OCS 2007 R2 Launch
Streamlined Communications
Today, users face the challenge of managing their communications across many devices and applications, which negatively impacts productivity. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 streamlines the way users manage communications, enabling them to find and communicate with the right person, from whichever applications they use most.
New call management capabilities let receptionists and team assistants take a large volume of incoming calls and quickly route them to the intended recipients with a simple click, while delegation features allow executives to completely hand over the management of their phone calls to their assistants. New desktop-sharing capabilities allow users on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms to collaborate with one another at the same time they talk to each other using enhanced audio conferencing features. The Group Chat feature lets organisations set up searchable, topic-based chat rooms that persist over time, allowing geographically distributed teams to better collaborate with one another while preserving organisational knowledge.
Operational Flexibility and Control
IT environments are very complex and create extra administrative overhead for IT administrators. IT is also called upon to deliver on imperatives like cost control, security, integration with existing infrastructure, and managing compliance requirements. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 allows IT administrators to meet these challenges effectively by giving them the ability to provide flexible communications solutions to users and by delivering the tools they need to help manage secure, compliant communications.
The new on-premise audio-conferencing capability puts IT in control of their audio-conferencing infrastructure while saving potentially millions of dollars in audio-conferencing costs. The Single Number Reach feature allows IT to log business calls placed by users from cellular phones for accounting purposes while helping to ensure that the same dialling rules that apply to calls made by users from their work phone also extend to their cellular calls. The new video monitoring capabilities allow IT to monitor the quality of video calls and conferences on their network, while support for SIP-trunking does away with the need to manage expensive on-premise gateways.
Extensible Communications Platform
One of the biggest advantages of having a software-based communications infrastructure is that businesses can embed communications capabilities into existing line-of-business applications and use communications and workflow capabilities to automate business processes, which saves money, saves time, and improves customer service. Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers an extensible communications platform that works with an organisation’s existing messaging and telephony infrastructure and can adapt to changing business needs.
The new Agent Dashboard for Microsoft Dynamics CRM built using the published platform APIs in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 gives call centre agents the ability to see presence information and the ability to click to communicate right from within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM screens. Additionally, software developers can automate business processes with instant messaging (IM) and e-mail workflows using such familiar development tools as Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
To find out more about this new release, register for the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Virtual Launch Event. OCS 2007 R2 will be available to customers and partners at launch.