- So I've got a question for you.
Do you still have a phone on your desk at work?
Now it used to be universal, but in many businesses,
especially in the last five years, the desk phone
has become more and more of a rarity.
One reason for this is the universality of mobile phones.
Some companies provide employees
with a cell phone and that's it.
I actually think that this is a trend
that will continue to grow.
However, there is also what's called
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.
What this does, through a combination
of hardware and software, is turn your computer
into a company phone extension.
I personally remember how excited I was
when this first became available because it suddenly
opened up working remotely as a practical possibility.
It no longer mattered where I was.
People called my extension
and the call came through on my computer.
Callers couldn't even tell that I wasn't at my desk.
And if I wasn't there, well, people left voice messages,
which I could listen to later.
The Voice over IP software gave me the ability
to see if there were messages waiting.
It gave me history of calls,
was able to use the company's phone directory.
It even let me set up multiple voice greetings
and out-of-office messages.
And one final thing, it let me forward calls
from my desk phone directly to my cell phone,
giving me the ability to answer calls
without being near my computer.
As technology continued to improve
and network bandwidth continued to grow, we moved into what
was once considered science fiction territory, video calls.
Tools like FaceTime and Skype made video calls normal
in the consumer world, and it was only a matter of time
before enterprise-worthy tools hit the scene.
In fact, there's a massive proliferation
of video call and video conference tools available,
from ones that are integrated into large packages
like Skype or Cisco Spark, to more meeting-centric
standalone tools like WebEx or BlueJeans or GoToMeeting.
The best ones now let you change devices
midway through the conversations.
For instance, you can take a call on your cell phone
on the way to your desk and when you arrive there,
the call seamlessly moves over
onto the Voice over IP system on your computer.
And then you jump into a video call
or a screen-sharing session from that.
I personally use about three or four different tools
depending on the nature of the conversation
and the technology available at the other end of the call,
but I'll always opt for a video call if available.
We'll talk more about that later in this course.