Unify Breathes New Life Into Desk PhonesUnify Breathes New Life Into Desk Phones

New line targets more than just voice calling to support varied use cases, including Internet of Things.

With mobile phones becoming ubiquitous at work, an increasingly pertinent question is, "Can anything save the desk phone?" Unify may be on to an answer with a line of phones introduced today.

Unify designed the new OpenScape Desk Phone CP family with a couple of assumptions in mind -- both of which I believe are true. The first is that employees will continue working from office spaces, if not every day at least part of the time. The second is that when workers are in the office they prefer using desk phones if convenient.

On this latter assumption, what that means is a worker who needs to place an outbound call while sitting at a shared workspace will opt to dial from the desk phone rather than another option. However, that same user will not do the same for inbound calls because doing so is too much work -- having to hand out the temporary number of the day or set up call forwarding from a mobile device to the desk phone. The desk phone likely offers better call quality, but easy peasy lemon squeezy will trump that every time.

Unify is trying to get away from marketing technology as being good and think more about how to create an experience that delights the end user, Jan Hickisch, Unify's VP of global solution marketing, told me in a pre-briefing. While this seems obvious, it's not really the way the UC industry has worked. Communication vendors love their cool technologies and would rather brag about them instead of how easy the products are to use.

The new line of phones comprises three models. The OpenScape CP200 and CP400 are standard desk phones designed for user-friendliness and cost-effectiveness with the help of the design firm Frog Design, which worked with Unify on the Circuit interface as well. I haven't used the phones, but they do look nice and they are well-engineered -- but they're not game-changing.

For that, we can look to the OpenScape CP600. The phone is loaded with interesting features, including support for:

The features create some interesting scenarios for workers.

As I mentioned, workers like things to be easy -- and with the Bluetooth and NFC support, this phone makes them so. As workers approach their desks, the phone detects proximity of their headsets or mobile devices and automatically logs them in. Now workers are able to receive calls to a single number no matter at which desks they sit. This is ideal for consultants, sales organizations, or other businesses that have a high number of transient or temporary employees, and it works with the hoteling model.

I understand the process of logging into a phone isn't hard but, as I said, workers tend to do the easy thing and probably wouldn't go through the process of logging in, particularly if only in the office for a few hours. Now, with the automation, they don't have to bother with it.

The BLE beacon integration is interesting, too. Beacons are becoming increasingly popular but can be difficult to manage, as they require periodic maintenance like changing batteries or updating firmware. One solution is to integrate the beacon into the Wi-Fi access point (AP), but the range of APs has gotten so good that businesses only need to deploy a few around a floor or a building. A business is likely to require far more desk phones than APs, and so with integration can increase the number of beacons without having to deploy standalone ones.

Consider a hospital that uses Bluetooth-enabled medical devices. It could use the CP600 phones to track the devices, creating an application to show the exact location of each device. The same could be done with patients and staff. There are many use cases for this, ranging from Internet of Things (IoT) applications to security.

Full Circuit
That brings us to the Circuit integration. At first glance, it seems strange to display Circuit conversations on a desk phone. Without a keyboard, workers can't interact with the messages so, to me, the idea initially seemed a bit impractical.

But as I learned in talking with Jan, the integration isn't meant to be interactive in nature. Rather, it's about the ability to display information and show messages and alerts for current or new conversations. For example, I might be deeply involved in a Web-based meeting, but I'm waiting to get an update on certain projects. I can keep an eye on the desk phone display instead of repeatedly checking my smartphone or Web browser.

As is the case with voice functions, workers aren't likely not take advantage of the Circuit integration if they need to log in for that purpose. But given that it's automated, the information will appear without workers needing to do anything -- so why wouldn't they use it?

It's good to see a company like Unify thinking about how to evolve the desk phone. The Circuit integration makes the phone a viable extra screen on the desk (although purpose-built for one function) and the beacon integration turns the phone into an IoT node that can provide accurate location information.

Is the desk phone dead? Maybe, but Unify has given the phone a new lease on life by making it do things other than just make calls.

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