First posted on Unified Communications - October 4, 2016
The number of solutions available in the marketplace in which organizations can communicate seems to be increasing daily. While they may work well individually, when it comes time to integrating them with other solutions, compatibility issues create problems that take away from the full capability of each product. But when two companies come together, the combined effort can deliver better user experiences for their customers, which is what has taken place with the announcement of OnSIP's integration with Slack.
OnSIP provides real-time communications (RTC) as part of its Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform to more than 45,000 businesses. This includes an on-demand phone system that is highly flexible and scalable without the burdens of high-cost traditional systems. As more organizations adopt remote work and collaborative workforce environments, OnSIP was looking to add a messaging solution that would bring users together seamlessly no matter what device or platform they were using.
The company selected Slack, a messaging app for teams with features that are critical for today's workforce, including one-on-one and group chats. As the acronym of the company's name indicates, “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge,” Slack not only finds conversations, but it also measures and responds to feedback in real-time.
According to OnSIP, the company wants to move business calls to the Web to deliver a better user experience along with the data this type of communication provides. This will make OnSIP the first cloud phone system and UC provider to integrate with Slack, bringing together two best-of-breed applications.
The new solution will be available in the in the Slack App Directory so users can generate voice and video call links with a slash command and share in Slack channels, email signatures, social media and Web pages. This includes creating permanent links to initiate free, high definition, encrypted voice and video calls to any OnSIP phone or application.
The combined technologies let users have their desk phone, Web app and smartphone app open at the same time so they can be reached at all times within a single window where all communications can be addressed in and out of the office.
“Integrating with Slack was a natural choice. We’re focused on moving business calls to the web for better user experiences and call data. For messaging, we integrated with Slack because we believe modern teams prefer complementary best-of-breed applications with easy setup over one-stop platforms with average performance and heavy commitments. Both OnSIP and Slack offer freemium service, allowing organizations to explore the services at their pace,” said John Riordan, Cofounder and CTO of OnSIP.
The collaboration between OnSIP and Slack will not only improve UCaaS, but organizations will be able to disseminate information faster so key stakeholders can receive instant notifications through designated Slack channels. As part of the collaborative environment, administrators can coordinate and direct actions to improve processes and quickly receive responses from all parties in the organization with voice, video and messaging.