The history of email goes back several decades. During this time, this standard of corporate communication has not only not become outdated, but every year it is becoming more and more popular due to the introduction of collaboration systems at various enterprises, which, as a rule, are based on e-mail. However, due to the lack of responsiveness of e-mail, more and more users are abandoning it in favor of text chats, voice and video calls, and video conferencing. Such ways of corporate communication help employees save a lot of time and, as a result, be more efficient and bring more money to the company.
However, the use of chats and video communications to resolve work issues often leads to the emergence of new threats to the information security of an enterprise. The fact is that in the absence of an appropriate corporate solution, employees can independently begin to correspond and communicate in public services, which can lead to the leakage of important information. On the other hand, the company's management is not always willing to allocate funds for the introduction of corporate platforms for video conferencing and chats, as many are sure that they distract employees from work more than increase their efficiency. The way out of this situation can be the deployment of corporate chat and video conferencing based on existing information systems. Those who use the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open-Source Edition as a collaboration platform can solve the issue of creating a corporate chat and video conferencing through Zextras Team, a solution that adds a lot of new features related to corporate online communication to Zimbra OSE.
Zextras Team comes in two editions: Zextras Team Basic and Zextras Team Pro, and differ in the set of features they provide. The first delivery option is completely free and allows you to organize text chats based on Zimbra OSE both in one-on-one and group chat formats, as well as one-on-one video chats and audio calls. In this case, all these functions will be available directly from the Zimbra OSE web client. In addition, Zextras Team Basic users can use the mobile app available on iOS and Android platforms. These applications allow you to access private and text chats, and in the future will allow you to make video calls. We note right away that for video chats and audio calls, Zextras Team users will need a properly working webcam and / or microphone.
But Zextras Team Pro provides much richer functionality. In addition to the already listed features, Zextras Team users will have the opportunity to create video conferences for a large number of employees. This allows you to hold meetings among employees who are geographically located in different places and thereby save time that was previously spent on gathering meeting participants in one room, and spend it on a deeper study of issues, or on solving specific work tasks.
Also in Zextras Team Pro it is possible to create virtual spaces and virtual meeting rooms for employees. The space can contain several conference rooms at once, in which various participants in the space can discuss common topics. For example, consider an enterprise that has a sales department of 16 people. Of these, 5 employees work in b2c sales, 5 employees in b2b sales, and another 5 employees work in b2g. The entire department is headed by the head of the sales department.
Since all employees work in the same department, it would be wise to create a common space for them to discuss all topics that concern each employee of the sales department. At the same time, topics often arise that concern only a division that works, for example, with b2b. Of course, sales people who work in other areas do not need to participate in the discussion of such topics, but the head of the department should participate in the discussions of each department. That is why it is possible to allocate separate virtual meeting rooms for each direction within the space allocated for the needs of the sales department, so that in each of them employees can communicate with each other and with the head of the department. At the same time, all three virtual meeting rooms will be conveniently collected in a separate space for the manager himself. And given that all communication takes place on the company's servers and data is not transmitted anywhere from them, then such chats can be called quite safe in terms of information security. In addition to the sales department, the principle of spaces and virtual meeting rooms can be applied to the entire enterprise.
In addition to video meetings, audio calls are also available to users. In addition to the fact that they load communication channels much less, many employees are often simply embarrassed to communicate in video format and often even glue the webcam on their laptops.
In addition to video chats and audio calls with employees, Zextras Team allows you to create video chats and audio calls with any user who is not an employee of the enterprise by generating and sending him a special link to connect to the meeting. Since the Zextras Team requires only a modern browser to work, using this feature you can always quickly communicate with a client or counterparty in cases where regular correspondence takes too long. In addition, Zextras Team supports file sharing, which employees can send to each other directly during a video call or text communication.
Not to mention the special mobile application Zextras Team, which allows employees to participate in corporate chats while away from the workplace. The app is available for iOS and Android platforms and currently allows users to:
- Chat by receiving and sending messages on your smartphone
- Create, delete and join private chats
- Create, delete and join group chats
- Join virtual spaces and meeting rooms, as well as create and delete them
- Invite users to virtual spaces and meeting rooms, or vice versa, remove them from there
- Receive push notifications and establish a secure connection to the corporate server.
In the future, private video chatting, as well as video conferencing and file sharing functionality will be added to the application.
Another interesting feature of Zextras Team is the ability to broadcast the contents of the computer screen in real time, as well as transfer control to another user. This feature can be very useful when conducting training webinars, during which it is necessary to familiarize employees with the new interface. Also, this feature can help the IT department of the enterprise help employees solve problems with their computers without the physical presence of an IT specialist.
Thus, Zextras Team is a complete solution for organizing convenient online communication between employees both in the internal network of the enterprise and beyond. Due to the fact that Zextras Backup is able to fully back up all the information that is generated in the Zextras Team, the information from there will not be lost anywhere, and depending on the severity of security policies, the system administrator will be able to independently configure various restrictions for users.
For all questions related to Zextras Suite, you can contact the Representative of Zextras Ekaterina Triandafilidi by e-mail [email protected]
Source: habr.com