New business capabilities will improve how calls are handled and identify issues sooner
Microsoft is adding two new features to its Skype for Business phone and web conferencing service.
The first is Auto Attendant – an automated system for answering and routing inbound calls using dial pad inputs and speech recognition. The other is Call Queues, which enables incoming calls to be routed to the next available live attendant in the order they are received.
Both new services were revealed at the annual unified communications industry conference Enterprise Connect, which is taking place in Orlando, US this week.
Microsoft also unveiled its preview of the new Skype for Business Call Analytics dashboard, which provides IT administrators with greater visibility to identify and address call issues, such as network issues or headset problems.
“Customers tell us some of the greatest benefits of moving their communications to the cloud are the ability to consolidate all their meeting and calling systems into a single solution and streamline provisioning and administration,” said Ron Markezich, corporate vice president of Office 365 Marketing. “Customers have also asked for more visibility into calling data to help address user support inquiries. Call Analytics provides rich telemetry data in real time to help IT admins troubleshoot issues and improve the user experience.”
Microsoft partners, including Polycom and Crestron, took the opportunity to reveal new meeting room solutions on top of Office 365 at the event too. Polycom RealConnect for Office 365 enables customers to connect existing video conferencing devices to Skype for Business Online meetings, while the new Crestron SR for Skype Room Systems provides rich audio and HD video and content sharing in conference rooms.