Cisco Business Edition 7000 (discontinued) vs. Slack

Cisco business edition are well suited for the environment where we need regular communication as they are easy to dial and has got great features. The product is well suited for both small business and large enterprises. Speed dial, good voice quality are key features of Cisco phones. They are not well suited in scenarios where we do not have LAN connectivity or internet. Sometimes we may face latency and jitteriness which is not good.

Incentivized

I think Slack works really well in office settings, or even for any group of people who need an easy way to communicate with each other through organized channels. It may not be the best for those who intend to use it as a social media type app, it is more geared towards business use.

Incentivized

• The platform supports up to 5,000 users connected at the same time in voice and video calls.
• Everything is virtually deployed on Cisco servers with reliability.
• Intuitive configuration and user-friendly web interface.
• It has several types of IP phones and is compatible with legacy and multi-brand hardware with SIP protocol.

Incentivized

• Automated Notifications: Integrated tools like Jira, Trello, and Google Drive to receive automated notifications and updates directly in Slack, improving visibility and efficiency within the team
• Message Encryption: Slack encrypts the messages in transit and at rest, ensuring the security and privacy of sensitive information and making our IT team's life much easier.
• Reminder Bots: We used Slackbot to set reminders, automate follow-up actions, and provided information based on user queries.
• SurveyMonkey Integration: Integrated our Slack with SurveyMonkey to distribute surveys and collect feedback from team members, streamlining the feedback-gathering process which was a huge support to our HR and Admin team.

Incentivized

• More cloud based services need to be added to the default service package.
• Companies frequently require a small contact center within the UC environment. It would be nice to see a build it contact center in the box.
• It would be nice to see some advanced AI based services (IVR voice recognition service) in the BE7K application list.
• Call recording should be also built in.

Incentivized

• The only thing I can think of is that it is easy to create too many channels. This has more to do with the team using Slack and less to do with Slack itself. maybe some direction on Slack's part on how best to utilize channels would be helpful.

Incentivized

As useful as Slack has become within our company, I feel fairly confident we will continue to use Slack as a communication tool. They continue to improve their software and add value to its use within our office. Customer service delivers, which is an absolute must. Looking forward to how they improve.

Incentivized

As long as you use the basic chat features and nothing more, it really is super easy to understand and use. Once you want to take advantage of some of the more advanced features and capabilities, that's when things get complicated. Anyone who has use SMS or a chat program before will be able to figure out the basics though, so rolling this out should be relatively straightforward and not required exhaustive training. Teaching chat etiquette is something else though.

I've never had to contact support for Slack which is a great testament to its ease and use. Adding people outside of the organization takes a little getting used to, but ultimately allows for greater collaboration between FTE and contractors. There is no clear alternative to this software, so it's the best we can do for now.

It always helps if you communicate to everyone in the organization how important it is to drop whatever other chat tools they are using and jump quickly to Slack. They will all fall in love with it.

Incentivized

I've used 220s and 240s too, but it takes a lot of time to set them up, a lot of time to download the iso files, and set up of datastores. 7k saves the engineer a lot of pre-build assessment and evaluation time. Gets a lot done in a lot less time, returns are a happy engineer and a happier customer.

Incentivized

Slack is the superior offering for what we do and who we communicate with. The other programs offer basic features, but Slack continues to innovate and is business-first, which is very helpful for our small team. The feature set and integrations are better in Slack than other offerings we have evaluated

Incentivized

• It has allowed for mostly smooth communication from department to department/office to office.
• It allows for saved phone # / last contact to appear quickly.
• It has allowed for safety warnings/announcements to emerge all across every office so that everyone within the organization is on the same page about events when they occur.

Incentivized

• We have a story when one guy mentioned in a our site group with tag @here about his wedding, he didnt know that @here works only for people who are online, so most of the people missed the message, slack is not the best place to update about the important things
• Slack helps to solve and be updated if you have an internal problems and you want to know how the solving goes

Incentivized