Posts

Big Features for Your Small Business – Mitel adds SMB Controller for On-Prem, Big Business Capabilities

We recognize that one size does NOT fit all!

That’s why TCI is excited to announce that Mitel has rolled out their new SMB Controller – it provides a full communications solution for small businesses with customized messaging, collaboration and contact center capabilities.

The MiVoice SMB controller is flexible to fit your organization, providing a full range of deployment and financing options. It’s ideal for the smaller customer or branch office that wants Enterprise-level features in a small business package for up to 150 users.

Advanced Enterprise-Level Communication Features

With MiVoice Business, you and your employees get embedded mobility to deliver greater freedom to communicate from wherever business takes you. It offers Unified Communications and collaboration with voice mail, unified messaging, and automated attendants. And it delivers excellent customer service with a fully integrated contact center solution.

Integrated Collaboration, Conferencing, and Customer Experience Solution

It’s easier to do business when your messaging, collaboration, and contact center capabilities are all part of an integrated communications solution like MiVoice Business.

With MiCollab and MiTeam Meetings, you get enterprise collaboration software and real-time video conferencing for locations across time zones and geographies that securely and swiftly power communications. And you can also integrate MiContact Center Business, to support a few call center agents or a thousand omnichannel agents.

Deployment Flexibility

You can deploy MiVoice Business on-premises, in a public cloud, or in a private cloud environment. You can also license the platform with either a traditional upfront CapEx purchase or with an OpEx subscription.

Large, small, or in between, MiVoice Business is designed to fit the unique needs of any size organization at each stage of growth.

Full Range of IP Desktop Devices and Accessories

When you’re on MiVoice Business, you can take advantage of a full range of IP desktop devices, accessories, and meeting room solutions that deliver advanced applications when and where you need them.

Why MiVoice Business?

  • Deep call control, collaboration, meetings with MiVoice Business and MiCollab
  • Advanced enterprise-level features comparable to those you have enjoyed with your current Mitel communications platform
  • Deployment flexibility: On-site, private cloud, public cloud (AWS /Azure)
  • In-office, hybrid or work-from-home options
  • Broad portfolio of IP phones, market-leading wireless SIP-DECT devices, and accessories for growth
  • OpEx option via monthly subscription
  • Smooth transition from your current Mitel communications platform to MiVoice Business

Let’s talk about an affordable way to provide enterprise-level tools for your small or mid-sized organization. Contact us today: (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.
 

Using Microsoft Teams? Mitel Offers No-Cost Integration with MiVoice Business + MiCollab

As hybrid work continues to expand, and Unified Communications capabilities continue to evolve, more customers are looking to integrate their Mitel telephony solutions with their Microsoft infrastructure.

In an environment where Microsoft Teams has already been selected or installed, many customers are looking for a user experience that retains full access to Mitel’s powerful communications capabilities.

Mitel has announced an important update to its MiVoice Presence Sync service and Mitel Assistant:

  • Mitel telephony presence information is now visible in Teams, Outlook or anywhere Microsoft presence is visible.
  • Brings call history directly into the Mitel Assistant client, which is free to download.
  • Mitel Assistant in “Telephony Only Client” mode provides a simple easy-to-use user interface.
  • No extra investments in Microsoft licenses are required.

Mitel Assistant in tandem with the Mitel softphone provides a blended Mitel + Microsoft Teams environment:

  • Removes the need for customers to go to Microsoft E5 / Phone System License
  • No need to pay additional fees for your DID (Direct Inward Dial) number to be hosted by MS Teams
  • Integrated user experience
  • Will let your Microsoft Teams users know when another user is on a phone call

Mitel Call Server presence integration for MiVoice Business

For businesses using Microsoft Teams together with Mitel call control platforms, your users can be busy in the Microsoft Teams system (for instance when attending a meeting) as well as in the Mitel system (busy on a phone call).

Mitel now provides existing Microsoft users with Mitel Call Server presence information as part of Microsoft user presence information. This feature requires the Mitel customer to have a UCC License and Software Assurance (SWA) active on their Mitel call server system.

Once installed, users get access to the following:

  • Dialpad & Directory Search – Supports manual phone calls from the dialpad or you can search using the corporate directory or Outlook contacts to initiate phone calls. Mitel Assistant will show presence information for searched contacts so that the user can know whether a user is busy or free to take a phone call.
  • Call History – Gives users MiVoice access to Mitel Call History in a dedicated tab. The user can stay within the Microsoft Teams Client when initiating calls from the call history. The user will also see presence when originating from call history.
  • Speed Dial – Users can search the corporate directory or personal Outlook contacts and add the speed dials that will show up as contact cards including avatar pictures and phone number information. Mitel Assistant will also show presence information for Speed Dials.
  • Escalate chat to phone call – Mitel Assistant also offers the user the possibility to escalate a direct chat to a phone call by clicking on the Mitel Assistant icon at the bottom of the chat view.
  • Optimized Mitel Softphone – When initiating a phone call from Microsoft Teams using Mitel Assistant, the new optimized experience using the MiCollab Telephony Only Client mode has been developed to provide the user with a discrete call floater window, that can be used to control the call without leaving the application in focus (for instance Microsoft Teams). The user can choose to use the floater in a collapsed layout or expand it to access all mid-call features, including Mute, Dialpad, Audio device management, Hold, Conference & Transfer.
  • Desktop phone or softphone – Users can either control the Mitel desk phone or use the built-in softphone to use the computer audio for calling. If needed the user also has access to more MiCollab functionality by expanding the MiCollab tray bar icon with access to Dynamic Status, Call History, Visual Voice Mail, and Settings.

Let Mitel be your Voice in Teams. Easy Upgrade. Free to download.

Mitel Assistant can be found in the Mitel Software Download Center as well as in the Microsoft Teams Store and users can easily install it into their Microsoft Teams client. To get full customer value out of the solution, Mitel Assistant should be used together with MiCollab in Telephony Only client mode.

If you’re interested or have questions, just let us know. Contact your local TCI experts at (703) 321-3030 or GetHelp@tcicomm.com.


Using Microsoft Teams? Mitel Has the Voice to Complete Your Experience

Microsoft Teams is a popular productivity tool that encompasses chat, meetings, calling and collaboration. It is included with all Office 365 plans, replacing Skype for Business.

For organizations that are committed to Microsoft Teams, Mitel offers several integration options to enhance Teams with added voice capabilities, providing even more value to your existing Mitel investment:

  • Direct Routing – Allows organizations to connect their Mitel telephony infrastructure to make calls from within the Microsoft Teams environment.
  • MiCollab HotkeyDialing – Included with MiCollab, easily set up hotkeys to dial. Select a phone number in Microsoft Teams and click the MiCollab hotkey combination to initiate a MiCollab call to the phone number.
  • Call2Teams – This third-party solution integrates a Mitel phone system with Office 365, enabling softphone functionality on your laptop within the Microsoft Teams environment.
  • AppDialer – Click-to-dial within the Microsoft Teams environment by creating hotkeys to highlight a phone number and using hotkey strokes to dial.
  • Web Extension – Mitel’s Chrome extension gives you a softphone directly from your web browser. Users will benefit from call history, voicemail, click-to-dial, contacts and more so they can easily place calls from the Microsoft Teams web user interface.

By pairing Mitel with Microsoft Teams, you can save time, reduce costs and improve your calling experience with integrated telephony, conferencing and contact center.

When you need to collaborate, Mitel has the technology to help your teams succeed. TCI will get it all going for you! Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

Re-Opening Reality Check… Getting to Know the Public’s Preferences for Getting Back to ‘Normal’

The conversation about the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted from shutting down non-essential businesses to how we can get back to ‘business as usual.’ But until a viable vaccine or effective treatment is widely available, you should expect many customers to remain wary. Based on our conversations, many leaders are privately planning for the possibility of working from home for months or longer. Others will need to come back in some kind of Hybrid mode.

State of the Nation polling reflects a very cautious public [PDF]

We’re in this for the long haul 

The public and private sectors will, of course, continue to adapt to serve their customers and constituents, and how you approach your workforce infrastructure will play a big role in how well you can respond to challenges and opportunities in the months ahead.

TCI can help your business stay connected

We’ve been supporting the DC region with customized remote workforce and business continuity solutions for 40 years. When it comes to customizing technology for your business or non-profit, we can map out the best mix of cloud, on-premises and hybrid deployments to connect your customers and workforce at the office, in the field and at home.

Hosted Voice, Unified Communications & Teleworking 

MiCollab & MiTeam Meetings for remote workers

Customer Contact Center 

Google Cloud AI-powered Virtual Agent and Agent Assist

Let’s talk about the technology you need to keep your workforce and customers connected. Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

TCI Makes Getting Connected Easy… Get Mitel Licenses for more Remote Work Softphones

Mitel softphones allow remote and mobile workers to take advantage of a full range of productivity enhancing tools right from their smartphones or laptops – no desk phone required. Your employees can stay in touch with the same features and tools they had in the office.

A software license from Mitel is required for each remote worker. TCI will assist in getting all the licenses you need and then set up and implement the softphones so your organization can continue running with minimal disruption.

Teleworking UCC / MiCollab options include:

If you are not a UCC Licensee, certain features can be purchased separately…

When it comes to maintaining staff productivity and supporting your customers, softphones are essential tools for doing business in these uncertain times.

We can equip your remote workers with softphones now. Contact TCI today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.

 

 

Real-time, Anytime… How MiTeam for MiCollab Offers Your Teams an Easier, Better Way to Collaborate

Mitel’s innovative MiTeam app integrates with your MiCollab online collaboration tools to provide a dedicated workspace for team-based meetings, conversations, and content sharing.

Designed for a workforce on the go, the embedded app seamlessly extends your company’s mobile reach to remote team members, and it connects teams of any size, even with real-time voice and video.

Everything relevant to your team is seamlessly synchronized into “Streams.” Each team’s workspace is archived continuously so everyone can access the history of messages, content, annotations, and tasks for future reference.

One of our favorite MiTeam advantages is that you can enable new team members to come up to speed quickly. They can see interactions with full context, gain access to shared documents, view recordings of meetings and track project tasks.

Check out this MiTeam video…

Let TCI help empower your teams with greater efficiency and productivity. With MiTeam for MiCollab, you can expect to increase business productivity by as much as 40%.

Contact us today at (703) 321-3030 or info@tcicomm.com.