We like everything at our fingertips.
That vital thing you need, just when you need it.
Those critical details to hand, just at the right moment.
Joining up more and more of our business applications means fewer platforms to manage and a slicker, faster user experience.
Global Directories are the perfect case in point.
Searching, finding and messaging a contact in just a few clicks using the same, single platform in just a few seconds brilliantly demonstrates the real-life value of integrated and unified communications.
But not all platforms come with that neat interoperability as standard.
It could be argued that Microsoft Teams, for example – that monolithic, powerhouse of an app upon which hundreds of millions of us worldwide now rely – missed that particular trick.
But when that happens, an affordable, effective fix hardly ever fails to step up to the plate.
Take the latest from UK-based Microsoft and Cisco app innovator telisca.
It’s affordable ‘Global Directory’ Microsoft Teams add-on allows the importation and merger of myriad databases from multiple sources; providing users with ultimate (and super-convenient) control over ALL of their contacts, hosted on a single telisca server.
“It’s like embedding the world’s biggest rolodex into the world’s biggest automatic dialler,” says telisca’s business development head Ben Djamaluddin.
“Anyone on Teams is able to spin up any of their contacts – internal or external – and interact seamlessly via message, email, chat, voice or video in the way we have all come to take for granted.”
It sounds so simple and yet it’s easy to forget that that was (not so long ago) the exception to the norm.
Back then we made much more time-consuming, labour-intensive choices: email, call, SMS or video conference.
Today much has changed.
“It’s undoubtedly the case that demand for that kind of single-platform, integrated communications has increased massively in line with the surge in remote working,” says Djamaluddin.
“Users have become more and more used to app-based communications and expect a slick, fast and convenient experience, whether on their phone, laptop or any other device.
“Directories of contacts are, though, often disparate, unconnected and, in many cases, legacy. In those cases, ‘slick’ and ‘fast’ and ‘convenient’ are unattainable.
“The bottom line is that users have come to love Microsoft Teams so much they don’t want to have to leave in order to find contacts from external databases which only exist elsewhere.
“As well as inconvenient, that’s also highly inefficient.”
Telisca’s tweak to Teams enables combined directory searching via multiple criteria; ranging from name and/or organisation to segmented groups such as geographical territories and customer verticals.
Hunt groups, contact sharing, and automatic messaging functionality are also accommodated.
“The new and amazing level of sophistication with which we remotely interact with each other is changing how the world does business,” says Djamaluddin.
“It means no one can be certain where a contact is physically located at the point of interaction. They might not be at their desk in the same way that they used to be. As a result, those multiple, yet unified, channels of communication are vital.
“The post-pandemic hybrid working model continues to fuel demand for truly unified systems and of course Microsoft Teams has established itself as a go-to one-stop-shop.
“But it occasionally needs added functionality in order to deliver next-level user experience and we predict more and more incorporation of new, innovative solutions going forward.”
Take a bow plug ‘n play..!
To find out more, visit telisca.
