MiCloud Connect vs. Microsoft Viva Engage

If your company has relied only on an on-premises system in the past, Mitel is a fantastic alternative. Mitel provides an excellent hosted option for businesses looking for scalability as they expand as well as ease of deployment for use by branch offices and remote employees. However, I would recommend caution if the company plans to utilize Mitel as its only communications platform because its conferencing solutions are not ready for prime time.

Incentivized

Yammer provides a social network experience for the enterprise, providing a "Facebook for work". Its mobile app provides an excellent user experience, showing the full mix of communications happening across topics and teams. The web app, while it hasn't evolved much in the last few years, provides a good experience consuming news. Personally, I use Yammer every morning to see what's happening across my company and comment, like, and share to interact across silos. As long as the size of the network inside of Yammer is managed - likely partitioning a large organization into business units, etc., - then Yammer provides an excellent platform for social news and "bottom up" collaboration across teams. Its free-form posting style, including articles and polls for interactive content, helps break down silos across the organization. Contrasted with the boring world of email, Yammer is a tantalizing world of pictures, GIFs, and videos. At LiveTiles, we share company and team news via Yammer, enabling others to see the progress and milestones - from a new office to a new customer - without the heavy burden of a company newsletter or similarly curated content. Even though we have fully adopted Teams for day-to-day, intra-team communication, Yammer is still the gold standard for inter-team communication.

Incentivized

• The system up-time has been 100% over 3 years.
• With separate systems and two locations we used to have to fake the system into 4 digit dialing by forwarding all remote extensions to DIDs. Now with Shortel extended to the remote location we have true 4 digit dialing.
• The Shortel desktop application makes managing calls and call routing a breeze for even our most novice users.

Incentivized

• No one likes getting a long thread of reply-alls. With Yammer announcements and updates can be shared — without cluttering your inbox.
• Yammer's mobile apps are great for our on-the-go sales team to stay in touch with our office staff.
• Yammer's social aspect makes it incredibly easy to use, even for our less tech savvy teammates. If you've used Facebook, learning Yammer will be a cinch.

Incentivized

• The Shoretel Mobility app for iPhone does not work very well and is not very intuitive in my experience.
• We have had many intermittent instances of employees reporting that call quality is bad, sounds like the caller is garbled and underwater.
• I deployed Shoretel Sky to eleven branches in four states over a 6 month period and experiences were not very consistent. Had issues with not enough power bricks being sent with the phones, some phones not having the the face sticker showing messages, directories, etc., user guides (quick start guides) not getting shipped with the phones at some branches, and phones being programmed incorrectly. This made it very difficult to plan my trips to train employees and install these at the various locations.

• While Yammer has been an easy transition from SharePoint, it's still relatively new and unknown. Some employees claim that feel like the product was just another "add on" to the entire Microsoft Office experience.
• When introducing new employees to Yammer, they are not as receptive because of how widely used SharePoint is across businesses and industries.
• Functionality is simple, but still vastly different from SharePoint, thus creating a learning curve.

Incentivized

Although the price is higher than some of the other Hosted systems out there, the value is definitely worth a renewal. Everything is relative: there are some companies out there who need phones, but don't necessarily care how they work, the functionality/features available/durability etc., they just care that they have phones that make and receive calls. There are other companies that are completely reliant on phones and certain functionality that is provided by the system. There are even some companies who are straight up dependent on the phone system and are losing tons of money anytime they are down, ShoreTel is the perfect fit for theSMB client who sees value in a solid,robust, reliable and high functioning phone system

Incentivized

Microsoft is dedicated to continual improvement on Yammer. They realize the value that Yammer brings to the table with their clients. In the short time that we have had Yammer implemented, we are just now beginning to see the strong impact it has on becoming more effective and efficient around collaboration.

I have not used a wide array of communication software, but this far ShoreTel/MiCloud has been the simplest and easiest to get into. My work employs several temps at certain points throughout the year, and they use this piece of software frequently, and new hires seem to have little to no issue using this software. Additionally, this is our primary telephone communication infrastructure, and I have yet to encounter any issues when signed in and regularly using it handling external calls to our department.

Incentivized

Overall easy to use and intuitive, although limited in the possibility to personalize layout and look & feel of a site. Some functionalities are not easy to use, like document editing, but some others are quick and effective (posts and tagging above all). Performance and responsiveness of the Yammer site is typically acceptable, in my experience.

The system has gone down on us MULTIPLE times. We asked them to move us to a different cluster. Shoretel declined. Basically we had problems or outages every month of the year from June 2012 to date. Our old phone system was just that: OLD, no bells or whistles. But it was up every day and I never had to think about it much until it was time for an upgrade. That's how I want Shoretel to be. I want it so reliable that I never have to think about it.

Very available

Even though the system uses a lower bandwidth connection we have experienced a higher call quality than our previous system which required a T1 line and back up broadband connection.

It's a simple product but it does provide value.

ShoreTel Sky's support is amazing. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10 is that we still need to contact them for stuff that we should be able to do, for ourselves, within the management portal. I know their portal is being worked on, so hopefully they will get the "little things" included for self-management.

We have never had to use the support for Yammer. The tool works well and we have not come across any bugs. User Interface is simple and easy to use, similar to other forum type products, thereby removing the need for any extensive training. Team members are invited in and immediately are able to start using the tool.

Incentivized

I attended the first ShoreTel installer class in Austin,TX. It was a week of intensive study with a live lab and having hands on experience made the class worthwhile. I have taken all of the sales courses and remaining technical courses either online or self study to keep costs down. I send my techs to the first installer course in Austin as I feel it gives them a solid foundation and most of teh other courses they have taken have been online.

Incentivized

The training identified some things M5 (ShoreTel's cloud division) could provide, however it was only using it every day and asking the Shoretel support several questions that I got the hang of it. The training was able to highlight functions but I did not learn how to use the phone from the training.

The training that Microsoft provides is very generic training for Yammer. I like the fact the training is short and easy to understand

I feel that the current features that ShoreTel provides are pretty solid, but in future I would love to see it expand into more features to assist inter team communication if possible. Considering that there was not a single issue with ShoreTel in my whole work period of 6months I think it is safe to say that the implementation is pretty standardized.

Incentivized

We organically implemented the product

Costs are lower with Mitel's offering than was the case with SureTel's offering. Switching from SureTel to MiTel was simple and painless. A software update was pushed by IT, and users migrated with relative ease. The vast majority of users did not need any involvement from IT during and after the switch over

Incentivized

I like how Yammer has functions that are fun and interactive, which can give you much more to do than using Teams or even Microsoft Forms. Yammer helps people feel included and gives people a better sense of how their friends and co-workers are feeling on certain issues. Yammer is a lot more like a social media platform than a work tool even!

Incentivized

Shoretel has been very scalable for our organization. We first installed Shoretel in 2003 to standardize three sites on one phone system. As our needs have changed, our Shoretel system has adapted with our growing needs and added locations. Initially, we were using analog phones and have been rolling out VoIP as our budgeting has allowed.

Incentivized

• We've definitely seen a business impact on our company in a positive manner. We've been able to provide the best possible service that suits our needs, while not being gouged by ISP's or Telco providers.
• We can better serve our customer service reps and tech support people by managing our own system, creating our own ring groups and control use.

• Nothing negative. But what we tend to forget is that Yammer is just a product, not a vision for change. The true and deep implementation and adoption of an enterprise network needs work and commitment, just like everything else. The true benefits will only emerge over time.

Incentivized