Headsets: The Critical Component
With open floor plans accounting for nearly 70% of US offices, headsets are critical for conducting work in the office or on the go. Companies are deploying thousands of headsets, significantly increasing costs and time spent by IT in managing, deploying, and troubleshooting technical issues. Imagine if headsets were proactively managed from a single platform with all your collaboration applications and devices, no matter if on-prem or cloud. Imagine if IT admins could remotely deploy thousands of headsets in minutes, view real time headset usage metrics, and receive diagnostic data. Awesome, right? Additionally, they can see this information for phones, video and a total end to end view enabling early detection of issues between any conversation. Now that’s possible in the new CUCM 12.5*
Cisco is disrupting the UCC headset market by seamlessly extending the collaboration experience and creating an intelligent, integrated headset management that leverages existing Cisco collaboration infrastructure, instead of requiring additional paid services or hard-to-maintain desktop software.
Headset management in CUCM 12.5* works in tandem with enhancements to Jabber and the Cisco 7800 and 8800 Phone Series and will soon be extended to the Webex platform.
Going Beyond Troubleshooting
CUCM 12.5* dynamically collects headset information and manages it as a device, equivalently the way it does with Cisco IP phones and Video systems. Upon a user receiving a headset and connecting to Cisco Jabber or desk phones, UCM immediately registers the headset, identifies the associated owner, and begins tracking real time call diagnostics and usage metrics. Once registered in UCM, IT admins can remotely configure headset settings (e.g. sidetone, volume, equalizer, DECT range, etc), view end to end call diagnostics, push automatic firmware updates to select groups or the entire organization without disruption end users, and much more. The days of troubleshooting blindly when someone calls with a headset issue are over thanks to Cisco end to end management of the complete UC solution.
Customizable reports can also be generated within CUCM 12.5* for efficient, hassle free management ensuring maximum return on headset investments. IT admins can instantly view high level inventory reports or in-depth headset stats such as usage, age, serial numbers, and more. Below are a few examples of the data within CUCM 12.5*.
Tackling the Collaboration Dilemma
The lack of an end-to-end collaboration solution makes headset management costly and disruptive for today’s mobile workstyles. Cisco is proud to offer a complete collaboration solution comprised of the Webex platform, video devices, call manager (UCM), IP phones, and now professional headsets. We also continue to add innovative features. For example, the 1.5 headset firmware allows not only headset management, but also includes the following new features on the Cisco Headsets 560 series:
- Conference capabilities – pair up to 3 headsets to the same base station
- Multiple Bluetooth Pairing – allows 4 paired Bluetooth devices
Cisco Headsets are built to extend the seamless collaboration experience from Cisco devices and clients such as Cisco IP Phones, Jabber, Webex, DX and Room Kit series. We are also excited to announce Cisco Headsets are now optimized for use with Microsoft Skype for Business. Cisco Headset support for Microsoft Teams is underway.
For a demo of headset management in CUCM 12.5(1)SU1 and 11.5(1)SU7, watch the video:
For more information on Cisco headsets, please visit www.cisco.com/go/headsets
References
*CUCM 12.5(1)SU1 required. Headset Mgmt Capabilities in CUCM 11.5(1)SU7 coming late 2019
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