AGAT

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Announcement Microsoft Teams

AGAT Software Enhances Recording for Microsoft Teams

Improved recording solutions for MS Teams

AGAT Software Enhances Recording for Microsoft Teams
SphereShield for Microsoft Teams

Recording has always been a valuable feature in the communication landscape. Required by businesses for a range of different reasons, from compliance to process improvements, recording offers essential access to information. As the need for recording solutions continues to expand, vendors like Microsoft have begun engaging with various recording companies to provide integrations available throughout 2020.

Similarly, Cisco recently purchased the Voicea brand, aiming to use the company’s powerful transcription service to bring the benefits of text to voice communications. AGAT Software, one of the market leaders in the delivery of security and compliance solutions for UC and collaboration services, has begun to deliver its own offering in this market. The AGAT flagship product, SphereShield, now works with Microsoft Teams to offer exceptional recording solutions, without the need for a third-party recording service. The SphereShield offering will also soon be available for Cisco Webex Meetings and Zoom.

I spoke with CEO for AGAT Software, Yoav Crombie, to find out more.

Tell us About the New Solution

SphereShield is AGAT’s solution for security, compliance and functionality within the communication and collaboration environment. According to Yoav, the idea for this new solution came from a number of things. First, customers were discussing the need for a new and improved recording solution to serve their compliance and information management needs.

Additionally, at Microsoft Ignite, AGAT Software realised that Microsoft is now working with 6 different vendors on some kind of integration for call recording. “While the need for call recording has been around for a long time, we have mainly focused on files, messaging, and communication in general. However, Microsoft Ignite showed us just how valuable this opportunity could be.”

AGAT believes that it can offer something that’s very efficient and cost-effective to its customers. “It’s easy for us to deliver this recording service, because we already have the building blocks in place. We have the Graph API and Proxy capabilities.” What’s more, call recording is becoming increasingly more valuable as the functionality continues to improve.

Tell Us About What You’ve Done with SphereShield

SphereShield, AGAT Software’s leading solution for compliance and security, will now offer a cost-effective solution that integrates with the Microsoft Stream server.

“The solution has several layers, addressing the needs of the current marketplace”

One of the main issues that people have with Microsoft Teams recording, is that you can’t share the recorded conversations externally. If you have recorded a meeting with external users, you can’t send that recording to the meeting participants. SphereShield will overcome that issue by creating a shareable link for the video. Additionally, SphereShield will also be adding video eDiscovery into the service, allowing people to search for the information that they need by parameters like dates, participants, meeting title, and meeting content. The eDiscovery is designed to be used by an end user rather than an admin.

“The other thing that we’re going to unlock is the ability to create a transcript for the meeting that you’ve done. We’re using the Microsoft solution for this and enhancing it. There are 8 languages supported, and you can use the transcript to analyse keywords, labels, and topics, using AI linguistic analysis. There’s also the option to analyse recordings and detect DLP incidents with the SphereShield built-in engine.”

What Other Compliance Features Are There?

The SphereShield solution for Microsoft Teams addresses a number of the issues that came from customers, including the need to store recordings on-prem. “Our customers were telling us that they needed to disable recording in Teams because they need recording to be stored on-prem. SphereShield allows for storing the recordings in a location under company control.”

SphereShield users can also enforce recording policies that force recording with specific business rules based on users, AD groups, domains and external participant information. Policy can also control whether users will be able to record or not. “We’ll also be offering the ability to analyse audio conversations in real-time and take action when incidents of DLP are detected. You can deliver action in the form of a popup awareness notification, or you can end the call.

The audio is streamed and inspected in real-time with the DLP solution, making it easy to educate the user about any security problems.

AGAT is also Working with Cisco

The AGAT Software team will also be bringing the solution for Microsoft Teams into the Cisco Webex Meeting solutions too. Using APIs, users will be able to analyse meeting recordings using similar recording and compliance options, as well as eDiscovery. AGAT is working with Cisco to release a solution that will offer archiving, analysis and DLP inspection of meeting recordings.

Additionally, now that Cisco has purchased Voicea, the company will be able to create a solution that offers live transcriptions and real-time content inspection in the future. SphereShield will be offering the ability to get all meeting recordings and transcribe the audio using DLP policies, for the detection of incidents with compliance. “We’re planning on working with Zoom, too.”

Ultimately, with the AGAT Software SphereShield solution, companies using Microsoft Teams will be able to take advantages of the recording features built-into their system. Instead of using a third-party recording solution, you can use SphereShield to access greater compliance and functionality.

“Plus, it’s a much faster and more flexible solution. You can implement this today as an on-prem or SaaS offering. That’s another major advantage over some of the vendors out there”

Original Source: https://www.uctoday.com/collaboration/team-collaboration/agat-software-enhances-recording-for-microsoft-teams/

Categories
Microsoft Teams

Announcing Conditional Access to Cloud-Based UC&C Services

Announcing Conditional Access to Cloud-Based UC&C Services

By AGAT Software team

Keeping Your Cloud-Based UC&C Safe

Unified Communications & Collaboration services such as Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Webex Teams are increasingly becoming a vital tool of modern enterprise businesses worldwide. For example, Microsoft Teams, launched just 2.5 years ago, has grown by 250% in the last year alone in the number of organizational clients, serving 500,000 organizational clients and 13 million daily users.

As time-sensitive communication is rapidly moving into cloud-based Unified Communications & Collaboration services, a growing number of organizations is exposed to a challenging compliance and security threat: employees using their own non-compliant devices to access company cloud UC services.

Most enterprise companies in the market have invested significant resources into deploying UEM solutions to address threats related to mobile devices.

Yet even while using a UEM/EMM/MDM solution, any employee may still access cloud UC&C services such as Microsoft Teams and Webex Teams from an unmanaged mobile device and put your organization at risk.

infographic

ShereShield Offers Integration with MDM/UEM Solutions

Restricting access to cloud services by UEM/EMM/MDM solutions has always been challenging due to the fact that the service is not under the company’s control. Moreover, UC cloud services come with the challenge of working with other protocols beyond HTTPS and the need to preserve call quality level.

When an employee downloads and uses an app on their personal device it poses a risk to the organization. Any mobile device might be at risk of being exposed to malicious code which may compromise sensitive company data.

SphereShield offers integration with leading UEM/EMM/MDM Solutions, allowing access restriction to Skype for Business Online, Microsoft Teams and Webex Teams from unmanaged and non-compliant devices. The new conditional access feature allows organizations to maintain control over their communications and keep safe.

SphereShield integrates seamlessly with all leading UEM vendors including MobileIron, BlackBerry, VMWare AirWatch, IBM MaaS360, Citrix Endpoint Management (XenMobile) and Microsoft Intune.

MobileIron Makes AGAT SphereShield Available for Sale

MobileIron, a worldwide leader in endpoint and enterprise solutions for mobile device management, has recently announced the launch of the MobileIron Premier Marketplace, and has selected to feature AGAT’s SphereShield among few select vendors on the platform, making SphereShield’s MDM/UEM solution even more readily accessible.

SphereShield provides cutting edge security solutions for organizations globally.

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Categories
Announcement Channel Management Microsoft Teams

SphereShield Now Offers Archive, Move and Export for Microsoft Teams

AGAT Software addresses demands of Microsoft Teams users

Microsoft Teams has quickly emerged as one of the most popular tools for centralising and managing collaboration in the enterprise environment. In a world where employees are becoming increasingly mobile and dispersed, it’s tools like Microsoft Teams that allow modern employees to stay connected wherever they are, without having to worry about things like email lag or lost phone signal.

However, there’s still growth that needs to happen before Microsoft Teams can become the ultimate collaboration solution for every brand. Fortunately, companies like AGAT Software are responding to the needs of Microsoft Teams Users by further developing their flagship “SphereShield” security and compliance solution.

SphereShield from AGAT Software now offers tools such as export, archive, and the option to move channels between Teams. According to the CEO of AGAT Software, Yoav Crombie, the offering was designed to respond to the top compliance and functionality requirements expressed by the Microsoft Teams User Feedback Forum, UserVoice.

Introducing Microsoft Teams Channel Management

Yoav told me that SphereShield is a unified communications and collaboration solution designed to respond to the needs of today’s teams. Customers need the simplicity and convenience that comes with team-based collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, but that doesn’t mean that they want to compromise on privacy, security, or compliance.

“We extended the features of our premier product, SphereShield to address the two main user needs that we saw in the current environment. Current Teams users told us that they needed help with archiving and moving channels in the Teams environment”

Within the Microsoft Teams UserVoice forums, “archiving channels” was the issue with the second-highest number of votes (9k), while moving channels had the highest number of requests (10k). These issues were among the topics that are marked as ‘backlog’, which means that Microsoft hasn’t yet set a timeline for addressing them.

“Today’s users need the option to archive channels in their Microsoft Teams environment when they’re no longer using them. This stops the Teams space from becoming overly cluttered, and it also means that companies can better manage their limit of up to 200 channels per team.”

While deleting channels isn’t an option, particularly when information in the collaborative space is needed for long-term purposes, archiving presents an excellent opportunity. Unfortunately, Teams doesn’t offer a native export option to allow channels to be moved into different formats.

Archiving Channels with AGAT SphereShield

Just because businesses aren’t necessarily using all of their channels anymore, doesn’t mean that they want to get rid of that information forever. Users from a range of backgrounds have informed AGAT of their need to archive information. “Many of the projects that are handled through the channels in Microsoft Teams are dynamic and temporary in nature. They might include things like mini projects, incidents and tenders. Once those things have been resolved or completed, organisations may still need to keep a record of the information for legal reasons or for reference.”

Many companies adopting modern agile working policies and practices end up creating dozens of channels every month within Microsoft Teams. However, when projects are completed, that means that businesses are left dealing with a huge number of unnecessary and inactive channels. Microsoft has a limit on the number of channels that can be created, which means that businesses quickly end up running out of space.

The SphereShield solution from AGAT Software allows Microsoft Teams users to archive the channels that are no longer active in their environment. This means that companies can retain valuable information for evidence, reference, or use at a later date. Once a channel is successfully archived, it can also be deleted from the original team environment, maintaining a cleaner, uncluttered platform for team members and managers alike.

Moving Channels with AGAT SphereShield

SphereShield channel management

SphereShield channel management – click to enlarge

According to Yoav, as well as wanting a way to archive their channels, companies also want the option to move their channels. Organisational changes mean that needs arise to limit the people who access specific channels or to move certain channels to different teams. With any project, it’s not always easy to anticipate how an environment will evolve. Channels can become specified for specific teams or require different levels of access. Occasionally, channels might be set up and users will later discover that the structure of the channel isn’t suitable.

Yoav noted that AGAT SphereShield will give users the option to manage their channels however they see fit, by moving channels between teams and improving the flow of productivity and information. “Users will be able to confidently start collaborating with the use of channels, knowing that those channels can be moved when needed to address the changes in requirements that happen in any business.”

SphereShield will even support the organisational need that companies have to move data within a Teams channel into an unchangeable format like a PDF document. That hasn’t been possible until now within the Teams channel environment. There also hasn’t been a simple method available for copying and pasting channel content.

“We’re addressing this need for exportation by providing the option to export a channel into a PDF document format that users can then store and share according to their needs”

The SphereShield team is working hard to keep pace with the rapid evolution of Teams, and the changing needs of the end-user. The new features of SphereShield will increase usability, enhance functionality, boost productivity, and increase the adoption of Microsoft Teams.

Original Source: https://www.uctoday.com/collaboration/team-collaboration/sphereshield-now-offers-archive-move-and-export-for-microsoft-teams/