The UCStrategies Experts share their expertise in bylined articles, opinion pieces, blogs, and podcasts, to define unified communications, educate you about unified communications technologies, and help you make informed decisions about unified communications solutions.
UCStrategies.com defines unified communications as “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.” The definition of unified communications narrows significantly when you can read and hear about real-world examples that other companies are implementing right now—and apply them to your situation.
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Plantronics has recently announced the Plantronics Developer Connection (PDC), which includes programming interfaces, technical resources, and forums through a software developer kit made for Windows environments, and serves as a community for developers to connect with Plantronics staff. The PDC also comes with an emulator to let developers test applications without a headset.
The Plantronics Developer Connection brings contextual intelligence and smart communications to existing applications so that they can benefit from information such as knowing the user’s headset state, communications capabilities, proximity, etc.
The first of Plantronics’ new generation of intelligent headsets is the Voyager PRO UC, which incorporates sensors to detect the user's physical location and surroundings. It obtains information on when the headset is used, proximity to the user's computer, and more. This information can then be used by application developers to create applications to improve user experiences, productivity, and workflow.
Plantronics’ Spokes PC-based software platform provides headset-enabled call control as well as real-time media management, and works as the contextual intelligence broker between the headset and ISV applications. Information gathered by the contextual intelligence software can be accessed and used by application developers to make their applications contextually aware. Using Spokes software developer kit (SDK), application vendors can incorporate this contextual intelligence into their applications, which will automatically know when the headset is worn, the user’s proximity to their PC, mobile call state, and with whom the user is talking. This helps application developers create new user experiences with improved productivity and workflow.
The Plantronics software and headsets are designed to make communications smarter. By providing contextual intelligence to communication, user productivity and the effectiveness of a business' workflow are improved.
Plantronics has made a multi-million dollar commitment to promoting the development of new apps that interface with Plantronics audio devices to increase the use models for the contextual intelligence ecosystem. Plantronics is already working with companies such as Cisco, Siemens, Avaya, Sococo, Vidyo, IBM, Huawei, and others to offer products and services that use the contextual intelligence provided by Plantronics headsets and software.
According to UCStrategies co-founder Blair Pleasant, “I saw a great demo from Sococo showing how their team workspace uses the information from the Plantronics Voyager PRO UC headset to change a user’s presence status and more. In the Sococo virtual team workspace, a user’s avatar and status automatically changes when the user puts on their Plantronics headset. If you’re wearing the headset and you're near your PC, your avatar shows others in your team space that you're available for a voice and video interaction; if you take the headset off, your icon or avatar immediately changes to show that you’re not available. If you move or walk away from your PC, the avatar will show that you’re available for a phone or audio interaction, but not video. This happens without the user having to push any buttons or do anything. This really demonstrates how the contextual intelligence of the headsets and software takes the manual aspect out of setting a user’s presence status, and helps speed business processes.”
For more information, visit www.plantronics.com.