Technological independence has become one of the highest priorities for Russian business. Among other things, the task of import substitution of services for commercial communications has become urgent. Many foreign services have completely stopped accepting payments from Russian cards or providing services. Sometimes this happens unexpectedly and the company not only loses the ability to hold meetings or exchange messages, but also loses data stored on the platform.
Even during the epidemic, MTS Group considered adding a video communication service to its ecosystem. And in 2022, one such solution was Russia’s business communication platform Webinar. The CIPR Digital 2023 jury, consisting of independent industry experts, determined the Webinar as the winner in the “Best Digital Platform” category.
On October 19, 2023, it was announced that all Webinar solutions were being merged under a new brand, MTS Link, to mark the transition to a new business strategy.
The aim was to combine the different products into a unified communications platform for business communications (UCaaS), where all services are offered in a single interface.
Ecosystem
Currently, the MTS Link ecosystem combines four cloud services: Meetings, Webinars, Boards and Courses. They provide opportunities for all types of team interaction in a remote and hybrid format: daily meetings and meetings, interactive collaboration tools, corporate training and the creation of training courses. The services also include tools to evaluate audience engagement and marketing statistics.
Additionally, corporate messaging Chats will soon be included in the solution portfolio; currently being tested.
All MTS Link services are integrated with each other and with the most common corporate applications.
During an online meeting, you can work on an interactive whiteboard, create a document with meeting results and responsible employees, and automatically email it to all participants. A recording of any meeting may be available for employees who are unable to attend the meeting. From webinar recordings, you can create online courses for new employees or staff development, conduct surveys and polls, and get suggestions for organizing an effective training process.
Frankly, it is more convenient to provide access to all types of communication through a single platform rather than using many different services. A single platform allows you to create a comfortable and functional digital environment for interaction both within the company and with counterparties. Integration with other applications allows sending invitations to participants and using familiar analysis tools, for example by creating a meeting in the calendar.
The platform is suitable for collaboration between teams of all sizes, but its potential is best realized in large companies with large numbers of employees, partners and customers. An example is the largest Russian retailer X5 Group, where up to 50 events with a scale of about 1,500 participants are held per day on MTS Link.
Practical use
Now MTS Link products are used by more than 10 thousand companies, including such flagships of the Russian economy as X5 Group, Renaissance Insurance, Avito, hh.ru, RESO Garantiya, 1C-Bitrix, Rusagro.
As MTS Big Data shows, in the first half of 2023, MTS Link became the leader among domestic video conferencing services in terms of mobile traffic growth. Overall, in the Russian video conferencing market, the MTS Link product ranked third after Skype and Zoom.
MTS Link, St. It is used by more than 90 leading Russian universities, including St. Petersburg State University, RUDN University, Innopolis, Kazan and Far Eastern Federal Universities, Sechenov University, Moscow Polytechnic University. This year, thanks to the MTS Link digital platform, more than 2 thousand applicants from different parts of the country had the opportunity to conduct remote consultations for admission to GITIS within the scope of the creative assistance project of the company “Generation M” for children. In addition, teachers of the institute held online master classes on the MTS Link platform to prepare for everyone’s admission.
The Link Webinars service for online training and events allows you to connect up to 30 speakers and 5,000 participants simultaneously.
All participants can connect to MTS Link services via the browser without downloading the program and registering. Mobile applications for Android and iOS have also been launched.
The Connection Courses service helps you create a training course from any content and complements it with tests and the ability to track students’ progress.
The MTS Link platform allows you to effectively conduct brainstorming sessions, strategic sessions and group training using your own interactive online whiteboards. Users of Miro, which has left the market, can easily transfer their finished cards to the MTS Link platform.
Link Meetings is the only Russian video conferencing product with a comprehensive API that provides individual audio tracks for speakers.
The Connection Meetings service allows you to connect up to 200 simultaneous participants to a video conference.
MTS Link is already actively using tools based on artificial intelligence (AI) to apply noise reduction, replace and blur the background, as well as make recommendations on the progress of training. In the near future, the service will have the ability to automatically generate the final summary of a meeting with a list of tasks performed with artists, as well as deadlines.
In addition to live communication, MTS Link allows you to create automatic webinars, when participants, while watching a video recording, have the opportunity to communicate with each other and ask questions in the chat. This is a suitable format for recurring events of the same type, for example, product demo webinars, introductory sessions, or introductory meetings for new employees and partners.
You can use chat, which is an indicator of audience reactions, voting, quizzes, and surveys, to increase audience engagement or check mastery of the material.
The organizer can monitor the level of participation by tracking the movement of participants to other windows.
All services include analysis tools as well as tools for promoting products and services. UTM tags allow you to track where attendees came to the webinar to evaluate the effectiveness of promotional channels and the cost of attracting attendees.
Branding allows you to personalize content by using corporate identity elements to design a webinar room or training course.
Technical details
MTS Link has integrated its solutions with the most common office applications. Meetings and events using this platform can be scheduled via Google Calendar, MS Outlook, Communigate Pro, My Office and you can configure invitations to be sent by email. You can also create a single space on the platform for regular planning sessions and meetings, accessible via a single link.
MTS Link products are suitable for working with hardware video conferencing terminals from Cisco, Polycom and Yealink in meeting rooms, thanks to integration with SIP and BFCP protocols. With this equipment, you can hold high-quality hybrid meetings, receive incoming calls, and transfer content to and from meetings.
MTS Link supports the WebRTC standard, providing high image quality and full presence effect. SSO single sign-on technology has been implemented on the MTS Link platform to enable users to quickly and securely switch from one application to another. It allows users to authenticate to different resources using the same set of credentials. This is especially important for a large organization that needs to maintain a high level of information security.
What are you thinking?
Source: Gazeta
Jackson Ruhl is a tech and sci-fi expert, who writes for “Social Bites”. He brings his readers the latest news and developments from the world of technology and science fiction.