{"id":612,"date":"2013-03-08T19:16:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T19:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=612"},"modified":"2013-03-08T19:16:14","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T19:16:14","slug":"must-have-unified-communications-features-for-your-small-business-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/must-have-unified-communications-features-for-your-small-business-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Must-have unified communications features for your small business Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.plantronics.com\/us\/cmpn\/big-trends\/big-trends.jsp\"><img class=\"size-full wp-image-613 alignleft\" alt=\"smb-tech-trends\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/smb-tech-trends.jpg\" width=\"113\" height=\"109\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Are you puzzled about what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plantronics.com\/us\/cmpn\/big-trends\/big-trends.jsp\">unified communications<\/a> features your small business should employ or add to ones you\u2019ve already adopted? \u00a0Unified communications, as I\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/01\/how-unified-communications-benefits-small-business\/\">described it before,<\/a> is not one product but a set of capabilities to integrate real-time communication services. It enables you, among other things, to send a message on one medium and the recipient to receive it on another. For example, I can leave someone a voice message and they can receive notification or even a speech to text transcription in an email.<\/p>\n<p>Each UC vendor offers a host of features to differentiate their platform, which can make getting your arms around UC even more complex.\u00a0 However, there are several features that are considered the foundation of any UC system. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comparebusinessproducts.com\/\">Compare Business Products<\/a> did a nice roundup of key UC features a few years ago in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.comparebusinessproducts.com\/briefs\/10-must-have-unified-communications-features\">10 Must Have Unified Communications Features.<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 They include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Presence<\/li>\n<li>Unified messaging<\/li>\n<li>Integrated audio\/web conferencing<\/li>\n<li>Instant messaging\/chat<\/li>\n<li>One number reach<\/li>\n<li>Click to dial<\/li>\n<li>Corporate phone books<\/li>\n<li>Extension dialing over all locations<\/li>\n<li>Screen pops<\/li>\n<li>Disaster recovery<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>UC essentials enhance communication and collaboration<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/laptop-smartphone-and-tablet.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-186\" alt=\"laptop, smartphone and tablet\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/laptop-smartphone-and-tablet-300x220.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"220\" \/><\/a>These basic UC capabilities can help improve communication and collaboration among your team. In this post and one next week, I\u2019ll review how.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Presence:<\/strong> Some people consider presence one of the most essential of all the UC capabilities because it lets you know when someone is available. After all, you can email someone in your company who works remotely or even in another part of the building, but you have no way of knowing if they are on or offline to get your message. Presence changes that. It lets you know the status and availability of the person you are trying to reach \u2013 and vice versa. If you use\u00a0 a softphone like Skype,\u00a0 you know how it works. A little notification pops up when someone in your contact list goes online.<\/p>\n<p>In a UC system, presence can be integrated across all your communication devices, including IP (over the Internet) desk phones, email, IM and IP softphones. \u00a0Some UC capabilities also let you know when someone\u2019s mobile device is turned on or off. Presence not only enhances communication and collaboration; it increases productivity. If a call from a customer comes in that requires customer service to check with sales or a technician, presence indicates if that person is available. If not, customer service can try someone else.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unified messaging:<\/strong> Think how much more efficient you would be if you didn\u2019t have to check all your communication devices for all the messages you receive \u2013 email,\u00a0 voicemail, video messages, SMS, and more &#8212; but could go to one inbox to retrieve all of them from anywhere. That\u2019s unified messaging. For example, unified messaging could send a voice message to your universal inbox where you could play the message directly from the email; play an audio file attached to the email; or read a transcribed text of the message sent in the body of the email. If you want to share the message with someone, you can easily forward it on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Integrated audio\/web conferencing:<\/strong> \u00a0Web conferencing enables you to share a presentation between meeting participants, conduct training, give a lecture or hold an event. By integrating audio conference capabilities with web conferencing \u2013 and increasingly with video conferencing \u2013 you make it easier for everyone involved to participate since they don\u2019t have dial in and join online separately. You also can call out to someone else to join the meeting if a question or issue comes up. By adding a screen sharing application to your integrated conferencing, members of your team in different locations can even work together to develop a presentation or document.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Instant messaging\/chat:<\/strong> Sometimes the terms IM and chat are used interchangeably. Chat often occurs in a virtual room where participants focus on a topic and text comments to the group. You could use chat to bring your team members together, wherever they are, to discuss a new product or service or marketing campaign, for example. You even can add video to your chat session.\u00a0 IM is more suited for one-on-one communication with someone. For example, if presence tells you someone is on line, you can send off a quick IM to ask a question.<\/p>\n<p><strong>One number reach:<\/strong> Often called <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/27\/find-mefollow-me-calling-makes-you-easy-to-reach\/\">Find Me\/Follow Me<\/a>, it\u2019s the capability that lets you choose one number to give out \u2013 it can even be a virtual number. \u00a0When someone dials that number, the IP telephony system routes the calls to numbers you have selected \u2013 office phone, mobile number, home phone or other \u2014 at the same time or sequentially.\u00a0 If, after routing the call to all the numbers, you still don\u2019t answer; the system will leave the call in your voice mail.<\/p>\n<p>Next week, I\u2019ll cover the other key UC features. If you are using any of the above, how has it improved communication and collaboration in your small business?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you puzzled about what unified communications features your small [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[510],"tags":[601,960,675,673,938,580,446,602,644],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}