I recently read a post on Unified Communications Etiquette Dos and Don'ts by Unified Communications analyst Blair Pleasant. I recommend giving it a read before continuing on. She captured some trends and observations around use of Instant Messaging, presence, and audio conferencing and offered tips on the evolving norms of respectful communication behavior. There is no doubt that our communication preferences and behaviors have changed significantly over the last decade.
When reading through her post it struck me that these etiquette issues, needs and expectations present opportunities for Unified Communications solutions to address. It's one of the technologies that contributed to creating the change in the first place.
In Blair's post she mentioned the expectation to IM someone first, prior to calling, to show courtesy in checking that they are there and available. There a few reasons this may have come about.
Presence and IM:
Widespread use of IM and it's presence information. The major challenges I see with presence include:
1) Accuracy - presence state is often inaccurate. This can be due to the users not wanting to publish their presence, or just as likely, users not being able to manually manage their presence. Could this presence inaccuracy be behind the expected use of IM to check if some one is really there and available for a call?
For presence to be effective it needs to be more automatically detected. A smart linkage to calendar entries, use of location services when mobile, activity on a call, activity on the desktop, networks or services you are currently logged into, use of the camera on your video phone or PC to detect physical presence (and where) and even if you're alone or not can all be very powerful in easing detection of our true state. Whether public or private, more accurate and rich presence information can be utilized by Unified Communications applications, particularly a personal agent, to help manage and route your communications.
2) Presence Federation - Presence should represent your total presence and where. Federate the presence from the internal enterprise system, Skype, Social Networks etc. Indicators on which mode of communication is prefered or most likely to succeed at that point in time can be very time saving in getting the communication through and responded to. Again, how much of this is public has to be up to the user. What's important is that it's known to the system.
Personal Agent
The combination of rich presence information and a personal communications agent can be very powerful. The rich presence information is known to the system independently of how much of it is being advertised. The personal agent reflects the users rule base of when, why, by whom and under what circumstances they can be reached and by what mode of communication. The contacting party need not concern themselves quite as much about the person really being available or not, or disturbing them since the agent can handle much of the control more accurately.
Presence/Agent Examples
Here are just a couple examples of where solutions need to go and how stronger presence and personal agents can factor in.
1) The impromptu meeting - I'm in my office doing some personal work on my desktop. I'm basically available. A person happens to walk into my office and we begin chatting for a while. I'm now in a meeting that wasn't reflected in my calendar. The video camera in my desktop communication device or PC detects the additional presence. My presence is automatically set to "do not disturb" or similar as if I was in a scheduled meeting. Unless a contact attempt passes my rules, my phone(s) will not ring, the agent can intercept or route the call. The agent can also choose certain auto-reply methods/modes to acknowledge the contactor. There will be no alerts or pop-ups on my desktop PC or communication device unless the communication attempt passes the rules set in my personal agent. I will see the event in my communication notifications summary bar later. For example, the Avaya Flare(TM) experience provides this notification and dashboard summary information.
I mentioned suppressing pop-ups. In addition to avoiding the distraction, it's also about privacy. Today's large screen desktop communication devices have the ability to pop-up a lot of information on who's trying to reach me and sometimes why (subject). This information could be very visible to someone in my office.
2) Personal events - If I'm out to a personal event, this can be detected or deduced a number of ways; location services, calendar entries, and time of day. For example, a business dinner is likely to be on my calendar, a family dinner may not be. Therefore, the likelihood that my presence at XYZ restaurant (via location services or check-in services), at 7 pm, is a personal event is pretty high and my agent would handle contact attempts accordingly. Calls or alerts will be silently handled and routed. However, post processing on the content and source of a voice or email or IM may still pass my rules to alert me.
Conference Calls
Another etiquette issue Blair Pleasant pointed out was multi-tasking on conference calls. Most of us are guilty. I know I am. Some will multi-task while physically attending a meeting. If someone doesn't feel rude multi-tasking there isn't much an application can do to prevent it.
That said, providing cognitive presence has been shown to help in remote situations. Video conferencing and virtual meeting (not web conferencing) settings strengthen cognitive presence and the emotional tie to the meeting and participants. The virtual meeting setting may actually be more powerful in cognitive presence than video conferences for reasons discussed in my virtual meetings post.
What's Next?
There is no substitute for respectful social behavior and the general tips and guidelines Blair provided. Unified Communication solutions have the opportunity to give us better tools and management capability. The solutions will continue to enhance capabilities that assist both senders and receivers in communicating with increased confidence that availability, contact preferences and privacy are respected. Let's not lose sight of the user impacts the technology has. Cell phones alone have had significant behavior impacts as described in this recent infographic. Add social networks with their smart phone clients and the bahavior change is and continues to be dramatic.
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