7 Highlights from the Unify Office autumn release
As the summer ends, new variants of COVID-19 pandemic are threatening the return to the office for many. Cloud communication has become the standard to keep enterprises rolling over the last two years. In response to this, RingCentral and Atos partnered in creating Unify Office, a born-in-the-cloud digital first solution that offers next-generation messaging, video, and phone services. It can be activated instantly and provides global enterprise grade security and reliability.
While we may not be socializing around the water cooler this September, hopefully you don’t mind us spending a few minutes to let you know about the latest capabilities in the new 21.3 release of Unify Office by RingCentral. As always, our release is full of great new functionality and improvements, designed to enhance both the standard user and administrator experiences. So here is a selection of the more notable highlights:
1. Share files from OneDrive and Sharepoint directly in Unify Office
Maybe you are in a conversation with your team and want to share the latest document but it’s now stored in OneDrive or Sharepoint - No problem. Unify Office now lets you attach files directly from these cloud storage locations which means you can easily share files in a team chat or video conference directly from the app.
2. Get more engagement with Breakout Rooms
With Breakout Rooms now available in Unify Office, hosts can split groups of participants into smaller groups, all within the same meeting, enabling more focused working sessions and group discussions. This often improves engagement levels and provides team members more opportunity to share ideas and thoughts in a remote work environment.
3. Effectively manage calls on the desktop app with Heads-up display
Heads-up display (HUD) is now available on the Unify Office desktop app. This means monitoring and managing calls on behalf of team members just became much easier. HUD empowers receptionists, executive assistants, and power users to view colleagues' real-time availability and manage multiple incoming calls, and much more.
4. Message forwarding
A feature many of us will know from using say WhatsApp for personal communications. A simple but effective feature that saves time and effort. Users can now forward messages from one conversation to another, making it even easier to share information with others - for better collaboration.
5. Do not disturb while screen sharing
We’ve all experienced this before. When in a meeting and we are sharing our screen but suddenly a message notification pops up – potentially revealing information that was not meant for other participants to see. To remove privacy concerns and general disturbances while screen sharing, we’ve implemented a do not disturb while screen sharing option. This means no incoming (video) calls or notifications will come through while you are sharing your screen.
6. Ad-hoc collaboration with Team Huddle
The Team Huddle feature allows members to create ad-hoc collaboration spaces connected to their team channels. This enables everyone to easily drop in and out of meetings - just like popping over to the IT Team for some help or dropping by the HR office to get information on the next company event.
7. Improved admin experience
This release is also packed with updates designed to make work easier for administrators. Here are four examples
- A new and improved portal header
A simplified version that provides the ability to perform core tasks more efficiently - as the saying goes, sometimes less is more…
- Archiver settings & permissions
New settings for the admin and user levels providing more granular control.
- Set up new users even faster
You can now copy an existing user extension and assign it onto a new user using licences. Just copy & paste, it’s as simple as that.
- Call Queue Manager enhancements
Added a “Messages” call queue manager permission which can be assigned to users who listen to call queue voicemails and return missed calls. We also added a navigation link to the Analytics portal from the Call Queue Management portal which is displayed when the manager has at least one Analytics permission. And to top it off, we increased the maximum number of managers per call queue from 15 to 50.
Atos has supported thousands of workers in maintaining productivity when working from home. As companies begin to return to the office perhaps in Q4 or Q1 2022, staff will need to maintain the same capabilities they’re used to with competitive device tech stacks.
In uncertain times, Unify Office is offering business customers greater certainty that their businesses can continue operating in a cost-effective, secure and efficient way. By servicing both business and IT decision makers equally, Unify Office helps to decrease total cost of ownership (TCO) and mitigate risk from global implementation while increasing end-user value and productivity. Atos Unify Office is available for customers in France, Belgium, Austria, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Germany, UK, Australia and USA.
