Overview

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The Vision

In 2018, Information Services launched the Communications and Collaborative Technologies (CCT) Program, originally referred to as Unified Communications. Our vision is to:

  • Provide the UO community with the ability to connect, share, and work together seamlessly.
  • Rationalize on a common set of capabilities to simplify the experience and maximize our technology investments.
  • Provide support for adoption and use.

The Challenges

The CCT Program strategically addresses a suite of challenges:

  • UO’s aging telephone system provided reliable service since it originated in 1989, but it became increasingly difficult and costly to maintain, and ultimately was no longer supported by the manufacturer.
  • The communications needs of the UO community have evolved dramatically in the last 30 years to include email, videoconferencing, chat, and collaboration tools.
  • Remote operations during the COVID-19 pandemic have put into sharp relief the need for greater mobility and flexibility.
  • Although a replacement phone system will continue to be necessary for critical safety and compliance reasons, such a system by itself cannot effectively support the university’s current and future voice communications needs, including for remote and mobile workers.

The Strategy

Information Services is in the process of implementing a new, more integrated suite of communications and collaboration tools that provides a rich, evolving feature set and a more seamless experience for faculty, staff, and students. Our strategy involves a six-part hybrid approach:

  1. Extend the current UO Microsoft Office 365 platform by adding Teams calling for basic telephony use cases for employees.
  2. Expand UO’s toolkit by adding Zoom for online learning and videoconferencing, as a complement to Microsoft Teams, and Dropbox for file sharing and collaboration, as a complement to Microsoft OneDrive.
  3. Use Amazon Connect for customer service call centers.
  4. Implement a smaller-scale traditional phone system for critical and utility phones using Cisco technology, while continuing to monitor the suitability of the Microsoft Teams calling service for those use cases.
  5. Integrate third-party solutions with Teams calling to address other telephony-related functions, such as E911, auto-attendant, and voice-enabled call routing.
  6. Set the stage for continuous improvement to further integrate all CCT services with each other to create a more seamless experience for the UO community.