In today’s fast-paced business environment, the ability to pull people together quickly is a huge asset. However, bringing your team together “on the fly” can be a challenge – more often than not, team members are in multiple locations, they have conflicting schedules, and it may take a day or more for many people to respond to an email or voicemail meeting invitation.
Here are three ways unified communications makes it easy for everyone on your team to share their location and availability.
- If status is “unavailable” UC lets you see where someone is unavailable.
This can be a powerful piece of information. For instance, if I’m unavailable because I’m in a meeting, but my status also indicates that I’m mobile, then the best way to reach me to request a meeting (or to convey a crucial piece of information) is probably a text message or IM over the Windows Mobile R2 client on my mobile phone – not a voice mail that I’m not likely to get to right away.
- UC offers a Follow Me service (simultaneous ring).
You can set your UC client to ring your client, your cell phone, or even your home phone. This will insure you never miss that important customer call, no matter where you are. UC also allows you to set up team ring on demand from your UC Client. This feature lets you select multiple teammates to send calls to when you are on the phone in a meeting, so calls will go to an available team member.
- UC allows you to prioritize your voicemail.
Voicemail is deposited in your email inbox. You can glance at your voicemails and choose that important voicemail without and having to listen to all your messages to get to the one you need. In addition, the UC voicemail service allows you to use voice commands to manage your voicemail box. This limits the risk of dialing feature codes into your wireless device while driving or doing other things. You can play delete, repeat, or send with voice commands from your UC mailbox.
When you combine these features with other UC capabilities – including real-time presence and calendar information, full audio and video conferencing, “meet now” functionality, and full document sharing – you start to see why UC is such a powerful tool for connecting and collaborating.
