Keeping Schools Connected with Cloud Telephony

Today’s educators are under extreme pressure, which has certainly been exasperated by the lockdown. The classroom and curriculum have evolved rapidly. Schools have been asked to improve the digital capacity of both students and staff, embrace curriculum changes and improve grades, all whilst budgets continue to be tightened.

Saving money whilst achieving efficiency gains, is something cloud telephony delivers in spades. Its why many schools have already made the switch, and why they are finding the virtual learning process easier, due to the array of collaboration tools for content sharing and remote working features. But what is cloud telephony and how can schools ensure they get maximise RoI from moving across?

Put simply, cloud telephony puts the telephone network wherever the internet is, allowing staff, students and managers to communicate across any number of platforms using their mobile device, PC or existing extension. It means that a school can have one supplier for voice and IT. Plug and play makes the installation super easy – at the click of a button updates can be applied and users can be added. The costs are much lower and easier to manage as no bulky hardware is required.

However, that’s just the basics. The most exciting part of cloud telephony is that it forms a foundation for a host of exciting features that can run over the top. Its these features that can make the real difference between seamless and clunky working practices. Here’s some that we hear are real value-adds and time-savers for teachers and administrators alike!

• Emergency broadcasting: Staff can dial an emergency number that will ring all senior leadership team members in the Emergency Outdial hunt group, which is key for schools in a lockdown scenario, where urgent senior staff input is required
  
  
• Intelligent call reporting: Ability to run reports on call duration, time to respond, missed calls, busy period review, how many calls a teacher has missed, when they missed them and report this visually
  
  
• Mobile app for staff on the move: This can be installed on any mobile device to assist staff in transit around campus or for teachers on school trips, sporting events etc
  
  
• Conferencing: Free audio conferencing is included for use on SLT or parent-governor calls. Each attendee can have a unique dial in number with chairperson and participant codes
• Hotdesking Facility: This allows users to log into different handsets/devices while retaining their own settings: e.g. programmed keys, voicemail, call history etc.
  
  
• Integration with apps: There is full integration with popular Microsoft desktop apps such as Teams, to improve internal and external communications