Amazon Chime Review: Collaborate with Amazon

Amazon Chime: simplifying teamwork

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Amazon Chime Review
CollaborationCollaboration Software ReviewsInsights

Published: August 20, 2021

Rebekah Carter - Writer

Rebekah Carter

In an era of remote and flexible working, it seems like every technology company has its own solution for enabling better collaboration. Amazon Chime is just one example of this. Created by the AWS team, Amazon Chime is a comprehensive communications service built to support teams in communicating more effectively.  

The Amazon Chime environment ensures companies can meet, chat, and even place calls from within the same landscape, all using one application. Developers can even use the same services and infrastructure powering Amazon Chime to add various features to your own applications. The Amazon Chime SDK supports audio calling, screen sharing, and video calling. 

Let’s explore the features of Amazon Chime, and what it can do for your business. 

Amazon Chime Review: Features 

Amazon Chime is an all-in-one solution for collaboration via audio, video, chat, and content sharing. Built on the powerful AWS environment, this collaborative tool allows businesses to choose exactly how they want to collaborate and pay only for what they use.  

Like most popular tools for teamwork today, Amazon Chime ensures you can meet, chat, and place calls within a unified and secure environment. You can instantly accelerate a chat message to a call, share your screen, and even invite more people to join meetings whenever you like. Let’s take a look at some of the features you can access: 

Meetings:

The “Meetings” section of Amazon Chime allows customers to use their calendar and add [email protected] to meetings, so Chime can call you. There are also personalised meeting links, a simplified one-tap meeting join feature, and even a “running late” notification. Other Meeting features include: 

  • Call Me access 
  • Optimised hosting based on attendee location 
  • Screen sharing 
  • Visual rosters  
  • Video tiles and picture-in-picture 
  • Meeting recording 
  • High-quality wideband audio conferencing 

Video Conferencing:

Amazon Chime supports all kinds of high-quality video experiences for mobile and desktop attendees. You can start meetings with Alexa, access integrations with leading brands like Dolby, and even use enhanced whiteboard features during the meeting. Other features include: 

  • Video for up to 8 people on mobile or 16 on desktop 
  • SIP H.323 conference room support 
  • Dolby voice room 
  • Instant meeting room joining 
  • Alexa meeting support 
  • Whiteboard features for collaboration 

Team Collaboration:

Users can access Amazon Chime to quickly conference with colleagues directly, in any environment. You can share attachments up to 50MB in size, create chat rooms, and even set up an integration with Slack, to ensure people can connect straight from their Slack workspace. Other features include:  

  • Instant chat with file sharing 
  • Chat rooms with @mentions 
  • Smart presence 
  • 1:1 voice and video calling 
  • Amazon Chime Meetings for Slack 
  • Chatbots 
  • Webhooks 

Business Calling:

The Business Calling section of Amazon Chime ensures companies can easily place and receive calls in their Amazon Chime application. There’s support for SMS messaging too. Calls sync immediately across all devices when someone rings your Chime number, and you can switch active calls between desktop and mobile devices in seconds. Other features include: 

  • Voicemail with recordings 
  • Calls to over 100 countries 
  • Chime directory for phone numbers 
  • Instant switch between devices 
  • Call history with redial or message reply 
  • Instantly turn calls into meetings 
  • Text messaging for over 100 countries 

Security and Admin:

Amazon Chime immediately offers peace of mind for company collaboration, thanks to the structure being built on the AWS service. You can benefit from a data centre and network architecture designed to meet the requirements of most security-sensitive organisations. Security features also include: 

  • A range of hosting region options 
  • Encryption for all voice, video, content, and messages 
  • Automatic updates 
  • Slack workspace invitations 
  • AWS Cloud Trail integration 
  • Single Sign-On 
  • Extensive user management 
  • Reporting 
  • Call detail records 
  • Amazon Chime Management APIs 

Amazon Chime Review: Benefits 

As one of the more comprehensive collaboration systems on the market today, Amazon Chime goes all-out to ensure people can connect more effectively in a digital world. Thanks to the underlying AWS cloud structure, companies can expect an excellent level of reliability and stability whenever they’re connecting employees around the globe.  

The Amazon Chime environment also comes with a wide range of integration and extensibility options, including SDKs, unique calling connectors, and APIs, so you can build the communication environment that suits you. Benefits include: 

  • Incredible security and stability: From extensive call detail records for compliance purposes, to granular user permission control, security is definitely top-of-mind for Amazon Chime. You can access integrations with Single Sign-on Tools and connect with CloudTrail to track account activity within the AWS environment. Amazon also delivers solutions for data sovereignty, and access to the highest possible encryption standards
  • Business calling: Amazon Chime’s business calling solution is surprisingly comprehensive. You can make calls to over 100 countries and receive calls within the Chime application. There’s instant device switching, and the option to immediately turn a call into a meeting. Plus, you get text messaging for more than 100 countries too. All that, and you also know you’re getting the reliability of Amazon’s amazing data centre ecosystem
  • Easier content sharing and chat: Amazon makes chatting easy, with either one-on-one messages or full chat rooms. The Smart presence functionality is great for instantly seeing which team members are available, and companies can build their own custom chat bots to strengthen connections between teams and people
  • Amazing integrations: Amazon allows you to build the collaboration solution that works for you, with APIs, SDKs, and other solutions for extensibility. However, there are also a range of built-in integrations to take advantage of, like the Dolby Voice Room environment for meetings, and the Slack app for collaboration. Amazon also has various “APN” partners like Nextiva, Lumen, and T2M Works
  • Build your own solution: Outside of the standard Amazon Chime application, developers and business leaders also have the option to build their own perfect collaboration ecosystem, with unique tools like the Amazon Chime SDK and Voice Connector

Amazon Chime: Verdict 

Amazon Chime is a fantastic communication service for business leaders looking to take advantage of a more flexible environment for collaboration. Equipped with everything you need to keep your teams connected, wherever they are, Amazon Chime combines meetings, video, chat, and audio for constant communication and productivity.  

With access to a huge range of integration and extensibility options, Amazon Chime can scale to suit any business. What’s more, this easy-to-use solution is fantastic for encouraging quick adoption among all your staff members – wherever they are.  

If you’re looking for reliability and scale, Amazon Chime is a great choice.  

 

 

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