Covid-19 has certainly been a rough ride for some businesses, whilst others seem to have hit the ground running. Microsoft is one of the latter.

Whilst Teams had already been out a few years – since 2017, which is long enough to iron out notable bugs and bring in some enhancements – it now features in everyone’s 2020 vernacular alongside Zoom and Disney+. The dash to homeworking and online get-togethers catapulted communication tools ahead by a few years, as we proved that we could successfully collaborate and support one another remotely within teams, across departments and with other organizations.

What you may not know is that in 2019, Microsoft introduced Direct Routing to Teams, the upshot of which meant users could use SIP lines to make external calls. Teams went from being essentially an in-house collaboration tool to becoming a credible telephony solution for all forms of communication. Microsoft then added functionality including hunt groups, and introduced their Graph API for recording, which meant all channels could now be captured to meet the exacting requirements of contact centers and financial services.

That’s when Covid-19 happened: a perfect storm with a silver lining.

Teams does allow users to manually record their conversations within the app, which is fine as a quick reference tool. But for those serious about compliance, it’s inadequate. The calls aren’t encrypted, which falls foul of regulations from the likes of the FCA, Dodd-Frank, HIPAA and MiFID II. And whilst a number of companies offer recording for Teams, those that aren’t white-listed by Microsoft are capped (or ‘throttled’ as it is formally, and graphically, referred to) at 10,000 calls per month – that won’t get you far if you’re a busy contact center.

That’s where Oak comes in. 

We’ve been designing and deploying call recording solutions for decades. So, we took our know-how and applied it to Teams. We’re white-listed as a Microsoft Certified Partner for compliance recording along with very few other vendors. That means you can deploy Oak’s Clarify recorder alongside Teams to securely capture any number of interactions – calls, video, screen-share and chat, internal, outbound and mobile – and store it for easy retrieval as long as you need.

You can deploy Clarify with Teams alone for a complete communications package, or in a hybrid environment if you want to still use your existing telephony for some calls.

Furthermore, you can integrate Clarify with Active Directory for single log-on, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM so you can search for recordings by either company name or number.

Many organizations use recordings to train staff and assess performance. We also offer Call Journey speech analytics, which goes a step further by identifying key words, as well as sentiment within recordings. You can pinpoint what you’re doing well, where things went wrong, and whether your team are towing the necessary line on compliance. You can even transcribe calls to text for further analysis in Microsoft Insights.

And the best bit? We think you’ll find us competitively priced compared to the other guys.

So, if you’re considering switching to Teams for all your telephony needs or using it alongside your existing platform, and wondering how Oak can keep your communications compliant, get in touch with our Sales Team via the online Chat or through the Contact Us page; we’d be really happy to walk you through a demo or answer any questions you may have.