BuddyTalk Business Centric Management, Usage, and Features 

In the SMB market, the BT100 allows personal usage as well as business-centric management and usage. With the support of a cloud-based conference system, the BT100 offers either ad-hoc based group calling or scheduled conference calling features.

Business Centric Management and Usage

The BT100 has three levels of device ownership to give flexibility of control. These three levels of ownership are Device Owner, Administrator, and Device Users. The Device Owner conducts one-time device and account setup, WiFi setup, and authorization of both AVS and the BuddyTalk Skill. The Administrator then performs user setup & authorization, user invitation, and the setup of shared contacts which are available to all users of the device. The Device Users can finally establish personal contacts unique to themselves, and then use the device for phone calls or as a smartspeaker to receive AVS services, as well as setup and schedule conferences.

Group Calling and Conferencing (Optional with service activation)

The BT100 system supports ad-hoc based group calling and pre-scheduled conferencing.  Ad-hoc group calling gives convenient, spontaneous multi-party calling, while scheduled conferencing offers more formal pre-arranged, invitation-based conferences.

Ad-Hoc Group Calling

For ad-hoc group calling, the user calls a pre-defined group in the shared contacts or their personal contacts. All groups in personal contacts or shared contacts have dedicated “conference rooms” (ie numbers associated with particular conferences) pre-allocated to them.  When a user initiates group calling, the BuddyTalk Skill server sends the member’s contact information to the InnoMedia cloud conference server which calls out to all members of the group to start the conference.  Those members who do not answer the call can later join the group call via the BuddyTalk App and, depending on user selection, the BuddyTalk App will trigger either the BT100 device or a smartphone VoIP app registered to the user’s smartphone to call into the group conference.

Scheduled Conferencing

A BT100 user can schedule conference calls and invite participants for the call. The participants will receive an email notification, and can join the conference by calling into the conference room at the scheduled time.