New Teams Features and Enhanced Jabra Functionality for PowerSuite Revealed During Microsoft Ignite 2018

As the Microsoft partner ecosystem and technology industry at large gathers in Florida for Microsoft Ignite 2018, Unify Square has introduced new software solutions to expand upon its industry-leading position supporting Microsoft Teams deployments. In addition to the wide-range of new features, services and enhanced functionality now available within PowerSuite, the industry’s first voice quality reporting & analytics solution for Teams is now available. Augmenting an already-robust Skype for Business voice solution, this new Teams offering will empower IT to better identify, track, and troubleshoot call quality across the entire Microsoft Intelligent Communications platform.

History of Microsoft Teams

Since first launching Teams last year, Microsoft has made significant strides in its objective to replace Skype for Business (SfB) with the new platform – even recently deeming Teams feature-complete, in addition to announcing that Teams is now used by 329,000 organizations. And this year at Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft has had a series of mini announcements for Teams, including a formal rollout of the new Teams certification for devices and the associated Microsoft store for Teams device purchases, a new Teams-centric algorithm for ambient noise reduction to allow a more “friendly” experience for call participants, and a number of intelligent-facing alerts in the Teams user interface to make the end-user aware of things like low speaker volume, speaking while on mute, and a poor network.

As the push to transition to Teams continues to ramp up, many enterprises are grappling with how to make a successful transition, or even how to introduce a unified communications system to their organization. Unify Square brings unparalleled experience to support organizations in their efforts to effectively deploy and manage Teams.

Setting the global industry bar, earlier this year Unify Square rolled out a full suite of Teams-centric consulting, managed service and software offerings. To date, Unify Square has already supported approximately 90 percent of its customer base with Teams piloting and migration activities.

“As Microsoft ushers in the new era of workplace collaboration with Teams at the forefront, we are also entering a new period of change for enterprise IT driven by the rapid adoption of new platforms, applications, and collaboration models,” said John Case, CEO of Unify Square. “Our deep UC expertise, paired with continuous PowerSuite product innovation, allows us to thrive in guiding enterprises through some of the most complex IT and end-user adoption issues – issues that will endure well into this new evolved unified communications era.”

Expanding PowerSuite

Joining forces with Jabra, we have also announced the expansion of our partnership and a deepening of the PowerSuite-Jabra integration. Growing beyond the current reporting and troubleshooting of Jabra devices, IT can now rapidly implement firmware updates and feature configurations for Jabra devices directly within the PowerSuite platform.

In addition to the Service Health solution to report on Teams voice quality, new updates and enhancements to the PowerSuite performance and operations software for both Teams and Skype for Business revealed today include:

• Teams Provisioning (beta) – The first of multiple phases of functionality to enable phone number management for and bulk migrations to Teams. This new functionality (which brings PowerSuite to provisioning parity for Teams, adding to the functionality already present for Skype for Business) includes phone number assignments and user onboarding, off-boarding, and termination, as well as policy management.
• Enhanced Workstream Collaboration Analytics – A rapid iteration of the initial Microsoft Teams reporting capabilities introduced earlier this year, this enhancement features new analytics including total teams and channel message counts, team member counts, and number of teams joined per individual.
• Tracking Dashboard (beta) – This new PowerSuite monitoring solution allows IT to track and assign a ‘score’ to the UC user experience for a targeted set of users. The solution empowers proactive troubleshooting to understand who on the call is creating the poor call experience, and for guidance on how to address and resolve.
• Mid-Call Update (beta) – This new extension of the Help Desk solution allows IT to drill even deeper into the details of a call for a single user, troubleshooting and taking action during any a call or conference as issues occur.

“For years, PowerSuite has led the market in providing the most comprehensive and holistic view into Skype for Business service health, availability, and customer satisfaction. As Microsoft continues its aggressive transition to Teams, we remain dedicated to bringing the same bleeding-edge IT solutions to the Teams platform. By consistently enhancing and rolling out new features and managed service extensions for PowerSuite, we are able to do that and so much more,” said Scott Gode, chief product marketing officer at Unify Square. “We look forward to taking part of Ignite this year to continue progressing our technology and building our product roadmap alongside Teams.”

Microsoft Ignite 2018

In addition to announcing a handful of Teams at Ignite this year, we learned that Teams is the fasted growing Microsoft app – ever. With a jam-packed schedule filled with Teams-related sessions, it was clear Microsoft was drilling in on how to plan a migration and best practices. Both large and small announcements trickled in throughout the week, with our new PowerSuite functionality for Voice Quality reporting in teams causing quite a buzz – especially since it allows companies transitioning from Skype for Business to Teams to compare benchmarks and to fully commit to a complete migration when they see that Teams has met their VQ bar.

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