Iristick brings remote assistance and collaboration to its smart glasses with Microsoft Teams

Iristick brings remote assistance and collaboration to its smart glasses with Microsoft Teams

Iristick is announcing the launch of Microsoft Teams video conferencing solution on their Iristick.H1 and Iristick.G2 PRO smart glasses. Fully optimized for use with voice commands, see-what-I-see function, screen, and file-sharing capabilities. Providing a completely hands-free option for remote assistance and collaboration.

Iristick Microsoft Teams on Iristick remote video conferencing assistance

The ‘Microsoft Teams on Iristick’ solution allows users to start a call or share files without having to use their hands. During a call, they can livestream, take and share pictures, control the camera view and zoom in for details using voice commands. This way, the solution offers hands-free information exchange, remote assistance and troubleshooting options. The result: better diagnosis of maintenance issues, faster and improved technical assistance, reduced downtime and costs.

Extended Reality and smart glasses are an undeniable part of Industry 4.0, the smart factories of tomorrow and digital health. Leveraging these technologies and their remote assistance solutions will help companies gain competitive advantages and provide them with a better chance to position themselves at the forefront of their respective industries. With Microsoft Azure we significantly simplify the integration of intelligent technology at scale and reduce the time to market for companies like Iristick.” said Joris Aeles, Azure Business Group Lead, Microsoft.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a significant, 44% increase in the number of professionals using collaboration tools1,” said Johan De Geyter, CEO at Iristick. ”Iristick supports this increased demand by launching a widely used videoconferencing solution on our smart glasses. ‘Microsoft Teams on Iristick’ is an application that connects frontline professionals in every industry to empower them in a digitized future.

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Dubber brings conversational intelligence solutions to Microsoft Teams

Dubber brings conversational intelligence solutions to Microsoft Teams

Dubber Corporation Limited is announcing the ability to capture video recordings and perform advanced recording controls on Microsoft Teams. Dubber video recording for Microsoft Teams will deliver recording on a single platform with real-time search, keyword analytics, and AI-enriched insights.

The advanced recording controls for Microsoft Teams will give users flexibility and control when recording voice or video calls. The features include the ability to pause and resume recordings, record on-demand or selectively manage which types of calls or meetings are recorded.

Dubber Microsoft Teams

James Slaney, COO, Dubber: Businesses increasingly recognise default and basic recording solutions fail to meet their enterprise-grade requirements for security, compliance and data sovereignty. No other company offers the completeness, scalability and robustness of Dubber’s unified call recording and conversational intelligence capability as a Microsoft Teams certified service“.

“Capturing video recordings adds critical context to knowing what was said, particularly as video has become a primary communications medium for every business driven by hybrid work”.

“For example, every customer presentation captured, attached and connected to a CRM significantly improves revenue forecasting, sales coaching, training and more. For compliance intelligence, capturing video completes the requirement to know your customer and employees. The release of advanced recording controls provides flexibility and practical control for administrators and end-users to select the types of calls that are recorded and additionally to record on-demand or pause and resume recording”.

We are addressing the critical need for any service provider or reseller of Microsoft Teams to differentiate, drive revenue and increase retention,” added Slaney.

Feature release details:

  • Video call recording: Capture and unify all your video calls, meetings and voice recording on Microsoft Teams in Dubber’s infinitely scalable Voice Intelligence Cloud. Affordable and flexible plan options start as low as $39.95 (USD) per user/month, with 100GB of storage included.
  • AI-powered video: Enrich video recordings with AI to unlock best of breed Dubber AI capabilities such as intelligent keyword search, transcriptions, analytics, sentiment plus tone analysis and real-time notification and alerts.
  • Pause-resume: Users can effectively pause and resume voice and video calls on mobile and desktop. When initiated, it results in the same consistent experience across the native app as well as calls using Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency codes (DTMF).
  • On-demand: Once configured, when a call/meeting begins, it gets recorded only when the user presses the “record” button in Dubber’s app.
  • Selective recording: Allows Administrator users to select which type of calls/meetings are recorded. The following call types will be supported at launch, including the ability to record all call types.
    • Record external parties (determined by users’ tenancy) only
    • Record meetings only
    • Record PSTN only

Head to the Microsoft AppSource to get the latest control features and learn more about Dubber on Teams.

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Liquid Intelligent Technologies targets African businesses with affordable Microsoft Teams Essential

Liquid Intelligent Technologies targets African businesses with affordable Microsoft Teams Essential

Liquid Intelligent Technologies is bringing Microsoft Teams Essential, the standalone Microsoft Teams collaboration solution to small businesses across Africa. Liquid is a Microsoft certified partner for the new Microsoft Teams Essential offering. 

Microsoft Teams Essential Africa Liquid Technology

Microsoft Teams Essential is a solution that brings the Teams collaboration platform into an affordable package. It provides an affordable entry point for remote collaboration that small businesses can take advantage of. At $4 USD per month, a user gets 30 hours of group video calls, group chat, file sharing, and calendaring.

This solution will enable teams to seamlessly meet, chat, call, and collaborate irrespective of the device or location. The new offering maximises value while minimising costs for businesses by centralising onto a single platform their collaboration tools at less the cost of a full Microsoft Teams suite.

According to David Behr, CEO of Liquid Cloud and Cyber Security, “Teams Essentials is an entry-level focused version of the Microsoft Office Suite that extends the Teams platform to medium and small businesses, typically twenty-five users and below. Liquid is proud to partner with Microsoft to deliver this affordable solution that supports the collaborative nature of small businesses, promoting enterprise in Africa”.

To enable seamless collaboration Microsoft Teams Essentials gives users access to its Microsoft online tools, i.e., Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Users will also be able to connect to Teams Essentials using a 3rd party email provider.

Liquid says Teams Essentials is another offering it is proud to launch across the African continent. Part of its strategic repositioning as an intelligent technology provider serving its customers’ rapidly evolving communication requirements across Africa. 

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Lucidspark brings new whiteboard integration experience to Microsoft Teams

Lucidspark brings new whiteboard integration experience to Microsoft Teams

Lucidspark Microsoft teams whiteboard

Lucid, provider of visual collaboration software, announces integration of its virtual whiteboard, Lucidspark, with Microsoft Teams. The Lucidspark integration with Teams will connect distributed teams by bringing collaboration right into their existing workflows.

The new integration feature will allow users to collaborate and interact with a Lucidspark board directly within a Teams meeting. By sharing it to the meeting stage. Providing the full experience of an in-person whiteboarding session without ever leaving Teams. Thereby making it easier for hybrid teams to collaborate, align and move into action.

One of the key ways we help teams see and build the future is by providing integrations and solutions that work wherever teams work,” says Sable Petersen, senior director of product marketing for Lucid.

Through our continued collaboration with Microsoft Teams, this new integration experience will enable our users to more effectively and seamlessly collaborate right within their existing workflows, providing seamless collaboration in today’s hybrid environment.”

Sable Petersen

We’re pleased to continue our relationship with Lucid and improve collaboration to better enable and support today’s hybrid teams,” says Ben Summers, director, Teams Platform Marketing at Microsoft.

This updated integration experience brings powerful solutions right to where teams already work, allowing distributed team members to innovate and drive the business forward even more efficiently.”

Ben Summers

Team members can contribute in real-time while also taking collaboration to the next level with Lucidspark features like emoji reactions, collaborator colors, notes and timers, voting sessions and automatically organizing and prioritizing ideas into action plans with intelligent data synthesis. These capabilities allow distributed and hybrid teams to stay connected while centralizing conversations and turning those into action through visual brainstorms.

The updated Lucidspark integration builds on existing features, including the ability to share boards quickly and easily within Teams. To bring everyone together and add boards directly to team channels for later reference or asynchronous collaboration.

Earlier this year Lucid announced the integration of Lucidspark with Microsoft Azure DevOps. Click here to learn more about Lucidspark virtual whiteboard for Microsoft Teams.

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Microsoft Teams to accommodate up to 20,000 participants in a single meeting, Teams meetings to support up to 1,000 participants

Microsoft Teams to accommodate up to 20,000 participants in a single meeting, Teams meetings to support up to 1,000 participants

Microsoft Teams accommodate

Microsoft Teams is upgrading the virtual platform to accommodate larger groups for meetings and classes. As part of this new upgrade, meeting organisers who want to have more people watch a presentation or discussion will soon be able to bring together up to 20,000 participants at a go but for a view-only meeting experience.

And for more interactive meetings—where attendees can chat, unmute to talk, and turn on their videos for real-time collaboration, Teams meetings are growing to support up to 1,000 participants, up from a maximum of 250 participants currently.

These upgrades are part of new features in Microsoft Teams that will make virtual interactions more natural, more engaging, and ultimately, more human. These features offer three key benefits for people at work and in education. First, they help you feel more connected with your team and reduce meeting fatigue. Second, they make meetings more inclusive and engaging. And third, they help streamline your work and save time. It’s all about enabling people everywhere to collaborate, to stay connected, and to discover new ways to be productive from anywhere.

As the global response to COVID-19 evolves, communities around the world have moved from an era of “remote everything” into a more hybrid model of work, learning, and life. And as we all scramble to keep up, the future of work and education is being shaped before our eyes. At Microsoft, we have spent the last few months learning from our customers and studying how they use our tools,” Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365.

Of the new features announced – the Together Modewhich will be available for users from next month, presents a new meeting experience in Teams that uses AI segmentation technology to digitally place participants in a shared background, making it feel like you’re sitting in the same room with everyone else in the meeting or class. Research has shown that since most people started doing work remotely, many people are feeling less connected and experience more fatigue during video meetings than during in-person collaboration. This mode makes meetings more engaging by helping you focus on other people’s faces and body language and making it easier to pick up on the non-verbal cues that are so important to human interaction.

It’s great for meetings in which multiple people will speak, such as brainstorms or roundtable discussions, because it makes it easier for participants to understand who is talking,” Spataro explains.

The second feature – the Dynamic viewoffers an extraordinary new meeting experience but it’s not intended for every meeting. We believe that traditional video meetings people use every day can also be more engaging and dynamic. A set of enhancements we call dynamic view gives you more control over how you see shared content and other participants in a meeting. Using AI, meetings dynamically optimize shared content and video participants. New controls—including the ability to show shared content and specific participants side-by-side—let you personalize the view to suit your preferences and needs.

The third feature is the Video filters which allows users to subtly adjust lighting levels and soften the focus of the camera to customize their appearance. Also introduced is the Reflect messaging extension which is based on research that shows that employee well-being is more important to productivity than ever. Creating an emotionally supportive environment is key to keeping people healthy, happy, and focused. The new Reflect messaging extension gives managers, leaders and teachers an easy way to check in with how their team or students are feeling — either in general, or about a specific topic like work-life balance, the status of a project, current events, or a change within the organization. IT administrators will be able to install the Reflect extension from GitHub, and then make it available to employees in their organization in the message extension menu.

In addition to the above, Teams users will soon be able to react during a meeting using emojis that will appear to all participants. Live reactions is a shared feature with PowerPoint Live Presentations, which allows audience members to provide instant feedback to the presenter.

Also, during meetings, chat has become a lively space for conversation and idea-sharing and offers an option for people to participate in the discussion without having to jump in verbally. But it can be challenging to pay attention to video feeds, presentations, and chats all at the same time. Currently, Teams users need to manually open a chat window to view the chat screen. Soon, however, chats sent during a Teams meeting will surface on the screens of all meeting participants, making the chat more central to the conversation. 

While Teams already provides live captions as a way to follow along with what is being said in a meeting, soon we will add speaker attribution to captions so that everyone knows who is speaking. Live transcripts, coming later this year, provide another way to follow along with what has been said and who said it. After a meeting, the transcript file is automatically saved in a tab as a part of the meeting. “Unless otherwise specified, all of these features will roll out later this year. And they all reflect our vision for the future of work: where everyone is able to contribute and do their best work; where they can move fluidly between experiences, apps, and devices; where AI lends a helping hand to streamline tasks, provide short cuts, and save you time; and where technology contributes to wellbeing and doesn’t detract from it,” explains Spataro.