By Stephen Brash, Cloud Acceleration Leader – Canada, Avaya

With just one month to go, almost all Canadian colleges and universities have finalized their fall pandemic plans. Just over half (51%) will deliver programs in-person, 41% have chosen to continue with a hybrid model, and about 5% are offering courses predominantly, if not entirely, online. This marks significant progress for the country’s COVID recovery, considering that this time last year only 5% of post-secondary schools were offering in-person classes.

One thing schools across the globe have learned is the importance of a flexible, all-in-one collaboration platform that can centralize communications with capabilities like cloud calling, presence, chat, and video and audio conferencing. Whether school plans to return to in-person learning, remain hybrid, or go fully remote, decision-makers at an executive level (CIOs, CTOs, DX Officers) must invest in the right UCaaS solution to adequately meet their users’ different needs. Solutions within the Avaya OneCloud™ UCaaS portfolio – including Avaya Spaces® and Avaya Cloud Office™ by RingCentral – should be at the top of their list, most recently achieving a 2021 EdTech award for best communication solution. 

What You’ll Get with Avaya OneCloud UCaaS Collaboration Solutions

• Meetings/Conferencing: Initiate video and content-sharing meetings anytime, anywhere from within one simple app. Never worry about having to pay for separate video meeting services or deal with the hassle of system integration.
• Messaging: Instructors can provide one-to-one attention by means of direct messaging with students, broadcast messages to students and parents with a single click, create forums to broadcast information, and more.
• Calling: Get all the benefits of a calling platform in a single cloud communications app, including voicemail-to-text, automatic call recording, on-demand call recording, multi-level auto attendant, and more. A smooth migration will allow you to optimize your existing telephony equipment while modernizing your business phone system. 
• Team collaboration: Avaya OneCloud UCaaS gives every user their own conference bridge with full collaboration functionality (calls, meeting, messaging, file-sharing, screen-sharing, recording). All files and communications are kept in one secure place and can be accessed anywhere, anytime, using any device. 
• Reporting: Take the guesswork out of understanding how your college or university’s communications are performing using built-in reports or by easily creating your own dashboards with over 30 KPIs. Understand metrics like utilization, missed calls, time to answer, refused calls, meeting frequency, and system Quality of Service (QoS).
• Centralized administration: You don’t have to install anything on your computer or have specialized expertise to get started with any of the solutions within the Avaya OneCloud UCaaS portfolio. Our customer success team will even step in as part of your purchase to help educate you on how to easily self-manage the system. 
• Multi-vendor presence: Avaya OneCloud UCaaS supports seamless integration with hundreds of ready-to-use business and communication apps like Office 365, Google G-Suite, and more, with the ability to easily make calls and search messages across all these apps for a seamless digital user experience. 
• Enhanced AI functionality: Avaya Spaces supports powerful AI meeting capabilities including AI-powered background noise removal, intelligent background replacement, and AI-infused presentation to further enhance and simplify the user experience – anywhere, on any device. Most recently, Avaya Spaces took the top spot for “Best Use of AI” and was named a finalist for Best Collaboration Platform in the prestigious UC Today 2021 Awards. 

The Best Benefits of Avaya OneCloud UCaaS 

Get a simple, flexible cloud experience

Move to the cloud at your own pace with solutions that make it easy to get new features and upgrades without IT headaches. Flexible subscription models ensure you can move at your leisure while enjoying the benefits of paying only for the services you use with the flexibility to adapt as needed.

Knock down barriers to collaboration 

Keep everyone connected and informed by removing all barriers to immersive collaboration. Enable faculty and staff to make decisions faster and empower them to act in the moment.

One app for everything you need

All communication and collaboration is contained to one simple, cloud-based app. Students can keep better track of coursework and class communications, instructors can communicate between each other as well as other staff (i.e. Deans, College Counselors, administrators, admission recruiters), and parents can communicate with a specific instructor, admission councilor, administrator, school psychologist, etc.  – all from one single interface. 

Easy for anyone to use

There are no time limits, no need to get permissions, and no confusing instructions to navigate. Just click on one easy link using a Chrome or Firefox browser on any device – laptop, mobile phone, tablet – to start conducting lectures online or join a meeting space.

Do everything you normally would in the classroom

Instructors can use screen-share to walk students through a PowerPoint presentation in real-time, send links and files using real-time chat (everything will stay in the chat session even after the class is over for future reference or in case a student misses the session), and monitor students as they take exams using video conferencing. Instructors are in complete control over how they choose to communicate with students and get work done. 

Streamline payments and save costs

Streamline payments with better price predictability and control (no surprises or hassles) and pay only for the services you use (never worry again about spare hardware capacity or licenses). Get everything you need in one complete system at one low, monthly price with one single, simple bill.

How Higher Education Institutions Are Transforming with Avaya OneCloud UCaaS 

• Lincoln Memorial University decided to replace its aging phone systems with Avaya Cloud Office for richer, cloud-based communications features, simpler connectivity across all campus locations, and ease of use and management – all as part of a more flexible consumption model that leveled off monthly IT expenses.
• Using Avaya Cloud Office, Aims Community College was able to reduce its workload on phone systems by a minimum of 30% while increasing uptime – all with no net gain of cost and increased flexibility and communications functionality for a better user experience. 

Adapt to Today’s New Higher Education Environment 

Whether in-person, hybrid, or remote, decision-makers need to invest in an all-in-one cloud communications solution to power their post-secondary school with flexible experiences built for today’s world of education and the challenges of tomorrow. Learn more about Avaya OneCloud UCaaS.