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Posts tagged "Business"

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Microsoft Teams update will eliminate a common business bottleneck
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Getting your next big project or idea approved by your manager or boss can often slow down productivity which is why Microsoft launched its new Approvals app in Microsoft Teams earlier this year.

The Approvals app can be accessed from any chat or channel conversation or by using the dedicated app entry point in the left navigation bar in Teams.

With the app open, all you have to do is fill in the details of the approval like the title, description and the users who need to approve it and hit 'Send'. However, you can also add attachments from Microsoft's office software or custom responses to tailor the request to your business needs.

Once submitted, the approvers are notified within Teams and can act on an approval request either from the chat directly using the Approvals card or from within the Personal app. They can also quickly review the details of the approval right within Teams before making a decision to approve or reject it.

Microsoft 365 groups as approvers

After launching in January of last year, Microsoft is now working on a new feature for the Teams Approval App that is slated to roll out next month.

According to a new post in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, the software giant is adding the ability to select Microsoft 365 groups as approvers when creating a new approval request within Teams.

For those unfamiliar, Groups in Microsoft 365 let you choose a set of people that you wish to collaborate with and easily set up a collection of resources for those people to share. These resources may include a shared Outlook inbox, shared calendar or a document library in OneDrive for collaboration on files.

When this new feature becomes available, Teams users will be able to send approval requests to their Microsoft 365 groups which could be useful if approvers aren't using the company's video conferencing software and online collaboration tool.

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Twitter might be taking on Slack by introducing business DMs
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Twitter has announced that it has acquired the business messaging service Quill in a move that could enable it to take on Slack.

After raising around $ 16m in funding, Quill exited beta earlier this year as an alternative to Slack available on Windows, macOS, Linus, Android and iOS.

In a new report, TechCrunch points out that the company was founded by the former creative director of Stripe, Ludwig Pettersson who is well known and admired by many in the startup community.

While neither Twitter nor Quill disclosed the terms of the deal, Quill did put out an announcement in which it informed users of its business messaging service that they will have until December 11 to export their team message data. Surprisingly though, Quill has created a Python script that allows users to transform their data into the CSV format so it can be imported into Slack.

Business DMs

As part of the acquisition, Quill's staff will be joining Twitter's Experience organization to help work on the social network's messaging tools and direct messages while Pettersson will become a product manager reporting to the Conversations team.

Since its launch in 2006, Twitter's direct messages or DMs have grown in popularity as a way to communicate quickly with others online and as a result, many have wondered whether the company would try to turn them into a standalone product or even a paid service for businesses.

Online collaboration tools have become essential for businesses during the pandemic as being able to communicate with co-workers is especially important when working from home. Now that Slack is part of Salesforce, organizations may be looking for an alternative business messaging service and by purchasing Quill, Twitter is in the perfect position to offer its own solution.

We'll have to wait and see what happens as a result of Twitter's Quill acquisition but with a new CEO at the helm who is actively trying to diversify its business, business DMs could be a very real possibility.

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Via TechCrunch

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Google Cloud wants to up your business AI with Bot-in-a-Box
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As more consumers are now sending messages to interact with businesses online, Google Cloud has introduced AI-powered Business Messages to make it easier for both small and large businesses to respond to customer requests.

Over the last two years, the search giant has seen a significant uptick in the number of people using messages to connect with businesses to check their hours of operation, verify if an item is in stock, scheduling a pick-up and more.

As messages are quickly becoming the go-to way to interact with businesses, consumers expect communication with them to be speedy, simple and convenient. However, for businesses, keeping up with custom inquiries can be quite labor intensive especially outside of store hours.

Google Cloud's AI-powered Business Messages allow business owners to connect with their customers on Google Search and Google Maps where they're likely already looking for answers. This new service allows customers to chat with virtual agents that can understand, interact and respond in natural ways. 

At the same time though, Google Cloud is combining smart automation with the ability for customers to chat with live agents when they need too. Since Business Messages automatically handle customer inquiries in the background, businesses can distribute their human customer service agents to address other needs.

Bot in a Box

(Image credit: Google Cloud)

Bot-in-a-Box

As getting started with AI can be difficult for any business but especially so for small businesses, Google is utilizing its existing AI tools like Google Cloud Contact Center AI's Dialogflow to create a new capability called Bot-in-a-Box within Business Messages.

Bot-in-a-Box makes getting started with conversational AI easy as it allows for fast and effective adoption of automation regardless of the size of your business. Enabling this new functionality can be as simple as using an existing customer FAQ document you already have regardless of whether it's from a web page or an internal document.

Since the conversational AI is powered by Business Messages and Dialoglfow working together, a business' chatbot is able to understand and respond to customer questions automatically without the need to write code. Bot-in-a-Box also supports “Custom Intents” which means that a chatbot is able to understand all of the different ways customers might express a similar question such as “What's my order status” and respond accurately using machine learning capabilities.

Businesses interested in using Bot-in-a-Box and AI for Business Messages can check out this page to find one of Google Cloud's partners that specialize in setting up and using this new service.

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