Plantronics Connects Smartphone and PC's to Conference Calls with InstantMeeting
Plantronics Connects Smartphone and PC's to Conference Calls with InstantMeeting by Robbie Pleasant
In order to reduce the time and frustration of dialing into conference calls, Plantronics has released the InstantMeeting app. This app, for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows PCs, uses a single button to dial into and connect to a conference call, and is available now.
The app is designed to identify conference calls in the user's calendar, before providing a prompt to access the call, dialing users in through Microsoft Lync or Skype. It includes one-touch connections, instant reconnection to any dropped calls, and the ability to message other meeting attendees.
According to Blair Pleasant, co-founder of UCStrategies, “The Plantronics New Ventures Division, which is helping the company expand to become a communications solution company instead of simply headset manufacturer, looked at its users to identify ways to help knowledge workers be more efficient. They realized that connecting to conference calls and meetings, especially scheduled calls, can be time consuming and a hassle, and developed InstantMeeting to make the conferencing experience easier, especially for remote and mobile workers.”
She added, “What seems especially impressive is the natural language processor, which scans the user’s calendar appointments and looks for certain key words in order to qualify something as a conference call, and then identifies the dial-in number and conference ID in order to make it simple to join a meeting. Plantronics’ challenge will be to reach enterprise buyers, who are different from headset buyers.”
The Outlook version is available for free, while the Enterprise version for Lync and Skype can be downloaded by individual users or deployed by IT departments, for $4.99 from their respective app stores.
For more information, visit www.plantronics.com.