What's new in the Virtual Office mobile app 9.1 release?

• New or changed:
  • Ringtone settings are now located under Settings > Sounds and vibration patterns in your Virtual Office settings instead of under Settings > Sounds.
  • Actions for Virtual Office voicemail notifications are now identical to actions for native device voicemail notifications. For example, tapping the notification opens your voicemail, and long-pressing the notification brings up the options to call back or message the caller.
• Removed:
  • Notification settings for messages and missed calls are no longer available, but will return with improvements in a future release.

  • Cellular data settings are no longer available.

    Note: The absence of cellular data settings may affect you if you are on roaming.

Support for Dark Mode: Let’s say you frequently access your Virtual Office mobile app at night, or simply find the usual interface too bright to look at; as an iOS user, you can now switch your interface to Dark Mode at any time! Your interface changes from black text on a white background to white text on black, making the app easier on your eyes.

Your Virtual Office mobile app switches to Dark Mode whenever you have Dark Mode enabled or scheduled under Settings > Display & Brightness; if you need Dark Mode at a different time of day, simply select Automatic, and select a sunset-to-sunrise or custom schedule.

Note: To access Dark Mode in your device settings, you must be running iOS 13.4.1 or newer.

New Siri integration for messaging: Need to get an urgent message to a colleague while you are driving or walking? As an iOS user, you now have the ability to message a Virtual Office contact via Siri!

For example, if Pat realizes while driving that Robin might not know about a meeting that will take place within the hour, Pat can activate Siri and issue a command: “Using Virtual Office, send a message to Robin Shasta saying “check the calendar for an upcoming conference.””

Note: If you have enabled Virtual Office to access your device contacts, you can also send Virtual Office messages to any contact on your device!

Siri supports the following commands with Virtual Office:

• “Using Virtual Office send a message to <contact name> saying <content of message>.”
• “Send a message to <contact name> on Virtual Office.”
• “New message to <contact name> using Virtual Office.”

Ability to send files from other apps via Virtual Office: Need to share a file with your colleagues while on mobile? You now have the ability to select files in other apps on your device and send them via Virtual Office! When sharing a file from an app your OS finds compatible with Virtual Office, Virtual Office now shows up as a sharing destination.

Note: At this time, you can select multiple files to send at once, but only one Virtual Office conversation in which to send the files.

Enhanced Fax screen design: For better usability, your Fax screen now displays the profile image of the fax sender.

Ability to view meeting transcriptions via mobile: You can now view the audio transcripts of your past meetings on the go! If real-time audio subtitles were enabled during a meeting, you now have the ability to access these transcripts from your mobile app.

Real-time audio subtitles in a meeting enable you to view an on-screen transcription of what is spoken during a meeting; if you have trouble hearing what is said or have an uncooperative headset, audio subtitles enable you to participate in a meeting without missing out on important talking points!

New look for personal contact edit screen: As an iOS user, enjoy a more intuitive experience while creating or editing a personal contact! When you create or edit Virtual Office personal contacts, the app interface more closely matches your experience editing personal contacts on your mobile device, allowing you to manage your contacts more efficiently.

Enhanced contact details and call logs: Enjoy a more intuitive experience when reviewing the details of your contacts! When you search for a contact and tap to see their details, immediately see a contact’s job title and a description of their presence status, and start a call or chat with them more quickly.

Similarly, call logs have been improved to more prominently display a contact’s title and presence, and ways that you can contact them.

Ability to search chat history: Need to find an important discussion in your chat history that took place long ago? As an iOS user, you now have the ability to search for words and phrases in previous messages in a room or one-on-one chat! If one or more of your keywords appear in a message, the message shows up with any matching terms highlighted.

Ability to promote calls to meetings: Let's say you're on a call with a company contact and your call is getting more involved; you can bring the other party into a meeting with one or more of your colleagues who can discuss an important matter with them. When on a Virtual Office call, you can immediately promote the call to a productive 8x8 meeting, and bring the other party into the meeting!

Note: This enhancement applies to users of 8x8 Video Meetings; users of older experiences retain their earlier ability to promote calls to meetings. To determine which meeting experience your organization uses, see details on 8x8 Video Meetings and Virtual Office Meetings.

Note: In order for the other party on a call to be brought into an 8x8 meeting, they must be on the call via one of the following or newer:
-Version 8.3 of the Virtual Office mobile app
-Version 6.6 of the Virtual Office desktop app
If the party is on the call using an older version of Virtual Office, they join only meeting audio when you initiate a meeting, and are not taken to the meeting interface.

Ability to sort and filter contacts by site instead of location: If your organization is an X Series or Virtual Office Editions customer, the option to sort company contacts based on location is replaced with an option to sort based on site.

In addition, let’s say you only communicate with company contacts in your own office; you now have the ability to filter out all contacts outside of your site!

Ability to jump to the first unread message in a chat: Let’s say a subject comes up in your team’s chat room that you want to mark as unread for yourself as an item to return to later; the next time you open the chat, you now have the ability to jump back to the message you marked for yourself!

When you jump to the message you marked as unread, the message appears under a New messages indicator in your chat history.

Enhanced tab navigation: Enjoy an enhanced navigation experience that enables you to access important functions of the app more quickly and intuitively! You can now:

• Access the dial pad with a single tap from the navigation bar.

  

• Open your user settings from your profile screen.

  

Ability to set business hours and mute notifications from your profile: Need a way to control incoming calls and notifications at specific times of day? You can now set your business days and hours from your profile to ensure you are not disturbed by incoming calls and notifications outside of your business hours!

In addition to setting up your regular business hours, you can choose to temporarily disable notifications for a specific period of time, such as 30 minutes, one hour, two hours, four hours, or until the following day.

If you are outside of your business hours or have disabled notifications for a period of time, your profile icon in your application header and profile page shows up with an additional Snoozing icon to remind you that you are not receiving notifications.

Support for Swipe gestures in Messages, Favorites, and Faxes screens: Need to quickly manage a large number of messages, faxes, or contacts? In addition to the existing functionality for calls and voicemails, you can now take advantage of swiping left or right to quickly manage the following:

• Swipe left on a conversation to reveal the options to hide or mark as read.
  • Swipe right on a conversation to reveal options to manage your listed messages in bulk.
• Swipe left on a fax to reveal the options to delete or mark as read/unread.
• Swipe left on a favorite contact to reveal the option to remove from the favorites list.

For details, see our content on:

• Marking chats as read, marking messages in a chat as unread, or hiding chats.
• Managing favorite contacts.
• Marking faxes as read or unread, or deleting faxes.

placing Virtual Office calls via Siri: If you often use Siri on your iOS device to reach out to your contacts, you can now use Siri to place calls to your personal or company contacts through Virtual Office! For example, to place a call to your teammate Robin Shasta, simply say “Hey Siri, call Robin using Virtual Office,” and confirm!

To enable Siri for your device and the Virtual Office mobile app, open your device Settings and go to:

• Siri & Search to enable Siri on your device.
• Virtual Office > Siri & Search to enable Virtual Office mobile app permissions for Siri.
• Virtual Office > Contacts to enable calling device contacts via Virtual Office in addition to Virtual Office contacts.

Need a quicker way to call a favorite Virtual Office contact via Siri? If you use Siri with the Apple Shortcuts app on your mobile device, you can add Siri shortcuts in the Shortcuts app to quickly make Virtual Office calls to your contacts!

To get the Apple Shortcuts app, download the app to your mobile device from the App Store, and get started creating Virtual Office shortcuts with Siri!

New application-only ringtones: In addition to the ability to use the same ringtone as your device for Virtual Office calls when you open your profile screen and go to Settings > Sounds, you now have access to new Virtual Office-only ringtones for the Virtual Office mobile app!

Color-coded information bars based on priority: Based on the priority level of an information bar near the top of your app, you now see the bar displayed in a color that indicates how urgent it is.

• Red indicates high-priority information, such as a message that you have no access to an Internet connection.
  
• Orange indicates moderate-priority information, such as a message that you are experiencing a temporary interruption in your phone service.
• Gray indicates low-priority information, such as a message that you are connecting to your phone service.
  

Improved visibility for Do Not Disturb: You no longer need to worry about forgetting to switch your status back if your presence status is set to Do not disturb! If you switched your status to Do not disturb from your profile, you now see an information bar near the top of your Virtual Office mobile appto remind you of your current status; this way, once you are no longer busy, you are able to revert your status in a more timely manner.

Support for silent mentions in chat: Let’s say that you are chatting in a group and a colleague asks whether anyone in the room knows the person responsible for a certain project; you may want to respond by saying "Yes, it's @Robin Shasta" with an @mention of Robin. The mention is useful not only as a way to introduce colleagues to one another, since now Robin receives a message notification, but it's also useful as a quick and accurate way to share contact information.

In previous releases, the ability to mention contacts functioned only in public rooms; in private rooms and one-on-one conversations, you needed to type out a colleague’s name without being able to @mention them.

In this release, we're bringing the ability to silent-mention colleagues not only in public rooms, but also in private rooms and one-on-one conversations; this enables you to share contact information without needing to generate an @mention notification, hence "silent".

To look up a person you remember as “Robin S”, for example, type <@robin s> until you see a result in the list that you recognize as correct. If you see an additional line of text below their name in the mention selection list, such as “Will not be mentioned (not a member)”, you know that you are about to silent-mention your colleague instead of @mentioning them.

Ability to mention users with identical names: If you try to mention a name that is used by multiple people in a public or private room, the @mention selection list now includes additional information, such as their email addresses, to help you identify the correct person.

New smart replies in chat: When you are about to respond to a message, the Virtual Office mobile app now provides smart replies based on the text of the message you received to enhance your chat experience!

Simplified management for voicemails and call logs: We have introduced a quicker way for you to manage your voicemails and call logs! As an iOS user, you can now swipe left on a call log or voicemail to manage it individually, or swipe right to manage multiple list items in addition to the selected call log or voicemail.

New notifications when cellular data is disabled: If you have disabled cellular data in the Virtual Office mobile app, you see a banner in the app to let you know that the setting is disabled. You can use this banner to quickly open your settings once your cellular network quality improves.

In addition, if people repeatedly try to call you while you have cellular data disabled, the Virtual Office mobile app notifies you that callers are trying to reach you.

Ability to search for contacts via partial names: When you use the search box, regardless of whether the name you enter is complete, you see a list of search results that narrow down as you type. In addition, if you need to get in touch with a colleague whose name you don't remember completely, you now have the ability to search for a contact by entering independent fragments of their first and last name.

Refreshed dial pad interface: The dial pad in the Calls tab, as well as the keypad you access from within a call, now show up with a refreshed interface.

You can now paste numbers more easily by double-tapping the number entry field when it is empty.

If the number you enter matches the number of a company or personal contact in your contact directory, the name of the matching contact shows up. If you enter a number not associated with any contact, you have the option to save the number as a new contact.

Ability to add companies as contacts without first or last name: If you frequently contact the primary number of another organization and choose to create a contact for it with the Company field filled out, but not the fields for first or last name, the new contact and its company name properly show up in your list of contacts.

Improved conference call controls: While you are in a conference call, the Transfer and Park controls are now disabled to better reflect supported conference call functionality.

Improved call transfer to company contacts: To better enable you to transfer a call to someone in your organization, tapping the Transfer option on a live call now brings you directly to the company directory rather than your list of recent calls.

• Ability to edit your messages: If you paste the wrong content into a chat or spot a sentence-altering typo in a message you sent, you can quickly edit the message to correct it and prevent confusion in the chat. Simply press and hold on a message to bring up a menu, and select the Edit option to begin editing. As you edit and once you finish editing, the timestamp for the message changes to indicate its status as currently or previously edited.

  

  Note: You can edit IMs with company contacts, but not SMS messages with personal contacts and external numbers.

• Ability to delete your messages: If you enter a message into a chat with the wrong contact or group of people, you can delete the message to prevent confusion or distraction in the chat. Simply press and hold on a message to bring up a menu, select the Delete option, and confirm to delete the message. Once you delete the message, the content and timestamp of the message change to indicate that its content has been deleted, and what time the message was deleted.

  

  Note: You can delete IMs with company contacts, but not SMS messages with personal contacts and external numbers.

• Improved ability to mention contacts in a room: While chatting in a room, you have quick access to an @ key you can tap without navigating to the @ key in your primary keyboard.

  

• Improved typing indicator in rooms: Your typing indicator tells you when someone is typing in your room, which helps room members avoid stepping on each other's toes while chatting. If multiple people are typing in a room at the same time, this release allows you to see multiple names in the typing indicator at the bottom of the room.

  

Notifications for upcoming meetings with synced calendar: Don't miss a single upcoming Virtual Office meeting! When you sync your Meetings tab with your device calendar app, you receive device notifications for your upcoming meetings from the Virtual Office mobile app, ensuring that you stay on top of your schedule. Swipe on the notification and confirm to view options for joining the meeting or reviewing meeting details.

Meeting notifications are controlled via a new setting; to find it, open the More tab and go to Settings > Notifications.

Ability to jump to current day in synced calendar: When you sync your Meetings tab with your device calendar app, you can quickly navigate to today's meetings with a tap of the Today icon, enabling you to quickly find your place in your schedule.

In-chat new message notifications: If you have a chat open when you receive a new message in another chat or room, you see a notification dot appear over the Back icon. The dot is colored bright orange to indicate a new message in a one-on-one chat, or pale orange to indicate a new message in a chat room. This notification disappears once you go back to your list of messages.

Ability to mark chats as read: You can now easily mark a room or individual chat as read without opening it; this helps you prevent clutter in your chat history if you already know what some conversations in your message list are about. You can mark SMS messages as well, such as spam or messages mistakenly sent to your number.

Note: Marking a chat as read only marks it as read to you; other people in your chats do not see the latest messages as read by you.

Ability to mark messages as unread: Just as with email, you can mark a message within a chat as unread so you can return to it later. If you have yet to get around to an action item that came up in a chat, you now have the ability to mark the message that talks about that item as unread, enabling you to return to the item later.

Note: At this time, reopening an unread chat does not jump to the specific message you marked as unread; the ability to mark the chat as unread simply functions as a way to remind you that something in the chat is on your to-do list.

Ability to copy message text: You now have access to an improved way to copy message text in your conversations without needing to highlight text manually; just press on a message, and select Copy text from the resulting menu to copy the message text to your clipboard, allowing you to paste in any application.

Cellular Assist now known as Cellular Minutes: The ability to use your cellular voice plan in addition to your data network for calls has been renamed to be more user-friendly.

Ability to promote calls to meetings: Let's say you're on a call with a company contact, or that your call is getting more involved; you can bring the other party into a meeting with one or more of your colleagues who can discuss an important matter with them. When on a Virtual Office call, you can immediately create a productive Virtual Office meeting, and bring the other party into the meeting. If you are talking to two other Virtual Office users in a conference call, you can also bring both of them into a three-person meeting with you!

Note: If the other party in the call is taking the call via the following versions of Virtual Office, they receive and must accept the meeting invite via chat or email, instead of being brought in automatically:
-Version 7.4 or earlier of the Virtual Office mobile app.
-Version 5.8 or earlier of the Virtual Office desktop app.

Option to silence incoming Virtual Office calls while staying logged in: When you need to silence your calls, instead of logging out, you can simply enable your Do Not Disturb status; incoming calls are forwarded to voicemail, but you can still receive chat messages in cases of emergency. When you try to log out, you are now able to confirm whether you want to log out, or enable Do Not Disturb instead.

Note: Calls are forwarded to voicemail by default; if you have changed your call forwarding settings, your calls may be forwarded to another location.

For details, see our content on using the Do Not Disturb status.

Announcing Team Messaging: With Team Messaging, collaborate with your colleagues via chat more effectively than ever before! Create chat rooms on demand, stay up to date on your team's latest discussions, bring multiple teams together to collaborate, and much more! Your chat rooms can be found under Rooms in the Recents tab.

In our examples, let's say that Sarah's fictitious organization, AcmeJets, uses Team Messaging. Sarah's Sales team (which includes Rob, Lisa, and John) is one of many teams within AcmeJets that can collaborate using Team Messaging, and make use of its features to accomplish tasks more effectively.

• Public and private chat rooms: With Team Messaging, you can create a public room that can be accessed by anyone at any time, or create a private room that is only accessible to certain colleagues. Whether you want to stay up to date with all your colleagues, or share sensitive information with a smaller group, you can do all this and more!

  Let's say that Sarah must collaborate with her global team more effectively to ensure that the team meets its goals. The team shares critical information, and holds an ongoing discussion across multiple time zones, which warrants multiple meetings. Sarah doesn't have the time to meet often, so she sets up a private room for her team, and invites all her team members to facilitate communications. Now, her team can discuss and post information in a convenient chat room.
  On the other hand, Sarah is also collaborating on a public release where she is one of many core team members tracking the progress of the release. To stay up to date, all core team members follow a public chat room created exclusively for the release.
  

• Ability to invite colleagues to private chat rooms: As a member of a private room, you can invite colleagues relevant to the conversation to bring them into your discussions; a fully-collaborative experience allows any member of a private room to invite a new member.

  Note: For added security, an invited colleague has access to the chat history of the private room starting with the time they were invited.

  

• Ability to mention colleagues to get their attention: If you need to alert a group member on a release deadline, ask for their input on your current discussion, or bring a new person into a public chat room, you can get their attention at any time by simply typing <@> before their name (for example, <@John Smith>). In a public room, you can @mention any of your company contacts, while in a private room, you can only @mention colleagues who are members of the room.

  John, a Sales agent in Sarah's team, needs to send his manager Sarah a brief spreadsheet on the sales progress for the customers he is negotiating with; as John's deadline approaches, Sarah can alert him via @mention to make sure he is on schedule with the document.
  

  When you are @mentioned in a chat room, you receive a special notification with an @ label to indicate that a colleague is requesting your attention in a chat room.
  

• Notifications for messages and changes: Has your chat room been renamed, or have new colleagues been invited to your private chat room? Whenever something about a chat room changes, you are notified in your chat history for that room. In addition, you can choose to be notified of all messages in a room to stay up-to-date, or reduce interruptions when you are busy by choosing to be notified only when you are mentioned.

  Let's say that the Acmejets Sales team is hiring new agents; as new agents are hired, Sarah or another person in her team can add them to her team's private chat room. Whenever a new agent is added to the chat room, existing members of the chat room are notified that their new colleague has access to the team's discussions.
  

• Quick access to chat room details: By opening the details page of a chat room, you can see the room type and name, as well as the member list for a private room.
  

• Better collaboration via shared rooms: Using 8x8 Sameroom, connect with your colleagues or clients who use other chat applications (such as Slack, Hipchat, or Google Hangouts) via shared rooms. With Team Messaging and Sameroom, connect with all your colleagues under a streamlined chat experience! You can even use shared rooms that are connected to the Virtual Office chat rooms of another organization that uses 8x8. You can see whether your chat room is also a shared room next to the room's public/private label, and in the details page for the room.

  The AcmeJets engineering team communicates with contractors outside of their company; once the engineering room is connected to the contractors' usual chat app via Sameroom, the engineering room is labeled as a shared room, and the engineers can collaborate seamlessly with their contractor colleagues.
  

• Ability to hide conversations from your personal chat history: If you want to clean up old business messages and SMS spam messages from your chat history, you can simply hide them on your end. When you hide a chat room or conversation, you do not delete it; other people involved in the hidden chats still see the conversations and chat rooms in their chat history.

  Note: You can hide chat rooms and chat conversations with individuals, but you cannot hide specific messages within a chat conversation or chat room.

  

File attachment access from chats: If a colleague attaches a file or image in a chat from the Virtual Office desktop app, you can quickly view and access these files by tapping them in the same chat from the Virtual Office mobile app.

Note: At this time, you cannot attach a file or image in a chat from the Virtual Office mobile app.