Enterprise Chat News Roundup #14
Summer updates & integrations from Webex Teams, Microsoft Teams, & Google Hangouts
Well hello there! 👋
We took a break from our weekly industry news roll-up to launch M.io for Unified Team Chat. You now can look forward to weekly updates from us once again, covering the constantly changing landscape that is workplace messaging.
Even with Summer in full swing, the last week and a half of industry news has been busy for enterprise collaboration and communication, from platform updates to service outages.
Here are some of the biggest stories we saw:
Microsoft Teams delivers new features
Just in time for the Summer, Microsoft Teams has released its latest list of new updates. Some of the biggest changes include the introduction of “Direct Routing” to help people with on-premises equipment tap into the benefits of the Teams portfolio and a new partnership with Evernote.
With Evernote availability on Teams, users will be able to access their notes and scribbles from their chat and share them easily with other users. This means that you can discuss your plans and brainstorming sessions with your colleagues more easily.
WebEx Teams gets a major UI overhaul
On June 26th, Cisco rolled out their spruced-up WebEx Teams system just in time for some summer collaboration. In the new release, you’ll notice a host of awesome UI updates designed to make your enterprise app experience a little simpler.
There’s a new jazzy range of customization options, including the ability to change backgrounds, icons, and texts, and the “search” bar now appears above your space list.
Plus, new layouts are also available for users accessing their meetings on the go, with a super-enhanced mobile UI. It comes with everything you’d expect from a mobile app, from pinch to zoom, to landscape mode.
Slack slips, but bounces back
Employees around the world saw their workflow systems come to a grinding halt on the 27th of June, when Slack systems were hit by a worldwide outage.
Slack acknowledged the issue on its status page at 6:33 am PDT after a handful of unhappy messages from users. Fortunately, the company managed to get the system up and running again by 9:49 am, before any major productivity problems could arise.
Slack isn’t the only collaboration tool to face problems recently — Office 365 also dropped off the map for a little while among UK users a few weeks ago, and it saw additional problems back in April. For now, Slack is keeping quiet about the reason for the outage. 🤔
GoToMeeting adds messaging
To make the enterprise experience more immersive for everyone involved, GoToMeeting has introduced a host of new features to their Collab app — including an instant messaging solution.
You can choose from video, voice, or content sharing to go alongside your instant messaging experience, and there’s even a new “Smart Meeting Assistant” to take notes for you.
Two new tools to make collaboration across systems easier
Finally, as the collaboration and enterprise app space continue to grow, we’re seeing countless new introductions from innovative minds across the industry.
1- Tact.ai gets $27 million funding to improve sales collaboration:
One of the most interesting integrations to hit the market lately comes from Tact.ai, a California-based startup that helps sales teams manage deal flows and customer interactions across Slack, the Microsoft Suite, Salesforce, and more. The company recently announced another round of funding from major players Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce.
2- Video conferencing interoperability from Google:
Google has updated Hangouts Meet to support interoperability for video conferencing and scheduling across tools like Cisco’s WebEx, Zoom, and Skype for Business.
Is this a sign of more interoperability trends to come?
