Michael Levy: [00:00:00] Yeah, and, and we provide like, um, a very, like that middleware where you don't have this whole robust UI and everything. It's just literally feeding it, um, still using all of our, you know, compliance, uh, rules. We have the ability to access. You know, different filters as well through it, and do all of that good stuff and deliver crisp, clean media.

We can even do stereo files, we can do transcription and just deliver it in a nice packaged format for you to do your analysis or feed any of your AI engines that you're looking to, uh, to feed.

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi, and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast This week we are going deep on teams compliance recording. Microsoft has a certification process, an API and an SDK for solutions. And I talked to Michael at Numonix about how that certification process works, what types of customers need compliance recording, how you can choose between solutions, questions to ask options to consider, and also [00:01:00] how solutions have to keep up with the changes in teams and Microsoft 365, including some interesting scenarios around large meetings.

Many thanks to Michael for taking the time out to jump on the podcast and for all his support. We really appreciate it on with the show. Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Teams Insider podcast. This is a show I've been wanting to do for a while. I have so many good conversations with Michael on the complexities of teams recording and the challenges of keeping up with the API.

Uh, so this show, we're gonna get it all on the record, which will be fun. Michael, how you doing? Do you wanna introduce yourself? 

Michael Levy: Yeah, I'm good. Uh, I'm Michael Levy. I'm the CEO of Numonix. Uh, we've been in recording for too long that I'd like to remember. But, uh, you know, seen it all. Done it all and, uh, very happy to be here with Tom.

Thank you very much. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Appreciate you joining the show. So, um, I guess the level set for everybody listening. Teams has recording in the box that kind of convenience recording and, and then we've got this separate thing, which is certified third [00:02:00] party solutions for compliance recording. So can you just take us through what the differences of those two scenarios are?

Michael Levy: So I would say the main difference is, um, I don't think Microsoft. Is a compliance recording company to be at the start. I think the complexities of what it is to be compliant in the recording world in terms of the encryption, roles based access, data security, GDPR, all that sort of good stuff when it comes to recording and the simple intricacies.

I think convenience recording within Microsoft is just not there. It involves someone enabling it manually. Yeah. Uh, I know there are some auto rules, uh, now that are available, but in essence, it's not storing it in a central location that is encrypted or available based on a need to know basis. Um, it's controlled often by the user instead of a company policy.

Um, and there are, you know, [00:03:00] many, many different in, in, uh, intricacies. Where's the data stored? Which region is it recorded in? So you have all those complexities because we've seen some, some crazy stuff develop over the last few years in terms of, um, you know, the rules in terms of recording where it's stored, how you accessing it.

Is it worm storage? Uh, you know, there's so many different things. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: The regulations and requirements. Yeah. So, so for teams, when, when we talk about VIN recording and you're right, teams have made this line very clear, like there are some modes now where you can sort of preset up meeting templates to say, I.

Auto transcribe, auto record, but that's still a convenience recording in the sense of it goes to the user's OneDrive, the user can edit it, delete it, remove it, stop it, mid call. Whereas on a compliance recording scenario, it's outta the user's hands. The admin has decided these calls, and we'll talk about how you can do clever filters on different types of calls with Numonix, but these calls are always recorded.

The user can't touch the recording even to the point where [00:04:00] there's an option of strict mode, which is. Teams will literally stop allowing the user to make and receive calls if recording isn't working. So some orgs go as far as my users are not allowed to make a call if the recording platform is not in action.

Michael Levy: Yeah, true. And, and one other one that, uh, I find as well is. You can only record a meeting through convenience recording if you're from the domain that has set up the meeting. Um, what happens if you join a meeting that you have to record, but you're not from the domain, you can't record that meeting. So, um, we found that in a, in a lot of cases, uh, I'm sure many people are familiar with it, where you've joined a meeting from someone else and it's like, you know what?

I have to record this. Yeah. And there's no. Button visible to start recording what's grayed out. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. That's one of the things that teams does really well, actually with its model where it's got bots following you as a recorded user that the bot will follow you even to somebody else's meeting and record that if you are a, it's about you being recorded as the user rather than the scenario in that [00:05:00] case.

Michael Levy: Correct. And And what I find also interesting, so I know we're gonna get to it potentially. But some of the rules we do, one rule in particular is external participant, where we had a, a bank in Europe that, uh, wanted to only record meetings if there were external parties to their company joining the meeting.

So an exterior domain, PSDN, or guest. And we noticed, uh, through a cus uh, customer, I believe it was in Australia, that there were calls being recorded. Even only when there were internal parties on the meeting and eventually through, you know, some research, we found that it triggered people were bringing the Microsoft convenience bot into the call, and that's actually seen as an external party to the meeting.

Ah, because it's external of the tenant, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's having an external party in the meeting when you have that button in. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's really interesting. So, um, we talk about regulatory requirements. Actually, I, I spend a lot of time obviously as, you know, talking to enterprises in the industry and trying to compare [00:06:00] solutions and it's, you see some of these solutions saying they are.

Their HIPAA or their Dodd-Frank or their two, but that's not really, is it. The solutions enable that capability. Maybe you could take us through some of those. We don't have to go through all of 'em. I know they're super deep, but what are some of the common regulatory frameworks that lead to customers needing to be recorded?

Michael Levy: So in Europe, specifically in the uk, we see MI two being a, a, a requirement, and I've seen that for many years. Um, I've yet to see an extent to be corrected. A, a body that will say, come test your stuff and your record is MI two compliant or certified. Um, I always say that we are an aid to helping you as an organization remain.

To compliant, and we have the abilities to make you and help you achieve compliance, as well as with hipaa, which is healthcare regulations. In most countries, we are protecting patient information, only allowing certain people to play back and listen [00:07:00] to calls, uh, encryption again. Very difficult to say. A recorder has achieved a HIPAA stamp, but you can certainly, um, have your features being HIPAA compliant and enable a hospital doctor's room or whatever to be HIPAA compliant.

And finally, the big one is GDPR. Like, do you provide the ability that someone is not recorded? If they request not to be recorded, can you get rid of a record? Now, many companies, um, in the recording space. Can delete a recording record, but it's a mission. You have to notify the company. How do you identify the call?

Because everything's supposed to be, you know, hashed out. Yeah, we don't see a lot of data, so we've built features, for example, our GDPR delete feature besides our GDPR cancel, which we have in a in a teams app, but our GDPR delete feature, we have the ability that you can request through a workflow within our platform.

The ability to delete a call. It runs through a workflow. You have a compliance officer who can, you know, approve or reject [00:08:00] it even once they've approved it, it can still be canceled through a workflow and then log that and have it, uh, uh, able to be audited as well. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. It's good to understand that.

Is it when you're choosing a solution that there are. Standards your, or regulations or requirements, your organizations looking to meet. And these solutions enable that capability. And then there's other certifications of the solution or the solution company. So your. ISOs your SOC two type stuff. And that is a a and, and again, you have to be quite careful here.

Is it the company that's certified for that or the particular solution or the infrastructure it runs on? Um, but those are where you might say, I want a, a SOC two solution for my company like IE that that solution has been certified. 

Michael Levy: Absolutely. And. And again, those are iso, soc, those are all very common ones.

Soc being, uh, the reason I shave today. So you wouldn't see the gray from our sock that we got, but, but, um, yeah, so, so SOC really the platform gets, [00:09:00] gets, uh, via attestation. It's not ready a certification, but more of a attestation and depends if you're doing SOC two, which is, you know, you have to maintain it and ISO as well.

Um, we've seen. Um, I would say 30 to 40% of the battle with working with customers to get to that. Uh, you know, providing our solution is a security review. Everybody nowadays, um, is security review. Mm. And the the sub two makes it a lot easier because I think if you can show that you've been through those rigorous controls testing, you know, and that you comply with all of them.

I think it makes it so much easier. I know, um, the stress we used to go through to get through these security things, and now with the SOC two, it's like we have SOC two. Okay, that should be easy. Let's, yeah, that's, that, that, that's an 

Tom Arbuthnot: agreed bar between organizations that everybody understands. And, and, and specifically when you're talking about SOC two, there's two types as well, aren't there?

Can you take us through that? 

Michael Levy: Yeah, there's, there's just a, there's a, a short step, which is the, the type one, which is [00:10:00] really just your controls and then. Um, then there's type two where you actually go through the audits and, and have to prove that you maintain those controls every year to maintain it.

You know, you get an ISO and it's like our ISO is three year valid. So, you know, they trust that within three years things, things are gonna be maintained. But SOC is really rigorous, or it's like a prop, it's an or a full audit. Yeah. You, you get audited like a, you know, big public company that has its financials audited.

You have people doing a full audit on you. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's great to understand. So Microsoft have this, uh, API that solutions can use, and then they have a certification process and there's about 12 vendors who are certified with different solutions on there. Um, as much as you can share, what does that certification process look like?

How do you as a, a solution get on that list? 

Michael Levy: So, so it's extremely rigorous. Um, there are firstly financial commitments to Microsoft that you have to make to be part of it. And I think one of the reasons they do it is because they don't just want a [00:11:00] hundred companies just signing up and having their name on a list.

Yeah. So there's a big financial commitment to it. Um, you're committing to having premier support because, um. They need a, a specific, uh, mechanism to pass through support tickets to their engineering teams. So if you just take the SDK and develop on it, that's all very well and good. But, um, if you get into an environment that there are issues in your teams environment, um, and Microsoft notices, you know, a third party application or a bot or whatever.

You're gonna struggle to get support because, um, they like to, um, know that it's a supported product within the infrastructure. So, and they won't pass it through to Premier support either or directly through their, their, to their product team if you don't have it. So, you know, there's, there's certification where you have to do an M 365 security certification, which is just about as rigorous.

As a SOC two, just no official audit, but it's rigorous. That's good to know. Um, again, [00:12:00] SOC two helps those sort of audits because if you have a SOC two, then that's pretty, you know, pretty, uh, standard to get done. Um, there's testing, they, they have third party companies that run you through rigorous testing.

And that testing changes because there's certain features and support for things like we'll discuss grouping or, you know, but grouping and delta roster, which will come through where you have to certify on. As well. So there are always changes to the SDK. Um, there's new features we've spoken about before, like the targeting of cues for teams supporting metadata and conference mode.

There's always something. And um, that's also, you know, again, why we spend so much time focusing on the catcher piece and haven't really taken our eye off that ball at all. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And that, that, let's talk about those changes. 'cause that's really interesting as well. People might not understand is you, you get.

Certified at a point in time. But the API and the team story is constantly evolving. You know, teams will change its capabilities in terms of meeting features or [00:13:00] audio in the case of the queues app with the barge and whisper going on transfer mode. And yeah. Over, over the years we've jumped on LinkedIn and talked about some of these changes, but how, how do you work with Microsoft to deal with those changes and how can customers understand if their solution.

Is keeping up with those changes. 

Michael Levy: So interestingly enough, your, your, uh, change pilot, um, uh, tool works very well where you're able to understand what's coming. I know last year it pointed out something that caught everyone off guard, um, which was great. Yeah. We like to keep an eye on all the changes.

That's good to hear. Exactly. Yeah. So, so, um, from, from the perspective as you know, technology is. Moving every day. Um, I even remember from the Skype for Business days, one day we woke up and there were issues in Skype for Business, which is a very different animal altogether, but we heard that there was a change to the, the, the, um, the client, which completely broke messaging, and we had to all scramble quickly.

In those days, there wasn't much. [00:14:00] Information on it. Now we are, 

Tom Arbuthnot: but at least in those days we had like cu and version numbers. You could be like, oh, this version number has gone from this to this, something happened. It's all a bit of, uh, a PA in the cloud, isn't it? 

Michael Levy: Yeah. And that's where we'd look first, believe it or not, when doing troubleshooting, check the version numbers.

Yeah. See when the last, but we never had a heads up. Um, with credit to Microsoft, now we have, if you're a part of the certified group, you're a member of a teams channel. Where they're posting updates, what's gonna come, what's gonna happen? They're not always happening on time. Um, you know, according to the, the, the timelines that we would like.

Yeah. Sounds about right. Um, but. Um, in fairness to them, they do notify us of things that are coming. For example, teams queue, um, targeting of teams queue and conference mode. And believe it or not, they ask us for feedback as well, and we provide a ton of feedback to them. I, I would like to think we're probably, I.

Um, and, and I know you'll probably have competitors of our shouting out loud, but I'd like to think we're, we're very, very [00:15:00] involved in helping Microsoft, um, because we've seen it a lot, you know, May 19th, 2020 when the API or the when, uh, when ga we were out there recording the very first day seeing everything.

So we've, we've seen a lot, a lot you do encounter in the field. We've encountered things recently. That, uh, we've noticed, and some of them don't have anything to do even with the recording. SDK, it's an Azure component that might affect the recording SDK, right? Um, or where you're running your bot, um, which then doesn't play well.

And you know, then there's a lot of scrambling in the back end to, to resolve these things. So it's, it's challenging. But again, um, I know I'm saying this with a biased hat on, but if you're considering recording as a company. You have to use someone who is a certified platform, even if it's just to record to, uh, for quality management, not even for compliance, because there are changes that can affect your environment from Microsoft that will affect your record.

And if you're not [00:16:00] keeping up, you're gonna miss things. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And I think that certified is the, definitely the minimum bar, but then it's a conversation with that vendor and that solution. And some of the things we're gonna talk about are good examples of things that have changed. If you can ask them. Were you aware of this?

How did you deal with that? And, and, and it's as much as are you talking to somebody who knows the detail, who's involved in the product versus a generic sales person. But, um, on, on that note, let's talk about large meetings. 'cause that was one of the most interesting challenges in, in recent times. So what, what happened there?

Michael Levy: Yeah. So, and, and this is something interesting actually that happened right up front. It was a big statement during Covid about meeting resources and, and you, you probably know better than me, I think initially without having that special license, you could only have 250 participants being in a meeting or 300, I, I don't remember exactly the, the number.

Um, and. Bringing a bot into the meeting for a, for a recorded user is basically an additional participant. [00:17:00] So if you had a hundred, let's say, let's say the number for argument's sake is 300. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. It was, I think it was two 50 initially, and then they bumped it up, if I remember rightly, but yeah. Yeah, it, 

Michael Levy: it got bumped up a little bit.

If you had that other license now, which I don't remember was a thou, you could take it over a thousand. Yeah. Still available. That was the license originally that they were gonna make as a requirement to use compliance recording until everyone freaked out and eventually the community got, uh, Microsoft to change its mind.

Yeah. Um, but um, yeah, so what would happen is if you had 150 targeted users join a meeting, then automatically you had 300 participants. Um, if you had 200, then you had 400 and didn't have Yeah, because 

Tom Arbuthnot: that's the, the bots. The bots were. One to one at that time. So if I'm a recorded user, my bot follows me everywhere.

It takes a media stream for the duration of which I was in the meeting, and therefore that's the compliance scenario, EO. Um, but as you're saying, then that scaling starts to get pretty crazy pretty quickly if you're a, a bigger customer doing bigger meetings [00:18:00] that are, all the users are recorded.

Michael Levy: Absolutely, and we've seen it. We have customers, they might not do them every day, but they have an all hands meeting on a Monday morning and on a Friday morning or Thursday morning. And while we did build filters that could stop people from being recorded in a meeting. So you could say, don't record a meeting if there's a specific key word in the title.

Maybe all hands, and maybe you only have one group that records it. However, that doesn't solve problems. It it to an extent, it does. But, um, lo and behold, when everyone gets there, even if you're blocking them, it signals and there's a spike because you have all these people, the bot doesn't just know it before, the bot knows it when it gets there, so it has to deal with that traffic.

So be, before you even get to the grouping of bots, you still have to deal with. Spikes in activity on the bot because you've got a ton of people and, and they can be pretty, pretty crazy. Those spikes. That's what I hear about often, even more than even from other recording companies, believe it or not. I, we, you know, I have [00:19:00] a friendly relationship with many recording companies, um, and we talk, you know, we try and make it better for the industry.

Yeah. And you know, one of the common things are, are spikes, uh, with people. Now, fortunately, we've. We've developed secret sources to deal with these things, you know, in our cloud native platform. Um, but the other issue is, let's say everyone is joining, how do you deal with it? Um, and that's where Microsoft did grouping, where you can group multiple people in an individual company or domain to a bot.

So you can put a hundred people on one bot. And that significantly reduces. It doesn't reduce that spike. Again, you still have the spikes. Yeah. Um, but you reduce that load and are able to record larger meetings. Now that doesn't happen in isolation. There's another feature which I. Um, which was made aware is to improve the performance in the team's clients.

Um, from 70 plus users, the roster events are not as robust. Um, it doesn't deliver every [00:20:00] time a new person joins a meeting or something happens because it's there, there's just way too much activity going on. So that's another one. We discovered that, um, audio, there was some workarounds, but when you got to video and screen sharing.

It provided complications and they've now provided support, um, in something called Delta roster, which measures the changes in the roster, hence Delta roster. Yeah. Above those 70 users. So we can successfully monitor who's joining and going where and, and, and leaving at, at certain times. But the combination of grouping and Delta roster provides for that solution to be able to have these hundred plus meetings, uh, with targeted teams, users.

Tom Arbuthnot: And these are. Changes Microsoft are making in the platform and the API and the SDK, but these are also changes you need to then invest in absolutely. In your solution to support these new capabilities. So all, all the solutions are on this journey of keeping up with Microsoft changes, implementing the changes on, on their own timeline.

Is there anything. In the certification, it says [00:21:00] you've, you've got to do it in X time or you've got to do by y. How does that work? Yes, correct. Now, 

Michael Levy: so that's been made mandatory as part of the new certification program for this year, is you have to, uh, be compliant with grouping and delta roster as well.

So fortunately it is, we've been supporting it now for some time, so we, we have clients using it. Um, we, we helped, you know, work through it many years ago. We had a, a large financial who had this issue two years ago and we were fortunate to be able to work through it already back then. But yes, absolutely, it's part of the new cer, the new certification test plans, um, grouping and Delta roster are definitely part of them.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's great. And so if you're, if you're choosing a solution, these are the kind of things you can, you know, talk to vendors about. Like how are they dealing with that? What are their timescales, you know, what's their commitment? 'cause that's really important. 

Michael Levy: I. And, and something you and I talk about often references, don't be scared to ask us to, to, to take you to references.

Yeah. We are very happy to do that. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. That's always [00:22:00] my, um, immediate shortcut when I'm talking to solution providers is like, like, gimme three, three names. And fortunately, you know, there's a lot of people in our community so we can cross reference all this style and, and the enterprises are very happy.

To help help their peers in particular. Like, they don't wanna, nobody wants to go through any pain, so, yeah. Yeah. If there's one thing to take away from this podcast in choosing a solution, you can't beat a, a suitable reference. Similar, similar complexity, similar scale is always the way to go. 

Michael Levy: Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: What about like in terms of looking again between solutions, like types of media collected, does everybody collect everything or to different solutions? When I'm, when I say everything, I'm talking about audio, video, chat, screen share. How's that work? I. 

Michael Levy: So, so I'm not, I know chat is not part of the same SDK that, um, that the compliance recording is part of.

So let's, let's segment it into audio, video, screen sharing. I'm not aware if all three, well, it's audio for sure is part of it, but I'm not aware about screen sharing and [00:23:00] video. If it's part of certification, that's something we can take up another time. But, um, it is something we support. Um, we support it as a standard included product in, in any of our versions.

So yes, I would, I would say that, um, you know, everyone should give you the ability because in compliance now, there's not only audio compliance, but visual. You don't know. You know, we've, we've had some interesting conversations with people, for example, are saying, don't buy their share. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't buy the share. Yeah. You know what I mean? Red time 

Tom Arbuthnot: means do the opposite of what I'm saying to do for compliance reasons, those kind of things. 

Michael Levy: Well, I, I'll, I'll tell you just on a, on a side thread, and this is something we can maybe have another discussion at another time, is I've seen some interesting technology recently as well that are now doing deepfake detection as well on meetings for teams.

Oh, interesting. As well as and, and real time as well as post call. Um, processing for, um, deep fake and voice authentication. So biometrics. So it's really [00:24:00] interesting because the stuff we're seeing in terms of deep fake are crazy these days. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Yeah. They're getting better and better and uh, there have been some news stories about people being ju by them, so that's definitely gonna be a thing.

Michael Levy: Some of the tricks are amazing. I know I saw recently a video where there was someone doing a, an interview, um, for a job and the person doing the interview identified that something was strange and said to the guy, put your hand in front of your face. 'cause you know, with all the filters and things there, a Facebook on.

Yeah, yeah. It's a try and true. The guy put his hand there and there and everywhere except in front of his face and then just killed the meeting because, um. Um, they could tell. So there's some cool little tricks that I've heard from some of the companies we're speaking to that do it. Um, cool little tricks of how they do their magic and Yeah.

Uh, it's very interesting 

Tom Arbuthnot: and you are, we won't go too far off topic, but you are into that world in the sense of you have an option on your platform to be a compliant media collector for other solutions. Don't do TA, so you, you can be the, the [00:25:00] compliant, or certified, I should say, middleware to pull that data out for.

CRM gathering tools or information gathering tools so they don't have to do the hard work of tying into Microsoft and absolutely getting supported. 

Michael Levy: So we're seeing it more and more these CI platforms, revenue, intelligence, uh, whatever, even just large companies wanting to, you know, build their own co-pilots that are, need to collect data to feed them.

Um, we are seeing that more and more and, and, you know. The days of, you know, they obviously can build their own SDKs, but do you really wanna go and hire multiple engineers to build them? Maintain them, because they're changing all the time. Then you hit big meetings, you gotta develop grouping Delta roster.

Yeah. And, and, and like you 

Tom Arbuthnot: said, the supportability scenario. If something goes wrong with a team of structure, is it, is it you, is it them? You're not gonna get any support from Microsoft. So, uh, for experimenting maybe, but in any kind of. Production, I think it's, it's gonna be much easier to, to leverage the work you guys have done.

Michael Levy: Yeah. And, and we provide like, um, a very, like that middleware [00:26:00] where you don't have this whole robust UI and everything, it's just literally feeding it. Still using all of our, you know, compliance rules. We have the ability to access, you know, different filters as well through it and do all of that good stuff and deliver crisp, clean media.

We can even do stereo files, we can do transcription and just deliver it in a nice packaged format for you to do your analysis or feed any of your AI engines that you're looking to, uh, to feed. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's interesting. I've, I've seen a big uptick in the recording conversation precisely because of that AI capture.

And, and we were talking to, uh, Microsoft on a different call yesterday and they said that their native transcriptions are under amazing scrutiny now. Like people took it or leave it before, but now because of AI, people are all over a quality transcription to pull that, that those insights and that meeting summary out, 

Michael Levy: well, that, that's another interesting topic because.

Remember we use cognitive services, Microsoft for everything. We are so deeply baked in, um, any little action happening [00:27:00] in our platform on our services. It's a Microsoft something in the backend. But, um, important to note is we liked it also because it was able to maintain that region and compliance. Um, picture.

So if someone was in the UK and they needed transcription, we know that the engine was sitting in the uk. You know, even though the call was going into transcription, it was never leaving the area. Now you might have a vendor that's not using it. Where is that transcription being transcribed? Because the media has to go there to be transcribed.

Yeah. Is it staying it within reason when you're doing your compliance? Are you just saying you've got transcription? Yes. Your recording is staying in the uk. Yeah. But in that little piece, when it's being transcribed, where is it going? Maybe your platform is Azure based, but you have a service sitting on Preem in a data center.

Have you checked their data center that their security controls there? 'cause that's all the stuff that encompasses compliance. Do you have cameras in the data center? Do you have access control? So there's a lot more, especially when you're using transcription, other tools. And that's why we think very carefully [00:28:00] about what we use because every component has to fill.

That compliance scope. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, that's another great, yeah. Great, great tip there when choosing the solution is what is their architecture and um, which third parties are they dependent on and have processing agreements with. And you've got all the GDPR processing implications there of, well, yeah, I trust you and I trust Microsoft as data, but actually if you're using this other might be great, you know, uh, transcription service on GCP or AWS, now you're trusting that and you're trusting Google, you're trusting Amazon or whoever it may be as well.

Michael Levy: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. So let's talk a bit about Numonix, 'cause you've got some really unique features. I definitely wanna get into filters. Maybe we can start there. What are some of the things you would call out that you do that you think is a bit a bit special or helped customers kind of achieve their recording goals?

Michael Levy: So, um, I would always say the reliability of the platform, um, because we focus on capture, that's all we do, and we realize especially not only for compliance, where you have [00:29:00] to make sure that everything is recorded, but also from the perspective. Of, um, of making sure that, um, the data resides within the reason region and that automatically you are able to record what you need to.

So there might be tools where you can stop a recording and, you know, start and stop, but we provide a lot of native builtin features. Um, some of them include, as I mentioned earlier, a meeting title. So you can say, um, let's say you have your executive, uh, group that is, um, that, that is gonna record a, a Monday morning.

Executive meeting, but everything else needs to be recorded. But not that one. You could say, only record, or don't record this meeting because the organizer is this account and there's the word private or exco or whatever in the meeting. Yeah, like a, 

Tom Arbuthnot: a hash hash, no rec hash, some code that the, the, the meeting organizer can use in the subject.

Michael Levy: Yeah, exactly. Well, we have another feature that we haven't presented in our, in our UI yet, but it will come where you can even [00:30:00] do by a category, a color category. Oh, that's clever. Within, within, so we have that, that we built for someone once, but we haven't transferred it into the, the UI yet. But it, it can be enabled through a.

Through a config file, um, things like that. Things like, now I know teams call queue recording is coming now by Microsoft through a policy, but we've been doing it for years where you can target a, a queue based on the UPN of the queue or display name or anything like that. So I. Record this queue or don't record it?

The don't record has actually been a good one because again, for GDPR, you might be wanting to say, um, if a call comes through a certain queue, don't record it. So when you hit the IVR, it's like, if you hit, you know, if you do not wish to be recorded, hit five and then you get transferred to that queue that then reaches the agent.

No, that's, but that's the 

Tom Arbuthnot: same, same agents, but non-recorded queue, essentially. That's clever. 

Michael Levy: Correct. And then we also have, which has proven actually to be a, a good one, is we have a native teams app that you can do record on demand as well, in a more compliant way. So even if you do want some agents [00:31:00] not to record, um, everything all the time, but only record based on a button, press.

We have that as a native teams app. You also have PCI muting through it where you can, you know, mute or, or insert silence packets during conversations and GDPR cancel that if you are recorded automatically and someone says, stop, you can hit the GDPR cancel, which will then stop the recording and purge any record of it.

Or you could use the mute button, which you'll just silence it thereafter. So at least you know if someone. Is using it in a responsible manner or not. So, you know, a lot of those, those good, uh, those good rules. The meeting, external meeting party as well. Um, we have filters where you could change different compression.

For example, do you wanna record in GSM 8,000 hertz, which will give you. Ultra compression of like 9.2 million minutes on one terabyte, or do you wanna go in PCM 16 with split media where you can have your RXTX, where you have your, your agent on one stream and the other party on another stream, so you can mute if there's any background noise.

Yeah. Or the [00:32:00] talk over. 

Tom Arbuthnot: You get both sides of the conversation very clearly. 

Michael Levy: Exactly. Yeah. So a lot of those good stuff. We have a lot of good stuff coming as well, which I'm sure we'll talk about as they start, uh, coming out. I don't want to really, uh, you know, let too many things out because then, then the pressure starts.

Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. We need something else to talk 

Tom Arbuthnot: about next time. 

Michael Levy: Exactly. Yeah. So again, the capture piece. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. And it's all cloud platform, right? So we, one, we've deployed this before and played with it like it's quick to deploy SaaS based. So there's, there's all of this world is now much easier than it used to be from a sense of testing things out and, and using them in production.

Michael Levy: Yeah, so, so another great feature we also have, which I think has been a a, a, a major benefit is we built a, a, an a, a provisioning tool in, in Azure using skim. So you can do all your single, all your provisioning within enterra. So you can create, besides doing the recording policy and assigned to an entry group that you add a user.

You know, triggers recording. [00:33:00] Um, you can also create this, this group, uh, this app using, we use Skim. You put your groups in that app, and then it auto provisions our system. So it'll create the users, add the targets, nice. Give them the attributes and everything. So managing the system is a matter of just adding and removing a user from an Enterra group, which is also, especially the, the large, large customers post a thousand users, even post 200 users.

Um, they really eat that up because it helps them maintain and manage. And from a security point of view, you have one, one single point, uh, to do all your provisioning. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. Well, very large orgs. Often that ad story is, is off the HR platforms. They, they provision a user as going active and then all that other stuff.

So you could automate that completely end to end. If it's an ad group, which really nice. 

Michael Levy: Exactly. It's a, it's a huge benefit. And, you know, adding, removing everything, you know, it's one, one spot that you're doing anything, you don't have to go and say, Hey, I need to check this in the platform. And then somewhere else, we have both options, you know, because it's part of our enterprise [00:34:00] solution, but, um, where you can do it manually as well.

So it's, it's really up to the customer. But in my opinion, it's one of our features that I, I appreciate the most. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Michael, thanks for taking us through that recording story. Hopefully everybody listen, it's given them some insight into the different options and, and how to choose a solution.

Um, just on personal note, really appreciate all the support you've given us from, from day one as well, and certainly a lot of the research and background in recording. You are one of the people I go to, so thanks for that. 

Michael Levy: You are welcome and thank you for everything you do for the community. Um, I know that you're traveling very, very often.

We spoke about this earlier and I know your family sacrifices a lot for you to be out there and bringing us all this info. So thank you to you as well for everything you do for the community. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Take care.