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Zoom Releases ‘One’ Bundle; Slack Updates Huddles

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Zoom and Slack icons
Image: Dzmitry Kliapitski - Alamy Stock Photo
Welcome to the No Jitter Roll, the regular round-up of news about collaboration and communication. In today's edition, we cover the latest on Zoom’s bundle offering, an update to an asynchronous tool, and a trio of new features for a contact center service.
 
Zoom One Bundles Comms, Collaboration Capabilities
Zoom announced Zoom One, a bundled offering that combines its chat, phone, meeting, whiteboard, and webinar capabilities. Available now, Zoom One serves as a substitute for buying individual licenses for each service, simplifying billing for IT management, Zoom explained.
 
“Businesses continue to realize the time and cost saving a single provider can offer. According to Omdia’s latest end user survey, 40% of organizations are prioritizing investments around eliminating multiple cloud-based UC solutions that may be deployed within their organizations,” Brent Kelly, principal analyst at Omdia Research, said in the announcement. “The need to simplify business operations is a market trend that we see as being increasingly important, and Zoom One’s tiered bundles and common management console aligns well to this customer demand.”
 
In addition to Zoom One, Zoom shared its framework for other bundled offerings, including Zoom Spaces, Events, Contact Center, and Developers. Each of these bundles will be built around its core capabilities (for instance, Zoom Spaces will include Zoom Rooms, conference room connectors, digital signage, scheduling display, and workspace reservation capabilities) and similarly provide a single price structure. No information on the release of these bundles was available as of publication.
 
Slack Adds Huddle Features
At its annual conference this week, Slack revealed a series of updates to its asynchronous communications tool, Slack Huddles. They include:
  • Coworking space in huddles: With this feature, all the content shared in a huddle, including chat, links, and notes, will be automatically saved as a message thread in the channel or DM where the huddle was launched. Additionally, users within the same channel or DM who weren't in the huddle will be able to reference that messaging thread for any information that they might have missed.
  • Video-enabled huddles: Initially, Slack Huddles start as an audio-only conversation with a minimized screen. Slack users will soon be able to turn on video during a huddle meeting and leverage video meeting capabilities like background blur.
  • Multi-person screen shares: Within huddles, multiple Slack users will soon be able to share their screens simultaneously. Additionally, users can draw or use live cursors on other users' shared screens to highlight a part of the document or presentation.
  • Emojis, effects, and stickers in huddles: Within a huddle, users can share emojis, effects, and stickers. Stickers are used for things like raising your hand or stepping away to refill coffee. They will also stay on the screen until the user removes them.
 
Amazon Web Services Releases Case Management Feature, Automated Chatbot Designer
AWS shared three new capabilities for its contact center service, Amazon Connect. They include:
  • Amazon Connect Cases: Available in preview, Amazon Connect Cases is a case management feature that allows contact center agents to track, collaborate, and resolve customer cases. When a customer calls or messages with an issue, this feature will automatically generate a case record that stores the call, chat, or any associated tasks. Agents can also manually create and resolves cases and tasks, view and add case data, and make internal comments. Additionally, IVRs and chatbots can use case data from Amazon Connects Cases for personalized interactions.
  • Amazon Connect outbound campaigns: Generally available, Amazon Connect outbound campaigns allows contact centers to deliver messages, like appointment reminders, marketing promotions, and delivery notifications, to customers through voice, SMS, or email, without the need for third-party integrations. This capability also includes a predictive dialer that automatically calls customers in a list, which can distinguish between a live customer, voicemail, or busy signal through AWS's machine learning capabilities.
  • Amazon Lex automated chatbot designer: With the newly available chatbot designer feature, developers can automatically design chatbots, speeding up the deployment process. To use the automated chatbot designer, a developer first uploads a transcript from Amazon Connect or another application into Lex, and AWS's machine learning capabilities will analyze the transcript and create an initial chatbot design. This chatbot design will include associated phrases, common intents, and a list of issues for it to resolve. Additionally, developers can manually make changes to this design and build, test, and deploy chatbots using Lex.
ICYMI: This Week Over at WorkSpace Connect
In addition to the collaboration and communication resources shared on this site, we’re covering the future of work on our sister site, WorkSpace Connect, which looks at the intersection of HR, IT, and facility/real estate. Articles from this week include: