No Jitter Roll Year in Review: July to December 2022

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Image: Yuri Arcurs - Alamy Stock Photo

We revisited the year in No Jitter Roll, and there was so much news that we've broken it up into two recaps. Review the back half of the year in new collaborative platform features, call center updates, and innovations in AI.

July 2022

Microsoft announced the Microsoft Digital Contact Center Platform — an open, extensible, and collaborative contact center service powered by Dynamics 365, Teams, Power Platform, Azure, and Nuance. The company partnered with contact center infrastructure providers, including Avaya, Genesys, and NICE.
The company also debuted Viva Engage, a social app within its Viva employee experience platform. Engage is intended to try and foster social interactions among a distributed workforce via storylines or content that Microsoft claims will help colleagues "share experiences, celebrate milestones, and discuss your interests” so colleagues can “learn more about you and your work.”
GoTo announced its intent to acquire mobile device management provider Miradore, with plans to integrate the company into GoTo's Resolve IT Support and Management product by early 2023.
Zoom integrated more apps into its third-party Apps ecosystem and made some of them available for use in webinars, including the quiz apps Pigeonhole Live and Mentimeter.
The company also unveiled its app for hoteling and hotdesking, Zoom Workspace Reservation, allowing users to pre-book workspaces by reserving a space for a specific time and duration. It works with Zoom Rooms, Zoom Phone appliances, work desks, and other workspaces.
Finally, Zoom also updated its call center options to include customizable waiting rooms and file sharing during customer chats.
Google and visual collaboration app provider Miro revealed an integration between Google Meet and Miro's collaborative whiteboarding app. Miro had teamed up with Zoom two months earlier. RingCentral also added a whiteboarding option to its RingCentral Rooms product line.

August 2022

RingCentral focused on reducing app-switching via several add-ins, including Google Drive and Forms, Trello, and ZenDesk, and updated its Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. For Salesforce, agents can click a phone number to send an SMS message and perform a warm transfer, which allows agents to talk to the transferred party before connecting with the caller.
UC analytics provider Vyopta has added Zoom Phone and Room Rooms support to its multi-vendor monitoring and analytics service.
Microsoft previewed the Experience insight dashboard, which provides metrics on product usage, in-product feedback, and Net Promoter Score values. To gain more detailed information, an IT admin can select an app or service to see details on these metrics and as user comments.
Additionally, Microsoft announced the general availability of Azure Communication Services support for Teams, which extends the interoperability of Azure Communication Service with Teams. Developers could now embed the Teams' calling experience into business apps and create workflows for apps that need custom management of incoming and outgoing Teams phone calls.
CCaaS provider NICE announced that it received the highest-level partner designation, Top Tier Status, for Microsoft's Azure IP Co-sell program. With this Microsoft and NICE combined service, enterprises will have access to CXone's voice and digital products, which can be integrated into Microsoft Teams, Dynamics, Nuance, Azure Communication Services, and Customers Insights.
Zoom released the Zoom Phone Power Pack, an add-on set of features to provide added functionality to customer support users. It included call queue analytics for real-time and historical insights, and the ability for call center users can access receptionists or call queues via SMS or MMS. The company also boosted the capabilities of its whiteboard app with Slack and Teams access options.

September 2022

Slack introduced Slack canvas, a new feature that allows users to curate, organize, and share resources within a single screen (i.e., canvas), which will be available next year. The company also updated its ad-hoc voice collaboration feature Huddles: Slack users will now be able to turn on video within Huddles, and multiple users can screen-share at the same. Information shared during a huddle will be automatically saved in the channel or DM where the huddle was started.
Microsoft updated its employee experience platform to include integrating Viva Goals with Teams for OKR tracking, Azure DevOps for work items, Power Bi datasets to track KPIs and key results, and Microsoft Planner and Project to receive automatic project management updates.
Zoom updated several of its product lines: It rolled out custom call handling options for Zoom Phone, plus the ability to track usage and the adoption of phone systems with the Subscription Center Management Reports; Apple CarPlay support so Zoom Meeting users can view upcoming meetings or join meetings from their cars; a new Zoom Whiteboard Plus subscription, which gives its users access to unlimited concurrent whiteboards; and a Salesforce integration with Zoom Contact Center, so agents can manage customer engagement right from Salesforce, without needing to switch apps.
Dialpad revealed several AI-based tools aimed at streamlining the agent experience and streamlining the call-review process: Dialpad AI Agent Assist is a single interface that integrates with knowledge centers and other systems so contact center agents can search for answers to questions without needing to switch tabs. AI Agent Assist analytics provides insight into agent behavior, while QA Scorecards will automatically flag a scorecard phrase or behavior.

October 2022

Cisco and Microsoft announced a new partnership that'll bring native Microsoft Teams interoperability to Cisco Room and Desk devices, marking the first time that Cisco devices will be certified for Microsoft Teams.
Conversational AI and automation provider Uniphore announced new AI capabilities for two of its customer service and sales platforms. First, for its customer service platform U, the Knowledge Bot will surface information from a knowledge database to inform live agents on the next-best action to take in a call. Then, in its Q for Sales platform, new AI capabilities will provide note-taking capabilities to a salesperson.
Salesforce rolled out its new contact center service, Salesforce Contact Center, featuring a host of AI and automation capabilities aimed at improving the agent and customer experience. The service also gave agents the ability to send web, mobile, WhatsApp, SMS, or Facebook Messenger messages to customers.

November 2022

Device maker Poly, now a part of HP, introduced its latest Zoom Rooms-certified conference room system, the Poly Studio Systems for Zoom Rooms.
Cloud-based software-as-a-service platform Ooma added five new capabilities to its Ooma Office business communications service offering, including Microsoft 365 integration which automatically created tasks associated with customer calls.
Cloud-based remote work tools provider GoTo added new features to its voice and video platform GoTo Connect meant to reduce IT administration burdens, including a new dial plan editor where admins can add more phone lines if they notice heavy call volume.
Contact center AI provider Observe.AI announced an integration of its conversation intelligence and workflow automation capabilities into Zoom Contact Center, which will allow enterprises to extract insight from customer engagements, while contact center intelligence provider Cresta announced an integration that would allow Zoom Contact Center customers to access Cresta's suite of AI capabilities.

December 2022

Cloud communications provider 8x8 announced a series of leadership changes, which included industry veteran Dave Sipes being terminated as the company's CEO. He is to be replaced by Samuel C. Wilson, formerly 8x8's CFO. This announcement followed press coverage that UC provider RingCentral had considered purchasing 8x8.
RingCentral released its device-as-a-service (DaaS) offering, which allows enterprises to opt for an OpEx over a CapEx model for procuring devices for RingCentral MVP, Rooms, and Contact Center. The company also announced that it is offering end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to its video service.
Slack announced a new technology bundle, the Sales Productivity Bundle, and teed up a combined Sales Cloud and Slack offering powered by Salesforce Customer 360. The Sales Productivity Bundle will include Salesforce's Sales Cloud Unlimited Edition and Slack's Enterprise Grid plan at a discounted rate.
Salesforce is now available on Zoom's roster of Apps for Zoom Team Chat. With the Salesforce App for Team Chat integration, users can 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.
Vyopta announced that it now fully supports Microsoft Teams voice services, including Microsoft Phone Plans, Direct Routing, and Operator Connect.

That concludes our wrap-up of the communications and collaboration news covered in our No Jitter Rolls for 2022. We hope that you enjoyed this look back and wishing all our readers a happy and healthy start to 2023!