Lark Technologies offers Southeast Asian business free collaboration tool

Singapore-based Lark Technologies has made its all-in-one enterprise-grade work tool for seamless remote collaboration free across Southeast Asia.

Available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, Lark offers unlimited video calls and online collaboration among other features to enable seamless collaboration. Lark can help customers check team members' schedules within a chat, launch a video call from a calendar event, and co-edit a document during video calls.

Joey Lim, Commercial Lead, APAC, Lark, estimated that 90% of employees in the Asia Pacific region are currently working from home, and said the company is helping customers get their best work done even when their teams are not physically together. "It's never been easier to start remote working," she said.

“With remote working in place, organisations are grappling to ensure that their employees remain productive while working remotely. The same also applies in schools and universities where educators are working hard to ensure that their students can continue to learn wherever they may be,” she added.

“In light of the situation, we saw the need to provide accessibility to digital collaboration tools and have begun offering Lark for free, ensuring that any organisations regardless of size can operate effectively with no additional cost.”

The suite consists of Lark Messenger, Lark Docs, Lark Calendar, Lark Video Conferencing, as well as Lark Workplace which integrates third-party applications. All functionalities are available in a single app, which is available on Mac, PC, iOS, and Android. The platform is hosted on AWS.

Lark's free version comes with:

- Lark’s Messenger supports chat groups for up to 5,000 members
 
- Online collaborative documents including spreadsheets for up to 50 editors simultaneously, and 2,000 viewers at a time 


Lark Docs supports inserting rich multimedia content, including images, videos, charts, and even group chats and polls. Using the Comment feature, users can have conversations about specific parts of a Lark Doc or specific cells of a Lark Sheet. Document-sharing permissions are supported. All changes are saved in the cloud in Lark Drive.

Source: Lark. Get translations in a preferred language automatically.

- Chat and documents can be automatically translated into a preferred language. Over 100 languages are supported

"In Southeast Asia we might be using English as a business language but we also know that everyone has their own native language," Lim commented. "We get the best ideas from people when they are comfortable with the way they communicate."

- 200 GB of cloud storage

- A smart calendar that allows users to display multiple calendars and check team mates' schedules.

From any calendar event, users can launch a chat group from Lark Messenger and an agenda doc from Lark Docs.

- Unlimited video calls with advanced screen sharing. Lark Docs can be shared from desktop or mobile and co-edited during a video call. External participants can be included

- Unlimited third-party app integrations, from Jira to Asana and Salesforce. 

- An Open Platform enables users to build their own apps and bots. One such app that was developed in reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak is for health-tracking. Available free to Lark customers, it records users' physical locations and health status.

- Customisable attendance/approval workflows for work activities such as approvals, reimbursements, leave, and attendance

In addition, Lark has just launched a livestreaming feature that can reach millions of people. Possible use cases can include senior executives delivering a speech to employees around the world, or teachers giving lessons to their students remotely.

Businesses who need more features such as encryption or more storage can upgrade to a paid enterprise version.

Lark's customers include Accenture, Dentsu and Robert Half.

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Plantronics and HP collaborate to offer Microsoft Teams videoconferencing solution

Plantronics, a unified communications technology provider, has joined forces with HP, Inc. to address growing customer demand for a high-quality Microsoft Teams videoconferencing experience in larger conference rooms.

The new solution uses the HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms G2 Skype Room System - Audio Ready as the controller for the Microsoft Teams video and content sharing, the Polycom Trio 8500 for sound and the Polycom EagleEye IV USB camera for video capture.

The HP Elite Slice for Meeting Rooms G2 Skype Room System - Audio Ready helps simplify meetings with stress-free setup, an intuitive interface, and includes Windows 10 Enterprise which makes running Microsoft Teams meetings even easier.

"As customers migrate to Microsoft Teams, Plantronics and HP created a simple Microsoft Teams videoconferencing experience in larger conference rooms for employees to use and IT pros to deploy and manage," said Phil Sherburne, GM, Group Systems Business Group at Plantronics.

Once the call is started, the Polycom Trio 8500 takes the ordinary conference call experience to the next level using eight directional microphones and PolycomHD Voice technology to bring high-quality audio experiences to large conference rooms. The Polycom EagleEye IV USB camera is simple to install with plug and play USB capabilities, and offers 12x optical zoom and wide pan area capabilities to follow and focus on the speaker no matter the size of the meeting space.

"Businesses are constantly looking for ways to simplify the video conference experience," said Lorena Kubera, VP Commercial Product Management at HP.

"Pairing our versatile meeting room system, HP Elite Slice G2 Audio-Ready, with the simplicity of the Polycom Trio 8500 and the EagleEye IV USB camera for the Polycom-HP SRS Bundle creates a seamless way to improve productivity and collaboration through Microsoft Teams."

David Howell, GM, Device Partner Engineering at Microsoft said, "Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing business application in Microsoft's history, and we continue to look for new ways customers can take full advantage of this powerful tool for collaboration. Combining a native Microsoft Teams solution with a high-quality videoconferencing experience makes it easier to work together, whenever you need."

Details:

This new bundle is available immediately in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand through Ingram Micro. The bundle will be available in Japan by mid-February through Synnex Corporation, and is expected to be available in other Asia Pacific (APAC) countries soon after.

Microsoft introduces Skype for Business

Microsoft is bringing Lync and Skype together with Skype for Business. In a blog post announcing the move, Gurdeep Pall, Corporate VP for Skype at Microsoft, said that the company is "bringing together the familiar experience and user love of Skype with the enterprise security, compliance and control from Lync to create the most loved and trusted communications platform for doing things together".

In the first half of 2015, the next version of Lync will become Skype for Business with a new client experience, new server release and updates to the service in Office 365. "We believe that Skype for Business will again transform the way people communicate by giving organisations reach to hundreds of millions of Skype users outside the walls of their business," Pall said.

Skype for Business will feature Skype icons for calling, adding video and ending a call, as well as the Skype call monitor, which keeps an active call visible in a small window even when a user moves focus to another application.

The new application will also improve on existing Lync capabilities, including content sharing and telephony. "Lync already offers instant messaging and audio calling with Skype users. Skype for Business adds video calling and the Skype user directory making it possible to call any Skype user on any device," shared Pall.

Current Lync Server customers can update from Lync Server 2013 to the new Skype for Business Server in their data centres, while the update will be transparent to Office 365 customers.

To learn more about how Skype for Business will help people be more productive, read the Skype Garage Blog or the Office Blog. An introductory video to Skype for Business can be viewed here.

*Images from the Office Blog.