We’d love your feedback on Skype for Business Cloud PBX
We’d love to hear about your experience (both positive and negative) with Skype for Business Cloud PBX in a 30-40 minute call at your convenience. • Your valuable feedback will be used to improve Office 365. • We’d provide you with a $150 check as a thank you. • Additional benefit: A direct connection to Microsoft for additional assistance on your Skype for Business deployment. • This is not a sales solicitation, and your feedback will be treated in strictest confidence. • An independent research agency, Moziac Group, will lead the conversations. Entry Requirements: • 100+ paid Cloud PBX licenses AND • 50+ deployed seats of Cloud PBX and/or Cloud PSTN Conferencing Mozaic will follow up based on a very short form you complete here: https://mozaicgroup-my.sharepoint.com/personal/amber_mozaic-group_com/_layouts/15/guestaccess.aspx?guestaccesstoken=iSudN0yesmtHs3WJwgOGYamw%2bO5VV1fJo48TwZl8i58%3d&docid=1_18647472c9e304e4bb0f7ae66d8094012&wdFormId=%7B1D287D6B%2D5868%2D44F3%2DA508%2D07AF538BDE53%7D Thank you for being a valued customer! We are eager to hear your feedback.Experiences with SRS/Logitech SmartDock
David Phillips asked me to share out experience with the Logitech SmartDock and SRSv2 in another thread, I thought I would start a new post to collect other people's experience. We are refurbishing our head office buildings, the first floor of the first building went live 3 weeks ago, so our experience is limited at this point. This floor has about 250 desks, and now a new collection of collaboration booths, high tables, etc. For the meeting rooms we installed :- 3 x 5 person Rooms with 46" screen, SmartDock, Logitech C930E and Senheisser ML20 Speaker 1 x 9 person Room with 65" screen SmartDock and Logitech Group 2 x 14 person room with 75" screen SmartDock, Logitech Group with extension mic, extron amp and ceiling speakers 3 x 55" Surfacehubs in a variety of different settings We bought the SmartDocks separate to the Surface Pros inside them, didn't find any issue in following the instructions to create the build, and to configure the accounts in Skype Online. We manage them in Intune, but not in OMS (too expensive!). We've configured them with E1, CloudPBX, PSTN Conferencing and a UK Domestic DialPlan. They have wired connections to our direct internet connection, not through the corporate lan, they arent domain joined. Out staffs response has been great, it's a big step up from the ugly collection of speakerphones and TVs we had before. Sound clarity is great, Video and screen sharing are very good. At the moment I would say about 40% of our meetings are using skype, and perhaps an equal number dialing into a legacy audioconferencing provider, the balance is shifting as people discover how much clearer the audio is in Skype. Having a quality solution in every bookable space makes a huge difference, we no longer need to think much about which site a user is at when booking a meeting, just find a point where people and a room are available and let them figure out where they want to be. The Logitech Dock seems pretty good, lots of screws but we don't want something that users will take to bits. Solid feeling, very good swivel function. It would perhaps have been easier with a line out option inside the cable section. There lots of cables going in/out of the dock but our installers have done a good job of making it neat and unmovable. We understand that we've bought into a very new product but its been remarkably stable. We are aware of 3 devices that reached a point where they needed a reboot as they became unresponsive (we schedule a reboot each night), this typically seems to be related to connecting local devices to the hdmi in. We've had quite a lot of difficulty getting hdmi switch boxes working reliably on the hdmi input, we wanted to provide autoswtching between hdmi and mini-dp inputs. Forcing the switch to set an appropriate Edid seems to be helping, but I'm not convinced we've totally figured it right yet. Users have raised 2 areas in the software that could be improved. 1. when dialing out to an external conference provider they cant then connect a laptop into the screen locally. 2. They would like to be able to cancel meetings that don't show up from the device, ideally we would like them to timeout like on a meeting room system. We're now just over 3 weeks away from our second floor going live, 15 SRS and 4 Shubs. I'll update back here with any new expereinces. Looking forward to seeing what happens as the SRSv2 app updates. DM me if you want any recomendations for installers in th UK.Skype for Business Broadcast: Cloud Voice Update
Join the Skype Meeting Broadcast on Thursday, Dec 15, 2016 at 9:00 am PST. Come join Delanda Coleman and Jamie Stark from the Skype for Business marketing team to hear all about Skype for Business Cloud Voice Reporting and manageability as well as PSTN Calling updates including new service in France. There will be lots of demos! Don’t miss it! Calendar Invite below. If you have missed our previous broadcasts they are all available on demand at aka.ms/sfbcastpast
Cloud Connector Edition 2.0 is GA with Media Bypass
Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition 2.0 is generally avaialble now. Auto updates soon/60 days to manual update Skype Broadcast: Cloud Connector Edition – What’s New in 2.0! Friday the 21st July at 9 a.m. Pacific This session covers the new release of CCE v2.0. We will discuss the major new features of Media Bypass and several improvements in reliability and scale. Speakers: Oliver Chiu, Bill Verthein Where: http://aka.ms/sfbcast Download: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52963 #Skype4b #Office365
Cloud PBX Auto Attendant & Call Queues Update
Hey Folks! First off, some overview - Organizational Auto Attendant is a new feature in Cloud PBX that allows tenant admins to configure an automated system to answer inbound calls to their company, ask the caller using speech recognition for their intended destination and route the calls accordingly to users and departments inside the company. If you're interested in learning more, there's a great session from Ignite 2016 that anyone can view here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2016/BRK3056 This capability is currently in preview for customers in North America. Preview for customers in Europe and Asia is planned to begin in a couple weeks (before end of year). As preview progresses, additional functionality will be made available for tenant admins to test and uncover issues prior to launch. We encourage all of our customers to sign up for the preview of Organizational Auto Attendant in the Skype Preview program at http://www.skypepreview.com Due to the tremendous response to this feature and the preview program, we’ve decided to extend the preview to enable more customers to take advantage of the feature and provide feedback to our engineering teams. As such, the planned general availability date will be shifting to March 2017. Because Call Queues are often used with the Organizational Auto Attendant, the preview program extension and date for general availability for Call Queues will also be moving to March 2017. In summary, the current plan is as follows: - Today: Preview for North America available. - December 2016: Preview for Europe & Asia available. - January & February 2017: Additional features released into preview including Speech Recognition. - March 2017: General availability of Auto Attendant and Call Queues. Again, we welcome all customers into the Skype Preview program to take advantage of the capability, help us uncover issues and make the subsequent release fantastic for everyone. Don't hesitate to sign up at http://www.skypepreview.com Thanks!! JamieAll Skype for Business Ignite Videos YouTube Playlist
Hey all, Great to catch up with so many people at Ignite. For those who couldn't make it, or were busy networking ;-), Microsoft have posted all the session recordings on YouTube. There is so much great content there. I have created a quick Skype for Business session playlist for those particularly interested in SfB. There is also a way to pull all those videos from YouTube for offline viewing. Don't forget there is a thread on this tech community forum for each session. You can still ask questions and discuss the sessions here. http://tomtalks.uk/2016/10/skype-business-ignite-conference-videos-youtube-playlist-download/ If you watch my PSTN conferencing session I would love your questions and feedback. Cheers TomRecording and Questions: SfB Broadcast: Avoid 5 Skype for Business Deployment Pitfalls
Hi all, The recording of my Skype Broadcast with Delanda Coleman is now up on Youtube. I'd be interested in your thoughts and questions. Here are some questions we got during the show: Question: Can you remind us where we can get the S4B metrics again? Sure, there are quite a few places to get these. For SfB Server, the best place is SQL Reporting Services (SSRS) with you Monitoring Reports. In SfB Online they are spread across a few places on the tenant, I've done an overview blog post here: http://tomtalks.uk/2017/06/skype-business-online-reporting-need-know/ Question: Why should we use Skype for Business Online and Teams instead of Fuze and Slack? Interesting question. A lot of this will come down to your specific scenario and business requirements, but some thoughts on why Office 365/Teams/SfBO might be a good fit: Security model is consistent across Office 365 One Identity and licencing model Increasing integration/interop between SfBO and Teams Nice mobile client experiences Question: What does a network assessment typically look like Skype Operations Framework (SOF) has a great overview of what a network assessment should look like, check it out here: https://www.skypeoperationsframework.com/Offers?pageState=NetworkReadiness For Modality Systems Network Assessment approach, you can find out more here: https://info.modalitysystems.com/impact-assessment/readiness Question: How can I deal with configuration drift (diagnostics/reporting) This is a good question, the best thing is to keep an eye on the reporting to make sure your performance is not changing. If you are looking at third party product options, anything that continuously tests the network/ports or service is great. Modality Systems have a Diagnostics Service offering where we have test nodes continuously make Skype for Business calls and test the service site to site, end to end, internally and externally. For more details check out the blog post here: https://info.modalitysystems.com/blog/modality-systems-diagnostics Question: Will there by snacks on this flight? Strictly virtual snacks on Skype Broadcast :-) Got more questions or thoughts? Please reply to the thread and I'll do my best to answer them. Cheers Tom
New Cloud PBX features
As many of you were asking, I'm posting here the newest and greated Cloud PBX features, just announced at Ignite... Auto Attendant: Auto attendants will create the "recepticionist" experience for your company, so when someone calls your company main number, the auto attendant will pick up the call, play announcements and identify the person you want to talk to, forwaring the call. Call Queues: With call queues tenant admins will be able to create groups of people that will receive a call when a specific number is dialed (similar to hunt groups). This feature is integrated with AD so you can reuse and manage your groups. Skype for Business Advanced Analytics: All tenant's data telemetry is centralized into a single page, showing very detailed information about, pretty much, everything that is going on on that tenant, like call quality distribution (or per user), IM, conference etc etc... If any of the above sounds interesting, I highly recommend you watching Ben Canning's presentation here: https://mediastream.microsoft.com/events/2016/1609/Ignite/player/session7.html His talk starts at 45:00 but I also strongly encourage you to watch Gurdeep's entire keynote with all the news about Skype :)(CDR/QoE) data for Call quality performance - reporting trends and details
I am very interested to understand to hear the <pings> out there - you who use the data from Lync or Skype on-prem's QoE database - whether you consume it in it's raw format in the manner of a data scientist, or consume it through a 3rd-party-developed reporting app in the manner of a customer-experience-support analyst / investigator. Is it just me or does the SfBO reporting still leave something to be desired? There is some elementary reporting, but I am not seeing anything that matched Lync/Skype Monitoring Reports. There is a mountain of meta-data in the QoE database. Is that getting left behind? Microsoft did a good job creating simple report-query-templates in the Monitoring Report server that could render 80% of what most Telecom Managers would expect their team to know from a platform. And for the other 20%, ALL the data was simply... available at the customer's disposal (and/or a partner's disposal). For Voice Engineers, Support Analysts, and Service Owners, this was a dream come true. Performance data at our fingertips. Now, with Skype for Business Online, I seem to bottom out on report category / type templates that I am otherwise accustomed to leveraging in the Monitoring Reports. And I hear partners are unable to get access to the Call Analytics API, so this tells me - simply - that in Skype for Business Online, there is some data I am no longer able to access, that I would like to access. @ Microsoft: Are there still developments happening in this space? I would like to see the SfB Online window unlocked for me to get into my QoE data, so that I (or a partner) can render the data in more relative context, with custom filtering. Some of that data can be used to prove Skype is not the root cause of an issue. Next, I would like to also understand the product team's vision of reporting call quality - for calls made in Microsoft Teams. I guess you have a challenge... because the boil-the-ocean expectation is that we will see all platforms (Skype on Prem + Skype Online + Teams...) to be rendered into a one-report-viewing experience. Right? ;-) What is the road map and pending enhancements for CQD and/or Call Analytics, in general? Where / when does Teams sit on that roadmap? And... Will a customer be able to render their own meta-data or be restricted from it?
