Welcome to the No Jitter Roll, the regular round-up of news dedicated to the communications and collaboration industry. In this week's edition, we explore some new whiteboarding capabilities for Microsoft Teams Rooms, a Salesforce integration for Zoom Team Chat, plus 8x8 selling off a part of its business.
Update Brings New Whiteboarding Features to Teams Rooms Devices
Microsoft
shared in a blog post this week that an Android update will bring new digital whiteboarding capabilities to Teams Rooms devices, including Neat's
Neat Board and devices in the Yealink Meeting Board line of digital whiteboards. Among the new features:
- Ad-hoc whiteboarding: By clicking on the "Whiteboard" on the device's home screen, users can start a whiteboarding session without a Teams meeting. Previously, Teams users would need to set up a Teams meeting or be invited into a whiteboarding session to use the capabilities. Admins will need to enable the feature on the device by going into the device settings and toggling on "Allow initiate Whiteboard."
- Switching between local and collaborative whiteboarding experiences: By pressing "Start meeting" on the whiteboard screen, users can move from a local version of the whiteboard to an online one. This will create an ad-hoc meeting and present the whiteboard to the meeting stage. Additionally, you can add or remove participants from this meeting.
- Redesigned content sharing: When a user selects the "Share" button in the meeting control panel, they'll now see all the content options for sharing, including Microsoft Whiteboard.
- Touch screen support: Admins can now "Enable touch screen controls" from the device settings, which will allow users to control the room system from either the touch display at the front of the room or the touch console in the room.
Zoom Shares Latest Platform Integrations
A month after Zoom announced that users will be able to access third-party tools without needing to leave the Zoom chat platform, the company has shared that
Salesforce is now available on its roster of Apps for Zoom Team Chat. With the Salesforce App for Team Chat integration, users will be able to search Salesforce CRM records, share them in channels, add messages to Salesforce records, and receive Salesforce notifications.
In addition to the Salesforce App for Team Chat, Zoom shared details on its integration with Jira and ServiceNow, revealed earlier this year. With the ServiceNow Virtual Agent App, Zoom users can interact with a bot to create tickets, check the status, and take action, whereas the Jira App allows users to view, create, and update Jira issues within Zoom Team Chat.
Spearline Acquires Callstats from 8x8
Communications infrastructure testing provider
Spearline acquired Web-RTC-based communications metrics provider Callstats from 8x8. The Callstats platform measures call quality, provides
eMOS scores, and run diagnostics and troubleshooting support to identify call issues for contact centers, service providers, and app developers,
according to the Callstats website. With this acquisition,
Spearline hopes to bolster its own telecommunication testing and monitoring service, including monitoring capabilities for WebRTC, VoIP, fixed-line, and cellular networks.
The news of Spearline acquiring Callstats comes shortly after rumors that RingCentral was considering acquiring 8x8, as industry analyst Zeus Kerravala
shared in a recent article. While Kerravala shared both the pros and cons of the deal, he believed that RingCentral wouldn’t make the purchase, citing among reasons that then 8x8 CEO Dave Sipes was able to do “a much better job of sales execution” and that 8x8 management signaled improved profitability ahead. A week after that article was published,
8x8 made a series of executive changes and ousted Sipes as the company’s CEO.
ICYMI: Recapping 2022 on No Jitter
As we wrap up 2022, we would like to highlight some of the top articles on No Jitter from this year. From issues like sunsetting copper lines to new contact center platform markets hitting the market, it has been a busy year for enterprise IT professional and the larger communications and collaboration industry. Here is a sampling of several of the top articles in 2022:
