Raise your hand if you have ever used an online, web-based tool for video, screen sharing, or conferencing. 

Ha!  Kind of a silly question for most of us these days. I suppose the better question is “how many different tools have you used in the past week?”

Many may not realize it, but there is a difference between a “Webinar” and a “Meeting”. Like with many things in the IT world, once a new technology gains popularity and vendors jump in with their marketing teams, the various terms and definitions tend to get muddled and mixed. 

Whatever prefix you prefer to add to better describe “Meetings”; e.g. web meeting, virtual meeting, online meeting, video meeting, etc., they’re really all the same. So, all of this probably doesn’t matter as long as everyone understands each other. However, it might good for everyone to know some technical and functional differences when we’re talking about webinars, webcasting, and the like versus an online meeting. 

The main difference between a web meeting and a webinar is that web meetings are generally used more frequently, guests are usually more interactive because they are connected with both audio and video, meetings can often be less “formal”, and have anywhere from one to one hundred or more additional participants. Whereas a webinar is typically used for planned events and presenting to a larger group of guests in often a more “formal” setting. Webinars can have guests ranging from as few as 10 to as many as 10,000.  Many of the features and tools available in Meetings and Webinars are similar depending on the platforms used. Some services can do both webinars and meetings with the right service plan added. While others are specific to either webinars-only or to meetings-only. 

Meetings platforms are used for all sorts of occasions and recurring and reoccurring gatherings for both internal and external meetings. Meetings will have a host, perhaps a co-host, and invited guests or participants. Nearly all solutions will have calendar integration so scheduling is easier and also have a way to start an “ad-hoc” meeting anytime. Usually, all members of the meeting are able to talk, video, and maybe even screenshare (among other “cool” features). Some virtual meeting services allow for annotation, whiteboarding, meeting minutes and notes, chat features, recording, and many other useful tools including remote control, which allows a host or guest to remotely control the screen of another sharing their screen. 

Advanced platforms for both meetings and webinars may even have AI-driven, auto-generated closed-captioning. Many meeting platforms go as high as 100 guests or more. Some meetings platforms may even go as high as 500 with the right add-ons. Larger meetings often get confusing and awkward once double digits are reached and usually require better host controls to keep people from talking over one another. 

Some online meeting solutions require the host to download software and use it when hosting a meeting in order to use all of the platforms’ features. Some are completely browser/web-based with nothing to download at all. Nearly all online meeting services will have an option for guests to use the browser/web-only options to get into the meeting and therefore not require that guests download the same software. Web-only options can be particularly convenient especially for guests that could have restrictions against downloading any sort of software directly to their corporate device. 

Being a planned event, webinars will most often have a registration feature or be able to integrate into another registration system for planning and marketing purposes. Webinars may have hosts, co-hosts, presenters, panelists, and then of course the guests. Webinars are usually live events and therefore streamed (live-streamed) with controlled participation of guests by hosts and operators through Questions & Answers (Q&A) and other chat features in the platform that can be left on, or toggled throughout the event at just the right time. Guests are generally not able to participate with audio and/or video, although there are a few platforms where the host can ‘promote’ guests to do so. 

There are even professional services that offer partially or fully managed webinar and webcasting services complete with your very own professional operator to coordinate and manage the entire event. Many of these services can even go so far as send out a full broadcast and video production crew for a highly polished and distinguished event. 

Webinars platforms almost never require a guest to download any sort of software to view and participate in the event and is accessible via the web (hence the “web” in webinar). Although some may require the service provider’s software for any host, panelist, or presenter. 

A quick sidenote: webinar vs. webcast. They’re both similar and just like with the terms online meeting, or whatever prefix you prefer, and webinar they’re often used interchangeably, but a webinar and a webcast are a little different. Most webinar platforms/services can just as easily do a webcast. Yet there are tools, services, and platforms that only do webcasting. A webinar is usually a live event and webinar platforms/services at least have the features for guest participation available, even though the host or operator of any given event may turn off those Q&A features depending on their preferences. A webcast on the other hand almost never has guest participation and are usually pre-recorded for viewing (over the web) at a later time. Many webcasts might also be of higher production value, something like a “TEDTalks” for example. 

There are literally dozens upon dozens of online meetings and webinar service providers available in the market today. With the covid pandemic and world-wide shutdowns of… well… everything, all of these services have gained tremendous popularity, along with scads of other tools that enable work-from-home.  I’m sure there are very few reading this who haven’t heard of Zoom, Teams, or Meet. Many of these and other new services have gotten very innovative and incorporated avatars, breakout rooms, and even networking centers to virtually mimic the look and feel of an in-person tradeshow or conference. 

A few of the most popular platforms include: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Cisco WebEx, AnyMeeting, GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar, just to name a few. Some have even reached the iconic status of being a verb. Example: “just Google it”, “let’s jump on a Zoom call”, “I already Glipped you”

There is yet another entire class of solutions that also provides online/virtual/web meetings and in some cases webinar services: Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), which is a fancy term for a business phone system. But much like your smartphone, the last thing you use it for is a phone.

Some of these services have created their own proprietary meetings platform/service while others may use or “tightly integrate” with one or more of the popular solutions previously mentioned. Most UCaaS not only includes a video meetings service, but also a host of other important business communications and collaboration tools--all in one neat bundle. Along with video, most will include voice (deskphone optional), virtual fax, business SMS texting, along with other mobile features, and all things related to a full-featured business PBX system. 

But, they are not “all the same”! As with many things in life, the devil is in the details. On the surface, they all perform the same basic functions--video meetings (or webinars, of course). However, as soon as we start getting into the meat-and-potatoes the differences can be dramatic. It really all depends on what features are important to your user-base. Sometimes it’s a matter of knowing what’s out there before knowing what is needed. First, figure out the big steps: webinar and/or meeting. Then call up a few providers, do a few demo’s, and start mapping out the differences. Then you’ll want to do a deep-dive your users to really figure out what they need: need-to-have and nice-to-have. 

It will take some work, but totally worth it in the end, especially when others are involved, have input, and buy-in to the new solution. You’ll be a hero if you do it right!

Instead of trying to do all the work, research, and info-gathering on your own and possibly risk overlooking that gem vendor because you didn’t even know they existed, reach out to a vendor-neutral sourcing partner like Cloud 9 Advisers. All of the major providers are members of our Supplier Portfolio, including several you may have never even heard of or considered. We’ve got decades of data and analytics on every vendor, carrier, and service provider so you can make these important decisions quickly and confidently. We are here to help you do your job better and make you look good doing it!

It might seem obvious, but the question of on-premise vs. cloud still comes up all the time. When choosing a phone system for your business, the toss-up between an on-premise solution or a hosted solution (hosted VoIP, hosted PBX) can be somewhat confusing. However, today, there really is no contest. On-premise options are dwindling quickly. It is safe to say that the only viable option for nearly all organizations is some form of cloud-based telephone solution. So the better question might be what type of hosted voice solution? 

With a hosted PBX, introducing a whole new phone system to your company isn’t as scary as it sounds.

It’s remarkably quick and easy to set up, so there’s no downtime for your business or expensive installation costs. Moreover, you can be safe in the knowledge that you’ll receive the best service and support and that your business’ communications are in safe hands.

More and more companies are opting for hosted phone solutions and with good reason, so what are some of the benefits of hosted business VoIP?

• Lower setup costs – the PBX is virtual, the initial investment is minimal as there is no need for the costly hardware and installation that a traditional PBX requires.

• Elimination of maintenance costs – your PBX and all that is required to run it is hosted by the provider. There are no additional maintenance fees, no telco/carrier fees, so there is no need to hire someone in-house to manage and maintain it. All users need is a phone on the desk (in many case that isn’t even needed anymore!). 

• Consolidated Costs – with the right hosted solution, specifically UC or UCaaS, you can even combine and consolidate other solutions you’re using today, like online meeting or virtual meeting platforms and other messaging, texting, and even web chat platforms. 

• A scalable solution – a hosted PBX is easy to scale up or down with minimal work and costs.

• User-friendly – For admins and end-users alike, a virtual PBX is conveniently simple to use and manage. There’s very little training required and no need for specialized skills so you can start using your new phone system right away.

• Unbeatable mobility & global potential – with a hosted PBX, employees can work from anywhere. All they need is internet access. Additionally, multiple offices are simply and easily connected by the same system further lowering costs.

Unified Communications as a Service (or UCaaS) is a form of hosted or cloud-based telephony and is a virtual phone system hosted for you by a service provider.

Again, the question is no longer “on-premise vs. hosted”, but now becomes “what type of hosted voice solution”. They come in many flavors and varieties and they go by many industry categories: Unified Communications (UC), Unified Communications & Collaboration (UCC), and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). These categories of UC are a little more specific and automatically include many more features, tools, integrations, and add in more communications channels like virtual meetings, messaging, mobility, and many more - in other words it unifies your communications. Other common names are Hosted VoIP, Hosted PBX, Hosted Voice, or even Cloud PBX, Cloud Voice and so on. These categories are a little more generic and may not necessarily include all that is a part of a UC, UCC, and/or UCaaS solution; simply being just a voice solution.

With so many Work From Home (WFH), remote work, remote staff… required today, things like virtual meeting or online meeting platforms are a necessity. Most UCaaS solutions already have those online meeting platforms built into the system and may even have agreements and tight integrations with the most popular platforms like Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Microsoft Teams. Therefore, it is already bundled together there is no need to pay extra money for several different and disparate solutions. It’s all included and it all works together seamlessly. Every user can have their own complete set of communications tools. 

Now the question is: which vendor? 

There are literally hundreds of UC, UCaaS, Hosted… vendors (and let’s not even get started on Contact Center or CCaaS options!). The “funny” part is most of those UC vendors are reselling, rebranding, and repackaging what the top few providers already offer. Some of them may add-in enhancements, most of them often strip features away. Sorting through it all is a monumental challenge. If you think you need help, we are here for you

By: Jeremy Boudinet, Nextiva

Do you work from a cubicle? An open office plan? When working at the office, you don’t have a choice in your work environment or office setting. You might have a noisy coworker, or sit under the air conditioner, which could impact your productivity.

UberConference was built to solve one simple, yet very real, problem: how much conference calls sucked.

At Dialpad, we think of work as a thing you do, not a place you go. You won’t find cubicles or desk phones in our San Francisco headquarters, just an open room full of energetic, extraordinary people with big ideas and determination to make the business phone relevant to the way we work today. Through smart engineering, beautiful design, awesome customer support, and high energy sales and marketing teams, Dialpad Communications brings simplicity to the professional phone experience with features that make us most productive, when and where we work best.

Where does most workplace conflict originate? From poor communication or a lack of clear expectations. Never assume your employees know what you expect. Remote work means different things to different people. It’s important to create guidelines around working hours, communication expectations and more. Here are a few things to consider as you develop policies for your virtual team.

• Working hours—When do you expect employees to log on and begin their day? Do you want them to design their schedules to fit a traditional consecutive 8-hour day? Do they need to be available for early morning or late evening phone calls to accommodate other time zones? When should they take a break for lunch? Are you less concerned about the hours worked and more concerned about results? Decide what works best for your business, customers, and teams, and let everyone know!
  
• Communication response times—How quickly would you like employees to respond to customer emails? Colleagues? What about IMs? Text messages? For reference, a Google Consumer Study revealed more than 80% of customers expect a reply to email within 24 hours. 37% expect a response within an hour. And according to FastCompany, more than 70% of people expect a response from coworkers within four hours.
  
• Time-off requests—When the crisis is over, one of the hottest topics at water coolers around the globe will be vacation plans. Most employees in an office are aware of their teammates’ holiday plans. Those sorts of conversations don’t always happen between remote employees and their peers, so it’s important to establish a process for documenting time-off. It’s also helpful to have a shared team vacation calendar, so everyone is in the loop. Make sure your remote workers understand your time-off policies and how to log their days off.
  
• Meetings—Managers need to establish a regular meeting cadence with remote employees. When building remote employee engagement, the adage “out of sight, out of mind” won’t work. Set up a time to meet one-on-one and stick to it. It’s tempting to cancel one-on-one meetings when workloads pile up. Don’t. Those opportunities to connect are essential! They allow you to build trust and establish a relationship with team members you don’t see face to face every day. Relationships are a vital ingredient to team success. Use the time together to check in on progress and offer performance feedback.
  

• Set an agenda and limit it to 2-3 items. Share the agenda at least 24 hours in advance so attendees can come prepared
  
• Limit the invitees. Consider the agenda. Who are the decision-makers that will be essential to include?
  
• Start on time and end on time
  
• When hosting virtual meetings, use video and screen share when possible. These features help foster interaction and keep attendees focused
  
• Institute a no cell phone rule
  
• If possible, reduce one-hour meetings to 45-minutes. This gives attendees time to debrief, organize their notes, and make it to the next meeting on time
  
• Consider whether you really need to hold a meeting at all. Status updates, for example, are often better suited for email or collaboration tools. Save meetings for conversations that can’t take place productively via other channels
  
• Ex: brainstorming, decision making
  
• Be sure to take good notes! As the meeting organizer, you should always send out a summary/recap. Be sure to include action items, next steps, and deadlines

• Are you offering a catered lunch in the office? Treat your virtual employees to lunch that day, too. Send a gift card to a food delivery service available in their area.
  
• Make lunch and learn sessions available via video conference so that remote workers can participate, too.
  
• Are you having an office holiday party? Make every effort to invite and provide arrangements for remote team members to attend, too.
  
• Are you closing early for the summer picnic? Encourage remote workers to log off early and enjoy some outside time.

The bottom line? Don’t save all the fun activities for your brick and mortar locations. There are tons of creative ways to engage all your team members, regardless of where they work.

8×8 is transforming the future of business communications as a leading Software-as-a-Service provider of voice, video, chat, contact center and enterprise-class API solutions powered by one global cloud communications platform. We’re empowering workforces worldwide to create connections that increase the speed and efficiency of collaboration. An 8-time Leader in the Gartner UCaaS Magic Quadrant and the only UCaaS Leader also in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CCaaS, we’ve built a cloud communications platform that delivers reliability to customers while loyally rewarding partners.

In today's quickly evolving global economy, Unified Communications solutions empower business strategies to break through boundaries that were once roadblocks. Decision-makers are taking a close look at which solutions boost productivity, collaboration, ease-of-use and cost-effectiveness. Through robust workforce collaboration tools, organizations can enact ROI-boosting productivity initiatives, monitor network usage, collaborate on shared applications and so much more.

Microsoft Teams is a perfect fit for many organizations

Microsoft’s recent announcement states that they have 13 million daily users actively utilizing Teams. The most important information for any company to understand about Microsoft Teams are the exact benefits of the solution and the value it delivers based on increased productivity and collaboration. Not only is CallTower the best resource to get this information about Teams for yourself and your organization, but we are also the top choice to provide Microsoft Teams with Voice - hands down.

CallTower is a customer-centric solution provider. That means, instead of pushing a single product on every customer, we find the solution (or solutions – we have many customers with multiple or hybrid solutions) that will work best for them. Since 2002, CallTower has been an industry leader in enabling people to connect; our portfolio reflects our solution enablement model. 

CallTower’s Microsoft Teams Direct Routing solution delivers an integrated Office 365 experience with global calling plans empowered by a US-based client services team, ensuring a personalized implementation, adoption, training and support strategy. CallTower has been voice enabling Microsoft solutions for years. As a Microsoft Gold Partner providing cloud voice solutions, our monitoring and management services ensure the highest quality user experience. The Microsoft Teams Phone System powered by CallTower enables customers to bring their current voice serves into the Microsoft Cloud through Direct Routing. Direct Routing ensures the ability to leverage CallTower’s preferred rates and unlocks the full potential of a Microsoft Teams Phone System.

Understandably, Microsoft Teams works best with a Microsoft PBX system as opposed to a third-party PBX system. Microsoft has invested an unmatchable amount of resources into their PBX systems and organizations can tap into these resources and put them to work in their communication solution.  CallTower delivers this exact setup with Microsoft Teams through Direct Routing - and the benefits are rated number one in the industry. To alleviate risk, instead of layering an existing external telephony solution like some providers, CallTower’s Direct Routing is built to work with Teams, Outlook, SharePoint and the rest of the Office 365 Suite in a native solution – plus other integrations like Salesforce, Slack and more. Organizations using CallTower's Direct Routing get the best of both worlds – the raw power and precision engineering of Microsoft with the personal, reliable support of CallTower. In addition to these benefits, CallTower also delivers CT Cloud Contact Center, CT Cloud Boost, CT Cloud Fax, devices, paging, door buzzers, receptionist console, credit card lines and more to provide a full turnkey solution to our customers.

Along with the limited resources and complex environment of a third-party PBX system, additional problems arise when considering the timetable of these hybrid Microsoft Teams setups. Most providers developing these setups won’t complete their vision until 2020 – which is not soon enough for organizations who want to innovate their communication strategies now. It makes much more sense to implement a system provided and proven by CallTower – a system that has been deploying Teams effectively since 2018 with the benefits of a well-tested native Microsoft environment. Instead of an unproven, third party application, organizations can have the best of both worlds and enjoy world-class 24/7/365 US-based support from CallTower. Why wait for 2020 or later when CallTower has already deployed thousands of users with Teams and Voice, and have the customer references to prove it? The choice is clear.

Read the original article from RingCentral here.