equity—whether they work in cubicles or shared spaces at the office, at home, or on the go.

3. Download our free eBook to Learn More

These first two steps are just part of the best practices that give your users best-in class solutions and support to work anywhere, at any time, and as technology equals. To learn more about creating meeting equality for your workforce, download our eBook Collaboration Best Practices Using Microsoft Teams.

Whether your employees are in the office, on the go, at home—or a combination of all three— create an environment that helps them consistently experience virtual meetings on a level playing field, where everyone can see and be seen, hear and be heard equitably. That’s just not good for them, it’s good for your entire business.

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1. ( Source: Aternity)
2. Source: Poly Persona Research, 2020

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our lives had to be moved online in an instant, and video conferencing, telehealth, remote work, and online collaboration are all part of the new normal. Small businesses and retailers, in particular, have been hit especially hard by this change with social distancing and travel restrictions in place.

If the bulk of your business is done through a brick-and-mortar storefront, the current climate requires some shifting in how you operate. The good news is that these restrictions and limitations can force innovation, and many businesses have been able to survive by leveraging tools and solutions designed to work with customers where they are — their homes.

Running a small business online or opening a new online storefront involves getting the basics right. These range from reaching your customers and procuring supplies to running administration, finding the right eCommerce solution for small businesses, to following through with customer-centric fulfillment.

Here are the tools that can help you get started.

Taking Your Small Business Online: Your New Online Storefront

Website

First things first… you’re going to need slick, up to date website to make it in the online world. Fortunately, there are many tools to create stunning, user-friendly, and responsive websites in minutes. Shopify and Wix are designed to be your all-in-one, eCommerce-for-small-business solutions. Website builders such as these allow you to choose from a wide range of templates and themes, register a new domain or transfer an existing one, create an online store, process payments, and manage shipments.

CRM — Customer Relationship Management

Eventually, you may want to scale. But, here’s where things can get messy if you don’t have tools in place to keep track of your customers and others that make your work possible. CRM tools are used to store data on all of those entities, from customers and potential prospects, to vendors and suppliers. Great CRM platforms integrate with a wide range of products and services, allowing you to manage and automate email, meetings, marketing, customer service, payments, and more. Some popular CRM platforms are Salesforce and Zoho.

Accounting

Online accounting tools provide fast support, maintenance, and upgrades for a usually minor fee that gives you invoicing, reporting, and budgeting all from one dashboard. This saves you on the time and overhead associated with performing accounting in-house and allows you to focus on running your business. Some of the best solutions available are QuickBooks and FreshBooks.

Collaboration

With tools like Microsoft Office 365, you can bring your communications, document management, and team collaboration tools all under one umbrella. This includes video conferencing, file storage, messaging, calendar integration, and of course email — all with mobile support and from any device. In addition to team collaboration tools, Poly Lens provides advanced management, analytics, and insights to help improve your business decision-making, all from a single platform.

Poly also provides hardware essentials like to ensure that you sound professional even if you’re working from your home office. Choosing high-quality headsets, desk and conference phones, and video collaboration solutions are an integral part of operating a customer-facing business that require sales or services.

The EagleEye Cube offers top-quality visuals, automatic group framing, 5x zoom and legendary audio performance so you can connect with your clients or convey product demos virtually like never before.

The Voyager 4245 wireless headset system enables wireless freedom, comfort, and audio quality. This versatile headset is a great option for small business owners who would benefit from the ability to connect to desk phones, PCs, and mobile phones. With unlimited talk time, you can be sure to never lose connection with customers.

The Poly VVX D230 provides everything you love about your desk phone but gives you the freedom to get up and move around your office. This handheld phone offers Poly’s best in class audio so everyone can experience crisp, clear conversations. With the ability to handle up to ten handsets per base and eight lines, this phone was built to grow alongside your business.

Staffing and Administration

One area that the global pandemic has really undeniably changed forever is the staffing and human resource management space. The best HR and administration platforms help you manage payroll, send and receive forms, manage work schedules, set up interviews, and onboard new talent all from one place. The best ones are BambooHR and Ceridian.

Project Management

If your work is task-based or you provide services of some type, you likely share employee assignments, track progress, and mark off completed work week to week or sprint to sprint. Keeping organized is especially important in the IT, SaaS, and services space, where turnaround times are generally short and performance of issue resolution or services provision expectations are high. Use Basecamp or Asana to assign work, check in with your team, and make sure your business continues to chug along.

Security

Does your work involve confidential or highly sensitive information? Unless you outsource payment processing and your CRM, you will likely deal with a lot of customer and business data, so you need to think about online security. Ransomware attacks can bring your business to a halt, and data breaches can destroy your credibility. Use Carbonite for data backups and Barracuda or Malwarebytes for email protection, end-point security, and brand protection.

Bringing it All Together

It may seem daunting at first, but bringing your small business storefront online can be done quicker and easier than you may think. Most of the tools used in for small business eCommerce are built with business owners such as yourself in mind — so don’t get scared off thinking you can’t make the transition. The tools above are just our top picks of what’s available, be sure to do some research to find the perfect solutions that meet your business’ needs. We know your small business was no small feat to get off the ground, so we’re sure if you put your mind to this, you’ll have your business online in no time!

PART 3 of a 5-PART SERIES

Since the end of January 2020, Microsoft has seen a staggering 500 percent increase in Teams meetings, calling, and conferences, and a 200 percent increase in Teams usage on mobile devices.* Organizations of all sizes are either already using Microsoft Teams or on the path to migrating to it. Those organizations are already achieving the benefits from this unified communication and collaboration (UC&C) platform like the ability for chat, voice and video calling, meetings, file sharing, application integration, etc.  However, there are organizations who haven’t migrated yet because they need help or, they are on Skype for Business-Online and need to make this transition quickly.

At Poly, we understand what you’ll need and the value in providing expert guidance to help organizations with the move to Microsoft Teams. In the first part of this series, we covered what important considerations IT Managers should take into account before migrating their organization to Microsoft Teams. In the second installment, we provided general best practices to ensuring your company’s network is reviewed and ready to handle the traffic and operational rigor required for collaborating with Teams. In this blog, we’re excited to announce Poly’s four Professional Services to help our customers on their transformational journey.

Poly Envisioning for Microsoft Teams

Poly Network Readiness Service for Microsoft Teams

Poly Adoption Consulting Services for Microsoft Teams

Poly User Migration Service for Microsoft Teams

Poly Envisioning for Microsoft Teams

Poly Envisioning for Microsoft Teams is a service designed to accelerate customer’s digital transformation and help maximize business value through the usage and adoption of Microsoft Modern Workplace Cloud Solutions. We help to translate your unique business needs into a customized, actionable roadmap — ultimately driving lasting value and increase business productivity.

Poly Network Readiness Service for Microsoft Teams

When it comes to deploying Microsoft Teams, we recognize the importance in being thoroughly prepared. It’s essential to ensure your network is capable of performing at a consistent, optimal level for carrying real-time media traffic. Poly Network Readiness Service for Microsoft Teams delivers a readiness assessment of your connectivity from the Edge to the Cloud and provides recommendations for improving performance in supporting any low loss, latency, and jitter requirements needed to support real-time media. Network readiness is a key factor for successful deployment of Microsoft Teams and transitioning towards a more collaborative culture.

Poly Adoption Consulting Services for Microsoft Teams

Once making the bold move of transitioning to a new UC&C platform, user adoption should be top of mind. Poly Adoption Consulting Services for Microsoft Teams assists with the development of unique, strategic user adoption plans that inform, educate, and motivate the user communities within Microsoft Teams. As part of the service, we’ll provide you the upfront support needed to drive high adoption. Your end users will discover new, efficient ways to maximize the platform, leading to an overall increase in collaboration and progressively dynamic workspaces. We’ll work closely with you and provide specific recommendations to successfully accelerate the transition to new and better ways of working with Microsoft Teams, and enable users by providing them with innovative tools and greater functionality.

Poly User Migration Service for Microsoft Teams

Alongside the increased adoption of Microsoft Teams is a growing expectation for seamless, successful user migrations that guide customers through essential and complex planning, delivery, and operational activities. Poly User Migration Service for Microsoft Teams leverages the Intelligent Communications capabilities of Microsoft Office 365 framework to migrate organizations from Skype for Business to Microsoft Teams. It also enables the Microsoft Teams Phone System with Direct Routing and optional audio conferencing in Microsoft Office 365. The business outcome of this service is to help you plan, simplify, and successfully migrate your users to Microsoft Teams.

All these services are delivered by our Global Professional Services Team of Microsoft certified experts. These services are designed to help our customers wherever they are on their journey to Microsoft Teams, and where they need expert advice.

Watch our two-minute video introducing these four new services to learn more.  For more information about Poly Services for Microsoft Solutions, email us at TeamMicrosoft@poly.com.

* Our commitment to customers during COVID-19, Microsoft  March 2020.

Teams that have a well-functioning, collaborative dynamic are the heartbeat of any thriving business — it’s a fact that bears repeating. To empower your people to share their skills, ideas, and inspiration, the first thing you’ll need to do is get them out of their silos and connected to one another. To do that, they’re going to need the right collaboration tools. Introducing the next generation Poly Trio C60 — a smart conferencing device for any meeting space to bring your people together. And, even though most of us are working from home right now, it’s only a matter of time before we’ll be back in the conference room where Trio runs the show.

Invest in the Best (Tools)

Nothing trips up collaboration like your communication tools being complicated and unintuitive. Trouble getting meetings started or having issues with audio can drastically influence the tone of the meeting. According to Deloitte, two-thirds of any company’s competitive edge is based on the experience they can give their clients and partners. The Trio C60 offers a tried and true, easy to use experience for your teams, so when it comes to meeting with high-stakes customers or partners, we’ll do our part to make sure your first impression is flawless.

 The iconic Trio family has truly stood the test of time and remains one of Poly’s most popular options when it comes to outfitting a standard conference room. The next generation of the Poly Trio is loaded with new features and has been given a fresh modern look to complement today’s thoughtfully designed office spaces. But don’t worry, we kept all the good stuff that has kept its ‘seat on the table’.

Although it may seem untimely to think about conference room technology in the midst of a conversational environment dominated by remote work, the investment in powerful collaboration tools is a wise one — and, here’s why: eventually, the majority of office workers will get the go-ahead to resume their normal office routines.  But note my qualifier, ‘the majority’.  A popular contention asserts that once remote working has been proven to be effective, many nine-to-fivers will demand more flexible arrangements. This is where your remote collaboration tools become an essential element of your workplace. Aside from the usual communication with external stakeholders and teams in different locations, we predict an uptick in collaboration with remote or flex-workers that elect to work from a home office full or part-time — making your huddle and/or conference rooms the place where your people work together.

The enduring popularity of the Trio boils down to three intertwined attractive attributes: (1) its flexibility and versatility; (2) the ways in which the latter allows for a consistent use experience, and therefore, greater organizational alignment; and (3) the fact that it has been continually optimized to keep up with the latest collaboration technology. Let’s take a closer look at each, shall we?

1. Flexibility & Versatility

The Poly Trio Conferencing Series is flexible and with the introduction of the Trio C60, this goes even further. The Trio C60 can stand on its own as a high-quality conference phone, or, it can be used to control other endpoints like the Poly Studio X Family or G7500. Additionally, the Trio C60 will support a variety of the leading open SIP and UC&C services, allowing for flexibility of platforms without the need for multiple endpoints. This makes it easy for Administrators to standardize on the collaboration experience throughout your organization and also gives you peace of mind that should the organization’s needs change, your endpoints can change with it.

The Trio C60 paired with the Studio X50

Have rooms of all sizes? No problem. The Trio C60 is also adaptable to different room sizes by allowing you to ‘daisy chain’ up to three devices for larger spaces. Additionally, optional wired expansion microphones will be available Spring 2020.

2. Consistency & Organizational Alignment

The design of the Trio Series is not only iconic, it’s also intuitive to use. For the end users, when technology is easy to use, it’s more likely to become widely adopted throughout your organization. Because the Trio can be used to control an increasing number of video endpoints, it offers a consistent user interface from room to room — eliminating the intimidation of controlling audio, video, and content sharing. From an administrative perspective, in order for any product to deliver the best experience for users, it must be simple for system administrators to manage, and maintain platform reliability, and enhance security.

3. Optimized for Collaboration

The Trio C60 will give you a variety of ways to empower and encourage teamwork. Currently, the Trio C60 will work with most leading SIP providers for audio conferencing and supports native platform experiences for both Zoom and Microsoft Teams environments — and, we’ll continue to incorporate additional native platform experiences in future releases.

Now, if you’d kindly bear with me while I geek out a bit… the new hardware and operating system give the Trio C60 up to 4x better performance than its predecessors. For wireless deployments, the C60 features 2.4-5GHz WIFI with multiple-in multiple-out (MIMO) — a technique for sending and receiving more than one data signal simultaneously to ensure a more reliable meeting experience over Wi-Fi.

Simple conferencing at your fingertips

Central to our philosophy here at Poly, we believe in amazing new ways to hear, to see, to work, and to work together. This means we are always looking for new ways to innovate and improve so that meeting participants are center-stage, and the technology discretely steps out of the way. With the Poly Trio C60 conference phone, everything you need is at your fingertips. Learn more.

5 ways Poly Studio can improve your Microsoft Teams Huddle Room 

It seems like every photo shown of a business in action these days features a bunch of people in a huddle room, looking productive – just like our own Poly beauty shot below.

But the technology that is IN the room really matters most to the people who are joining remotely – the people NOT in the room: Your sales team joining a Microsoft Teams meeting from the road. Your CFO joining a budgeting meeting from his cabin in the mountains. Your flexible workers joining small team brainstorms or regular staff. What you have in your huddle rooms can either make people more productive by making them more included … or can frustrate them with bad audio, choppy video or cameras pointed anywhere but at the speaker. If you’re moving to Teams, you want to be moving forward, now, with the best experiences. Poly’s new Studio USB video bar – now certified for Teams – can help. Time waits for no one, especially not in the enterprise where execution speed is critical.

Here are five ways Poly Studio can help improve your Teams experience:

#1 Poly Studio is Ready to Connect

To thrive in this new reality, office workers need huddle rooms for fast and impactful meetings. That’s one reason why huddle rooms have exploded in popularity in recent years. Huddle rooms have become the hub for ad-hoc spontaneous collaboration when the situation calls for quick, easy setup. The Poly Studio USB plug-and-play video bar brings meetings to life in a snap so you can get on with the business of innovating.

#2 Poly Studio is Ready to Focus on Who and What Matters

As a certified USB video bar, Poly Studio works with any Teams solution. Now that Poly Studio is Certified for Teams, you’ll be armed with the premium USB video bar that not only connects you quickly to your remote colleagues but brings you second-to-none visual quality. Picture this: You start a meeting, start to speak, and the camera “automagically” knows which person to zoom in on. Just as in real-life interactions when your eye automatically fixes on the person talking, Poly Studio mimics that reaction. Now your remote attendees feel more included, and can participate more fully.

#3 Poly Studio is Ready to Hear Every Nuance

Poly consistently rolls out products loaded with acoustic features based on decades of audio science. Poly Studio is the culmination of this acoustic excellence. Six beam forming mic arrays in Poly Studio mean that every word and vocal tone is picked up, for the maximum immersive audio experience with your remote colleagues. Full duplex speakerphones take the uncertainty out of any conversation. To keep the attention on those verbal nuances, intelligent features like Poly Acoustic Fence and NoiseBlock automatically mute extraneous noises that come between you and crystal-clear communication with your team. That means everyone has to work a little less to hear what’s going on, so they have more energy left over to actually address your business challenges.

#4 Poly Studio is Ready to Manage

While Poly Studio and Teams form an ideal combination to hold the most productive meetings, the “behind the scenes” is just as satisfying. Management is as simple as it gets. Before Poly Studio came along, IT managers dreaded the walk from room to room to update each device. Now, they can push updates without leaving their desk. All they need is an internet connection!

#5 Poly Studio is Ready to Innovate

Too often, traditional meetings are bogged down by technical difficulties that discourage team members from speaking up and sharing their ideas. By the time the meeting gets up and running, attendees are discouraged, looking at the clock and only half-engaged.

What would happen if your meetings could not only transcend distance, but also remove all the barriers like choppy video, tinny audio, distracting background noise and bowling-alley views of your colleagues? Innovation—that’s what happens! The Poly Studio with Teams certification is designed to boost your best innovations.

Ready to Huddle

Poly and Microsoft are ready when are you are. Ready to brainstorm. Ready to solve problems. Ready to help you express yourselves clearly. Poly Studio, certified for Teams. We can’t wait to see, and hear, what ideas you’ll share.

Learn More about Poly Studio.

Google is all in on voice, and Poly partnership proves it

A G Suite Treat: Google Voice is GA

“Phones still connect us all,” said Smita Hashim, Director of Product Management, Google Voice during the recent Google Cloud Next 2019 and G Suite Unified Communication roadshows as GA of Google Voice in 11 countries was announced.

I tend to agree. Google Voice for G Suite was the last piece needed to complete Google’s UCaaS offering, rounding out the integrated communications package that businesses can use for all their collaboration needs.  The move is a big win for businesses that rely on Google Cloud’s G Suite with Google Voice. Enterprise users can take advantage of Google Voice on their desktop, desk phones and mobile platforms as part of the G-Suite they’re already using in their workflows.

G Suite Dreams Are Made of This

Poly is thrilled to partner with Google, where telephony is a focus area of continuous innovation, to simplify communications complexity wherever and whenever customers need to collaborate.  85% of enterprise users still communicate with a desktop phone. * Because professional desk phones are designed for consistency, reliability, comfort and an easily managed connection, they are likely to remain a fixture in workplaces even as BYOD and smartphone use continues to rise.

Enter Polycom VVX 250, 350 and 450 OBi Edition phones, the first IP phones certified for Google Voice.  VVX x50 Series OBi Edition desk phones are fully integrated with Google Voice so they just work and live up to the standards of a professional-sounding call no matter the distraction, complexity or distance customers may be up against.

By certifying VVX x50 Obi Edition phones, Google helps ensure activating phones on Voice is as easy as possible on administrators and IT staff. Google Voice for G Suite uses Polycom Device Management Services for Service Providers (PDMS-SP) API, making it simple to assign desk phones to Google Voice users.

Booth visitors at Google Cloud Next 2019 saw firsthand how easy it is to get Poly VVX x50 phones running with Google Voice in a few clicks.

For flex workers, our Voyager 5200 UC headset is certified for Google Voice and Hangouts Meet to power collaboration on mobile and desktop applications.

With the overwhelmingly positive feedback Google Cloud team has been getting from their 650+ Google Voice Beta customers such as Dow Jones, Nielsen, City of Edmonton, Portland State University, and ZPG, I am super excited about Poly’s partnership with Google and trust our certified solutions will help customers breakdown communication barriers and collaborate more effectively.  Looking ahead, our alliance opens up even more ways—desk phones and headsets and who knows what’s next— to power human connections.

*Plantronics Persona Research. 2017 data from US, German, and French workplaces.

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I challenge you to name someone who doesn’t panic when they lose their smartphone for five minutes. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Everyone from sixth graders to great-grandmothers have all but fused their smartphones to their hands for personal business—texting family, online banking, watching movies, getting directions to that new Gastropub everyone’s Yelping about. Today, more people own a smartphone than own a toothbrush, which I suppose is none of my business.

It would surprise exactly no one to learn that 500 million people also use their smartphones at work. What might be news, however, is that smartphones aren’t solely devices of distraction for selfies, social media and shopping. More than a third of those use their smartphones to perform their job functions. According to the Frost& Sullivan 2017 IT Decision Maker survey, 36% of respondents do at least part of their business function via smartphone. Indeed, employees rely on their trusty little digital workhorses to travel with them for home to car to office, performing functions both personal and professional.We also know 60% of mobile workers sleep with their phone, and 70% keep their phone “within eye contact” at work. The mobile trend will only multiply as Gen Z,a quarter of whom owned a smartphone before age 10, become the latest fresh faces in the workplace.

Clearly there is very little distinction between home, work,and everything in between, and those lines will continue to blur even more in the future.

In today’s workplace, separating the smartphone from personal and professional lives is a non-starter concept, and unprofitable one.Studies back up the claim that workers wielding a smartphone are measurably more productive. A Frost & Sullivan survey of 500 managers and executives at US companies and government organizations reported that in using smartphones to get work done, respondents gain nearly an hour (58 minutes) of work time each day and see an estimated productivity increase of an incredible 34 percent. The benefits don’t stop there. Bringing smartphones into the workplace (BYOD) is a boon to IT professionals who don’t have to deal with the hassles of running cabling and installing ethernet connections at each desk.

Turns out, the smartphone and the workplace are a natural combination!

As much advantages as smartphones bring, using them for an entire workday comes with limitations, regardless of whether you’re Team iOS or Team Android. Finding somewhere to prop it up to have back-to-back conference calls, or view someone’s presentation, is never graceful, even with a decorative finger-ring kickstand. The sound quality of the speakerphone is not up to snuff for professional calls. Then the battery runs out. We love our superhero devices we call smartphones, but even heroes need a wingman.

At Plantronics, giving mobile workers freedom is in our DNA. So, it was only natural to us to go beyond headsets into a new product category so that we could extend a full-fledged hero’s welcome to our little pocket productivity machines. We created Plantronics Elara 60 Series to elevate the smartphone experience to that of a true collaboration engine.

Here’s how that plays out: the mobile-first worker can start their business call at home, continue it in the car, then arrive at the office and place it on Plantronics Elara for a professional grade audio experience.

The mobile phone station also charges the smartphone’s battery, shifts easily to portrait or landscape mode, is adjustable to get the right angle on video calls, and gives the choice of speakerphone, handset or headset. Further, Elara makes connecting to Microsoft Teams— the wildly popular teamwork hub used by more than 200,000 organizations and growing— as easy as pushing the built-in button. 

Elara the epic smartphone wingman wouldn’t be a true Plantronics product without…headsets! Mobile-first workers can select their favorite headset, whether it’s the Voyager Focus,the Voyager 5200, Blackwire C5220USB-A,  BlackwireC3220USB-A , or enjoy the speakerphone or handset.

Now that we’ve shared how Plantronics is dialed into the needs of the mobile-first worker, we’ll ask the real question: Will there be a day when more people own a Plantronics Elara than own a toothbrush?

Polycom Studio is the all-in-one video bar that connects to your laptop or room PC. Polycom Studio takes the frustration out of the meeting experience and replaces it with simple plug-and-play connectivity to virtually any ecosystem, including Microsoft Teams, Skype, Cisco WebEx, and Zoom. Designed for huddle rooms and other smaller meeting spaces, this product is the first of its kind for Polycom and Plantronics.

Delivering the best audio experience in its class, the 12-foot microphone pick-up and powerful stereo speakers deliver sound with amazing lifelike clarity that fills the entire huddle room space. On the video side, 4K resolution is just the beginning of a truly natural visual experience that includes features such as automatic speaker tracking and automatic group framing.

To take a first look, Leila Lewis, Corporate Communications Manager, sat down with the Polycom Studio Design Team to get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Polycom Studio. Nathan Yang, Senior Director of Experience Design; Tony Duys, Distinguished Engineer; User Research Manager Diana Castles; Researcher Lauren Hamilton; and Senior UX Designer Rene Cardona offered insight into the newly-released video bar. 

Leila: How is Automatic Speaker Tracking and Automatic Group Framing special in Polycom Studio?

UXD Team: Speaker Tracking means you don’t have to mess around with the remote control to get the camera to focus on the person who is speaking. In Studio we went further by combining both automatic speaker tracking and automatic group framing to make it an even better experience. Not only can it zoom in 5x for a closeup of the speaker’s face, but we also eliminated the distraction of a moving camera. By placing the camera lens inside the unit, meeting participants don’t get distracted by physical camera movements. Instead, subtle lights appear right above the camera, indicating whether it’s capturing the right of left side of the room, for instance. This way, users get subtle visual cues that they are seen, without the distraction of a moving camera.

Leila: OK, I now understand Automatic Speaker Tracking. Why would a meeting need Automatic Group Framing?

UXD Team: It’s almost as if you have a human video director in the room, arranging the camera in a way that looks good to the far end. Group framing intelligently does this by detecting where everyone is in the room and getting rid of empty space surrounding them, so that the group is framed nicely without large empty spaces filling up the frame—all automatically.

Leila: Many people don’t realize how much thought goes into designing the mute button of every Polycom conferencing device. Can you provide insight on Studio’s mute feature?

UXD Team: Think about how many times you’ve panicked for a split second because you thought you forgot to mute, or talked for 30 seconds straight before realizing you were on mute. Or tried to mute but hung up instead. Accidental mishaps with the mute button have caused too many people embarrassing conferencing moments.

This is not an issue with Polycom Studio. We designed the mute button to stand out with our iconic triangular shape, and there is no doubt what your mute status is – an entire panel of lights turn red when the system is muted! Coupled with the audio tone confirming that the system is on mute, customers are much less likely to stumble through awkward halts in conversation while on a call.

Leila: What would you say to people worried that cameras are ‘always on’?

UXD Team: The user experience doesn’t end when everyone on the video conference says goodbye and hangs up. Awareness about privacy in the presence of our smart electronic devices is heightened these days —people want assurance that the camera is actually off! Giving our customers this peace of mind was part of our thinking in the design process, which we deliver by employing a mechanical shutter. With Polycom Studio, you can physically close the shutter to cover the camera lens. It’s a physical way to show that no, your video conferencing device is not spying on you and no, you don’t have to tape a sticker over the lens. This mechanical shutter is completely separate from all internal electronics, so even a hacker can’t open it.

Leila: Describe what design considerations were made for people with disabilities.

UXD Team: The audio tones described earlier were implemented in part to address users with visual impairments. In designing the remote control, we also took special care to ensure that the visually impaired could participate in their conferences with confidence. It’s subtle, but small design aspects such as concave and convex-shaped buttons on the remote control provide tactile feedback.

Additionally, Polycom Studio can be mounted above or below a wall-mounted monitor, and we ensured that it mounts in accordance to ADA standards; it won’t protrude too far into the room. It’s a slim unit designed not just to be compact enough for huddle rooms, but for individuals with disabilities to have a great conferencing experience as well.

Leila: Tell me how you decided on the rectangular shape.

UXD Team: Brands are strongest when the products and experiences are cohesively designed (think DeWalt tools, Porsche cars, etc.). All of them carry a distinct look and feel that instantly identifies that brand. When a user sees the Polycom look,they see a trusted brand with a rich heritage that delivers some of the best auditory and visual experiences. We want our entire portfolio to be cohesive and aligned with Polycom Trio. Polycom Trio is an iconic and blockbuster product (the fastest-selling conference phone in Polycom history), so we stayed true to that linear and precise aesthetic.

Learn more about Polycom Studio.

Today I have the pleasure of letting you all know that Plantronics has added to the Calisto family of speakerphones by introducing Calisto 7200 to the market.  This new, sleek and compact speakerphone is designed specifically for small “huddle rooms” for up to six people, to provide a meeting experience beyond compare. With the addition of Calisto 7200, our partners can now offer their customers a complete selection of audio collaboration devices: headsets, personal and small group speakerphones.

We created this product in a collaboration that began last year with Polycom, a leader in the conferencing space, as we share a mutual goal of providing users with superior user experiences. There’s no doubt the need for small conference rooms is growing quickly. In a Nemertes 2018 study, 67 percent of IT leaders are evaluating now, or planning for this year or next year, to invest in meeting rooms. Even in today’s open-office environments, the need for smaller conference and collaboration rooms is increasing.

One of the best things about this speakerphone is that it can help increase adoption of unified communications (UC) systems. Because it’s so easy to use, with intuitive, plug-and-play connectivity for both PCs and mobile phones, it’s just flat-out simple to connect with UC applications. An additional side benefit is that businesses placing these in their huddle rooms don’t need to worry about post-installation availability. Calisto 7200 comes with a combined USB audio and security cable. However, without the locking cable, the device is portable, so you can take it on the road with you if you wish. To top it all off, there is software support for asset management via our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, Plantronics Manager Pro. With the subscription of Plantronics Manager Pro, IT can track these (and other) Plantronics audio and mobile devices to control inventory, update firmware, pre-configure and lock device settings remotely to ensure consistent audio across all devices.

Calisto 7200 connects easily via a USB cable, or you can connect wirelessly via Bluetooth. It has touch-sensitive controls to make it easy to manage calls and the Bluetooth memory can be cleared of previously paired devices which is essential for a shared audio device. And, at a suggested list price of $299.95, it’s affordable enough to install in all of your huddle rooms, small conference rooms and collaboration zones.