Softphone telephony
Our day-to-day office life has changed considerably over the past few years. Today, various tools and forms of communication make collaboration easier. The term unified communications and collaboration (UCC) refers to a combination of communication technologies, including video telephony, screen sharing, chat and softphone solutions (or softphone telephony).
A softphone is a software application that is installed on a PC, laptop or mobile device to operate telephony as a software solution. As a result, conventional telephone numbers can also be used irrespective of location, for example, when working from home or at a shared desk, as it is no longer tied to a desk phone.
The softphone solution is based on the ETH VoIP standard telephony platform (OpenScape Voice) and focuses on voice communication. The softphone client can be launched through the browser and used without having to install anything. Thanks to an intuitive user interface, the functions required for daily use are available to the user across all devices. The main functional requirements supported are call forwarding, holding and forwarding, telephone book connection, presence and status display as well as a hunt group function in WebRTC.
Employees today increasingly want to be reachable on their smartphones using the office number. With the OSMO (OpenScape Mobile) client, Unify offers the option to make calls on the mobile device using the business number. In this way, users can make calls on the go or when working from home and still use the office number. Calls can also be answered even if the computer has already been shut down.
People who want to use the telephony functions through Microsoft Teams will have the option of setting this up accordingly at a later stage. Teams offers a set of basic features that are less comprehensive compared to Unify's UC communications. The idea behind connecting a landline in Teams is to create a hub to bundle all communication and collaboration functions in the same environment. This eliminates the need to jump back and forth between different applications and interfaces.
The technical accessibility of ETH Zurich employees is still an important part of their daily working lives, and it is an important pillar, irrespective of whether it concerns an emergency or a routine task.
ETH employees are supported when using the softphone when working from home, at a shared desk or when on the go, which results in higher productivity.
At the same time, from an overall ETH perspective, the risk of dependency on cloud providers is reduced, as the softphone infrastructure can be used for other UCC services (video conferencing, screen sharing and chat) if required.
Softphone telephony can be used by all ETH Zurich employees who have been assigned a landline number. Softphone telephony is available free of charge
To migrate to the new service, please log in to the protected pagePhone Control Centerlock or the protected pageIT Shoplock. The migration can be started independently and at any time.
Important information about softphone telephony:
- Support page and useful information on Confluence on all matters relating to UC Softphone
- More information on the topic of communication
- Service Owner Pius Baumann, Group Manager Voice Networks (ID Infrastructure)
- IT Service Desk ITS Service Desk
To order UC softphone: