We have been working hard to finalise the release of a new feature and we’re proud to present IM (Instant Message) Conferencing, expected to release with version 17.9 early Q1 this year.
You might already know, or you may be asking yourself – What is IM Conferencing? Glad you asked, IM Conferences are ad hoc discussion groups for multiparty instant messaging, allowing users to create temporary chatrooms with the contacts in their contacts list directly within the MindLink client (Desktop & Mobile) as well as the native Skype for Business client. Not all conversations require their own chatroom and so, the use case of IM Conferencing ranges anywhere from a one-off discussion to review an event schedule with colleagues to something more informal such as a team lunch group.
Why is this important and how will users benefit from IM conferencing? Typically, chatrooms are topic-based conversational spaces for example, a sales chatroom, a support chatroom, a chatroom for the London office versus a chatroom for the New York office. Sometimes, a user will need to send a message to several contacts at once but the message might be very specific and not relevant to everyone in a particular channel and contacting everyone individually or by email, could be a hassle.
Previously, if a user wanted to address a message to more than one person the simplest way of doing so would be through a chatroom or an email. With the newly introduced IM Conferencing feature, users can reach out to multiple contacts simultaneously by simply adding the relevant participants to the conversation in a matter of clicks. This also limits the need for chatroom creation and chatrooms, which require special memberships and limits sending group emails to discuss topics on the fly.
The power of IM Conferencing stems from the fact that all users have the freedom to add and remove participants to IM Conferences to tailor the audience.
What’s more? To complement the new IM Conferencing feature we have also scaled out support for Move-IM allowing the discussion to be escalated to a chatroom for wider visibility when needed. Additionally, IM Conferencing is available for MindLink Mobile and Desktop, so users will not only be able to spin up ad hoc group conversations on the fly, but also on the go.
Last but not least, whether you leverage Skype for Business On-Premise or Online through Office 365, MindLink’s IM Conferencing feature is supported across both platforms and can be initiated from MindLink or Skype for Business.
For further information about IM Conferencing and how this will benefit your users, or more about our current product range, please get in touch with us here.