Imagicle Spring Release 2022. Empowered integrations in the Cloud.

It’s only been one month since the first Imagicle Virtual Event, It’s Cloud Time!, aired live with more than 300 people watching. Our audience had the chance to get a deeper knowledge about our exclusive Cloud proposition for Webex Calling platforms. We covered the advantages for both end users and partners, highlighting the ease of using sophisticated UCs behind a single pane of glass and the benefits of selling Imagicle with a team of experts that will support you from start to finish with a smile on their face.

And while It’s Cloud Time indeed was a great time to catch up with the Imagicle world, you know that the tech and UC world is not for the faint of heart. In fact, it’s already time to tell you even more news. Our Spring Release 2022 is one for the books, bringing even more innovation and fine-tuning to the path we’ve been following with Cisco to make customers happy.

Imagicle for Webex Calling: empowered integrations.

The main character of this release has to be our offer for Webex Calling. Since day 1, our goal has consistently been delivering seamless integration and a complete experience on the calling platform you use every day, enhancing its features and adding new ones to boost usability, flexibility, and security. 

And we’re proud to say that, starting from this release, Webex Calling users who choose Imagicle will benefit from:

1. A brand new, exclusive native integration of Imagicle Digital Fax with Webex Calling, delivering a 100% cloud-based faxing solution.
2. One login to all Imagicle apps with your Webex Credentials, thanks to Webex Single Sign-On support.
3. Automatic user synchronization from your Webex Control Hub to your Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite, making it easier to keep your list always updated.

Let’s discover them one by one.

The only Digital Fax for Webex Calling on the market.

Our road to native integrations with Webex Calling started in the latest part of last year when we announced our Attendant Console for Webex Calling. In fact, the Imagicle Attendant Console, complete with Advanced Queueing and Auto Attendant, is the only Attendant Console in the market that’s natively compatible with Webex Calling and ready to serve mixed environments.

In Spring 2022, we took it one step further. We’re proud to announce that our Imagicle Digital Fax is the first and only virtual faxing solution available on the market that is fully compatible with Cisco Webex Calling. Multi-Tenant, regardless of the PSTN option in place! Another exclusive service provided by the Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite to complete the Webex Calling experience.

In a nutshell, this means that Webex Calling users will be able to send and receive faxes without leaving their calling platform in a few clicks, with a cohesive and intuitive user experience. Imagine you’re in a call, and you need to send a fax right away: you’ll be able to do it on the spot, without even changing the window on your pc, tablet, or mobile. And, of course, fax transactions are 100% secure because our solution is GDPR and HIPAA compliant. The world has come a long way since standing in line at the office’s fax machine, right? 🙂

We’re proud to have engineered a native integration between Imagicle Digital Fax and Webex Control Hub that, through a simple configuration in the Control Hub, allows the Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite to receive and transmit faxes to and from PSTN in a transparent way, regardless of the PSTN option chosen by the customer. They could be using an On-Prem SBC, an SBC hosted by the service provider, or even a Cloud-connected PSTN option from Cisco itself. Whatever the customer chooses, the same simple configuration in the Control Hub will rule all scenarios!

A simple as well as clean and elegant architecture: the only thing you need is Public Peering between Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite and Webex Cloud, nothing else. Let me say that this is a great architectural simplification, as it is no longer needed to implement different connectivity models or configurations depending on the location of the SBC.

An unprecedented simplicity for every company wanting to digitalize processes while enabling hybrid workers, because Imagicle Digital Fax is 100% software-based, paperless, and securely accessible from any device, just like your Webex Calling.

Webex Single Sign-On for Imagicle apps. Simplified access, increased security.

The news is right there in the title. From Spring 2022, you will be able to access your Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite with your Webex credentials, thanks to the new integration with Webex Single Sign-On.

This is disruptive for a number of reasons, where increased security and ease of use surely are the main characters, but let’s take it back a bit so that you can really understand the benefits.

Single Sign-On is a form of authentication and authorization that lets the user access multiple protected resources with a single authentication interaction. In fact, with Single Sign-On, access credentials are provided only once, after which it is possible to access all resources that are part of the computer system without having to authenticate again. In a nutshell, this means faster daily work and fewer emails and passwords to remember.

If you’re an avid ImagicleBeat blog reader (if you’re not, you can become one right now 🙂 ) you might remember that, in Winter 2022, we made Single Sign-On available as a cloud service for cloud and cloud-connected UCX Suites by developing a cloud service based on the latest AWS technologies that, leveraging standard SAML or OpenID Connect protocols, is capable of federating with several market-leading Identity Providers such as Microsoft Azure AD, ADFS, Okta, and Ping Identity.

Well, starting from this release, Webex will be a new addition to the identity providers we support. This means that users can log in to their Imagicle UCX Suite web portal, gadgets, Attendant Console, and even Voice Analytics using their own Webex credentials!

In short, a single secure login for all Imagicle apps, for each user and device, granting the same experience everywhere, just using the same digital identity you use every day for your Webex.

Moreover, all the same Single Sign-On flexibility is now available in many additional applications: 

• UCX Suite gadgets for Cisco Finesse
• UCX Suite gadgets for Microsoft Teams
• Voice Analytics

These enhancements are ready to make your UC experience with Imagicle even more secure while giving you an even more cohesive user experience.

Sync your users‘ list the easiest way.

Last but not least in the path of delivering increasingly bold integrations with Webex Calling, starting from this releas the Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite can automatically synchronize users directly from the Webex Control Hub!

Let’s once again take it one step back to really understand the benefits of this new feature.

The Imagicle UCX Suite needs to know the whole company users list to cover a number of use cases and, generally speaking, to offer the best possible features and experience. 

For example, if a user wants to log in to the Imagicle applications, that user needs to exist inside the relevant company database. Another example is our Attendant Console: if you want it to provide a list of corporate colleagues, you need to somehow incorporate that list into your Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite.

But how? Manually? And with the need to update it every single time someone joins or leaves?

No, thanks.

The Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite has always been able to synchronize users automatically from several corporate sources, such as Active Directory, an LDAP server, or directly from CUCM. 

But usually, those repositories are located on the customer premises or hosted by the service provider; thus, to let the UCX Cloud Suite connect with them, the Private Peering option was needed… before Spring’22, that is 🙂 

So, the big news is that your Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite updated to Spring Release 2022 can fetch and synchronize users directly from Webex Control Hub seamlessly and automatically!

The first benefit is that there is no more need for the Private Peering option. The UC (Public) Cloud Suite is just enough. 

So, through a single and straightforward configuration, the UCX Cloud Suite of a customer using Webex Calling Multi-Tenant will be able to automatically pull the whole list of company employees from Webex Control Hub and keep, for example, the list of receptionist colleagues inside the Attendant Console up to date daily, avoiding any manual operation at all.

And do you want to know what the icing on the cake is?

The Imagicle UCX Cloud Suite is also able to automatically pull users‘ pictures/avatars directly from Webex Control Hub, meaning that Attendant Console will show the same profile picture for all colleagues both inside the Attendant Console and inside the Webex app.

To wrap up, Imagicle for Webex Calling is a crucial chapter of Spring Release 2022. We promised customers and partners an increasingly seamless, powerful, and complete integration, and we’ll keep working towards that goal. In a few months, we’ve delivered two native integrations for our apps, Attendant Console and Digital Fax, and user experience and security enhancements with Single Sign-On and User Sync.

The Webex Calling journey with Imagicle has just started, so be sure to stay tuned for what’s coming next.

But Spring’22 news is not finished, yet.

A brand new dashboard for Voice Analytics.

Do you remember our first, cloud-native add-on for Call Recording, Imagicle Voice Analytics? 

Leveraging your recorded calls, it provides speech-to-text multilingual transcriptions and analyzes them through sentiment analysis, giving you a complete picture of the performances of your customer service without forcing you to listen to hours of recordings.

Imagine how easy it would be to be notified at a glance when a customer is unsatisfied with a call. Great simplification in terms of improving performances and training agents, right?

Well, Voice Analytics is the tool you were waiting for, and with Spring, it becomes even more powerful.

Our Voice Analytics service has gained a powerful and complete dashboard providing meaningful insight into the content of the huge amount of recordings captured by Imagicle Call Recording.

This dashboard’s widgets will make supervisors’ work faster, smarter, and easier than ever. Here are three of the most disruptive widgets to give you an idea.

• Overall Sentiment to understand the average mood of the conversation, highlighting the number of Positive, Neutral, or Negative calls. Is there any topic that sparks a negative sentiment in customers? Does it need monitoring?
• Sentiment Breakdown to measure and display the average Sentiment of the agents (Users) and the service users (Remote parties) to highlight the parties’ different moods throughout calls. Did the caller’s mood change at some point in the conversation?
•  Sentiment Trend to explore the evolution of Sentiment within the selected time interval. Did the Sentiment of customers change at a specific moment in time? Is it related to a change in your operators’ approach?

Even though I’m really proud to be telling you all this, it would be even better and simpler to show you. Do you know that, if you already have Imagicle Call Recording in place, you can quickly start a free trial for Voice Analytics? Why not look inside the huge number of recordings you already have captured? 

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Start revolutionizing your customer service. Try Voice Analytics.

Obtain your free trial and see its potential first-hand!

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Imagicle for Microsoft Teams. A solution for every use case.

In Spring 2022, we didn’t leave anything to chance. The Imagicle for Microsoft Teams chapter of our story has not been left behind, and we have some great news for those who use Microsoft Teams as their preferred calling platform.

Microsoft Certification. On the way!

We’ve officially signed up for the Microsoft Teams Connected contact center certification program. Our partnership with Microsoft will get stronger and more transparent to give users even more advanced solutions. 

While we go through the steps needed to complete the certification, stay tuned and enjoy our product-related news.

Call Recording in General Availability.

Call Recording is now in general availability, allowing you to capture every company call to improve interactions and customer service and better comply with data security regulations provided worldwide, with a seamless user experience directly inside your Microsoft Teams.

Attendant Console: addressing your needs with a tailored integration.

We know that companies worldwide are adapting to a permanent hybrid work model, allowing employees to work wherever they want while keeping the office’s doors open for better synergy and collaboration. That’s why our Attendant Console can be integrated with Microsoft Teams in two different ways, depending on the frequency of office attendance and your specific needs in the new normal.

• Integration with your Microsoft Teams client, completely software-based for those who favor a work-from-home schedule.
• Integration with your physical phone (without the bot interference!), ideal for those who still go to the office a lot and know they will answer calls when they are there.

Conclusions.

When we publish a new release three times a year, we always like to say that each release is just the beginning of something greater. In Spring 2022, this couldn’t be more true. 

We’ve started three separate journeys towards the ultimate customer happiness that intertwine along the way. We have our integrations with Webex Calling becoming increasingly seamless and advanced, now with a new native integration with our Digital Fax and increased and more transparent security thanks to Webex Single Sign-On and User Sync, and we’re already working on more advanced solutions.

We have our Voice Analytics, with its potential of shifting the trends of employee training and customer interactions for the better, now empowered by an automated analysis dashboard with a lot of potential for customer retention.

And then, we have our Microsoft Teams integrations on the road to become even more powerful and certified.

What can I say? Stay tuned, guys, because the next big news season is just around the corner.