3 Steps for Improved Troubleshooting of Multivendor Unified Communication and Collaboration Services

Eileen Haggerty

Since the pandemic, large companies and organizations have increasingly relied on unified communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) platforms to keep their employees connected and productive. However, many have found that increased use of UCaaS or UCC services has also led to increased technical challenges, even several years later.

In fact, even though employers are increasingly asking employees to return to the workplace, 3 in 10 IT leaders say that issues with UCC platforms continue to make up a majority of their help desk tickets. These same IT leaders report managing a growing number of platforms from various vendors, and in the face of this challenge, most rely on vendor-provided data to troubleshoot common UCaaS issues such as audio or video quality, connection delays and login issues.

Need for More Efficient UcaaS Troubleshooting

The research shows these challenges are usually resolved in a few hours, but in some cases, resolution may take days or even weeks. Considering 75% of companies plan to increase the number of UCaaS platforms their employees use this year, more efficient troubleshooting methods are needed. Below, we will explore three steps IT help desks can take to shorten troubleshooting time in a multivendor environment.

For many organizations, adopting a more comprehensive monitoring strategy is a key first step needed to identify and address potential issues. Here are a few key aspects to consider when designing a monitoring strategy:

Once a comprehensive monitoring strategy has been established, IT teams are more prepared to troubleshoot issues and work with vendors to resolve more trying issues. Most importantly, they now have an independent data source to validate performance claims.

Let’s say that several employees begin to report delays in joining calls when they use Microsoft Teams or Zoom. The team from IT tasked with looking into the issue looks under the hood of …

… these systems and examines each vendor’s dashboard for clues. However, all they see are green performance indicators across the board.

When IT is left to guess at root causes, especially when supporting multiple platforms and a distributed hybrid workforce spread out across many environments, any number of issues could be wrong. From the vendor’s perspective, everything may look fine. But without independent external data, it may take several hours of troubleshooting to determine and resolve the problem. Thankfully, vendor-independent packet monitoring solutions allow teams to set baselines and performance thresholds, arming help desks with the network context needed to collaborate with vendors and test new solutions when performance degrades.

Additionally, to address these issues proactively, IT teams should consider implementing user-experience synthetic testing and trend analysis, so that even when users aren’t active, organizations can identify degradations in performance. And by getting ahead of issues early in their life cycle, before users are even aware of emerging issues, IT teams can deliver a more seamless experience.

Challenge of Supporting Myriad Platforms

In summary, one thing is clear: UCC and UCaaS platforms have become integral to business operations. Even after several years of hybrid work, and the growing migration of workers returning to the office, organizations are investing in more platforms, not fewer.

Supporting these services across so many environments is no small task, however, as evidenced by the huge volume of requests help desks receive daily. Research shows that many issues can be resolved within a few hours. But for more advanced challenges — especially those that don’t appear on vendor dashboards — more detailed monitoring and third-party data may be needed to determine root causes. To shorten troubleshooting, organizations should establish a comprehensive packet-monitoring strategy to arm IT teams with the data they need to set baselines, communicate with vendors and resolve performance issues before they impact operations and the end-user experience.

Eileen Haggerty is area vice president of product and solutions marketing at NetScout Systems. Before joining NetScout she worked in technical marketing roles at Motorola Codex, Racal Data Group and Celox Networks. Haggerty has an MBA from Boston College. You may follow her on LinkedIn or @NETSCOUT on X.