Introduction to Nimbus

Contact Center Cloud Solution for MS Teams

Nimbus Logo

Welcome to Nimbus, a Service & Contact Center solution which runs integrated into Microsoft Teams™. Luware Nimbus is Software as a Service which natively runs in the Microsoft Azure cloud. Nimbus allows you to set up your own services with minimal configuration effort and IT know-how. Developed from the ground up, Nimbus is combining years of Luware know-how with modern web standards.

 Core benefits of Nimbus

  • A lightweight user interface with controls just as responsive as a locally installed application.
  • A streamlined and lean design which seamlessly integrates into the layout of Microsoft Teams while working just as well in your browser.
  • Highly customizable service settings for each service, combined with a backend configuration that shares or individualizes all resources within your tenant.
  • Your Service, your rules. Define opening hours and workflows, adjust call distribution as needed. You can fully delegate to service owners – no IT support required. 
  • A large set of features included right from the start, with many more to come in the future!

As a good starter topic, it's highly recommended reading Nimbus in a Flash.

 

How Nimbus handles your data

Info

This section is a brief overview. Refer to our Documents for more detailed whitepapers on architecture and security, and the official Luware Privacy Policy for Nimbus's general approach on handling user data.

 

User access and authentication

With O365 as your directory, a single sign-on (SSO) experience is provided for all customer Nimbus users. User access is authenticated with tight integration to Microsoft's global identity management platform (Azure Active Directory - AAD) and industry standard authentication flows (OAuth2). By using a concept of Organization Units, Nimbus ensures that data and access is given out only on a "need to know" basis per team/service on your tenant.

The customer or their integration partners perform self-administration of data access by leveraging predefined Role Based Access Control policies provided by the Luware Cloud products. This ensures that Luware or Nimbus never need to store or process user account passwords outside the customer's environment.

Call handling and reporting

By using a completely API-based integration –as part of the Graph API handling presence status, call handling, call functionality– Nimbus taps directly into the Microsoft Teams client application and can access the same functionality that MS Teams provides. Teams remains the single point of contact for all your call-center involved employees. There is no additional call toast, no switching between applications, no additional training required. Nimbus remains in the background – either as (optionally) installed personal app, or team-oriented tab in your Teams client to provide call context and live reporting data. 

As extended contact center solution, Nimbus never touches the call itself. Instead it just "tells" MS Teams what to do with it. By doing so, the media stream stays inside the customer’s Teams tenant, with the following resulting benefits: 

  • Everything from security to encryption is covered by Microsoft.
  • The daily routine remains in Teams: the presence status, the call, the call handling.
  • Call handling is also covered by your company’s approved GDPR and internal data policies.
  • As both customer and Teams Infrastructure run in Azure, delays and jitter are reduced to a minimum,  enabling the best audio quality possible.

During live call sessions, Nimbus provides a Microsoft Power Automate Connector to read and store parameters. This enables to connect to 3rd-party systems such as CRMs or customer directories to provide additional data for the internal Nimbus users. Usage is completely optional and follows the same access and authentication concepts as described above.

Data storage

Luware operates with a geographically dispersed workforce with locations in Switzerland, the UK and the EU. Geographically distributed datacenters in Azure enable Luware to meet the customer’s needs regarding home-country legislative, reduce network latency, and allow for geo-redundant backup and failover. Data is securely exchanged between Luware’s cloud infrastructure and the customer's tenant via the Graph API. An OData interface is provided to extract Reporting data for historical reporting purposes via Power BI. Luware provides a pre-configured Power BI Template and instructions to connect to this interface. Usage is completely optional and follows the same access and authentication concepts as described above.

All customer configuration and reporting data (including voice messages) are stored and maintained in the shared Luware Nimbus Cloud infrastructure. This structure is segregated logically by individual Luware Nimbus applications in order to keep the data demarcated, private and secure. Data within the Luware Nimbus application is retained for the purpose of system operation and reporting. Luware does not store your customer data outside of calling PSTN and Voicemail records. Data retention policies are in place to ensure data isn’t kept any longer than necessary to service its purpose.

For more details on reporting data retention duration, backup, security and disposal, refer to our Security Whitepaper located on the Documents page.

 
Diagram: How Nimbus integrates into the Azure infrastructure 

Product updates & maintenance

Being Software as a Service, Nimbus is constantly being updated with new features and fixes. Luware development follows an agile approach, which entails that –while an overall feature roadmap is being followed– scope changes may occur on short notice. As changes on a SaaS product can be disruptive in both user experience and operation, Luware strives to be transparent in its communication and implementation approach. For Luware this means:

  • We announce disruptive updates ahead of time, both in newsletters and via maintenance communication on https://status.luware.cloud/, where we communicate maintenance and service disruptions of any kind.
  • We perform updates preferrably outside of peak business hours to minimize potential impacts on operative infrastructure.
  • We follow a regular update cadence (usually once per week) so that any potential issues and customer feedback can be clearly associated with an update.
  • We communicate Release notes as timely as possible and keep a history, in order that both our staff and customers can talk about the same changes on the product.

Release types

Nimbus Release notes are distinguished by baselinemajor, and minor releases, usually signaled on the primer text on each release. All our customers are receiving the same product and the deployment tasks lie mostly on Luware side. Deviations from this procedure (e.g. a staged update on our clusters) or any necessary customer-side actions are communicated ahead of time. We use this Knowledge Base, and our support team outlets directly to contact affected customers.

The following table explains our release types in further detail:

Type of Release

Description

Usual cadence

Major Release A major release consists mainly of new features from our roadmap. Major releases are usually accompanied by very large updates to both our Release Notes and Knowledge Base, moving previous major releases into the Release Note History at the same time. Semi-Monthly / Quarterly
Minor Release A minor release contains hotfixes and smaller and feature improvements made on existing previous features. Hotfixes usually address and supplement existing Release Notes. Multiple times per month

Stay updated on Nimbus changes

In our regularly updated Release Notes, the type of release is usually identified in a primer text to inform you what to expect. You can also visit http://status.luware.com to stay ahead of upcoming updates and maintenance.

 

Notes on versioning

The product version is located at the bottom of the Nimbus login page:

Version Info

🤔 What can I read out of this?

  • The version indicates when the product was updated → See table below. Note that this a purely technical information. We always prefer clear dates in our Latest Release Notes communication (e.g. Update on ) for clarity.
  • Every release is accompanied by a version change. If not stated otherwise in the release notes, all productive environments (clusters) get updated to this version at the same time during maintenance.
  • Publishing of Release notes signal the conclusion of a major version update. In-between the cadence we avoid making changes to the system, so any newfound issues can be clearly attributed to one change in particular.
  • Release Notes and build version dates may be apart from each other due to various reasons (e.g. QA and customer feedback phases or a staged rollout on our separate productive environments).

You can interpret the Nimbus version info as follows:

Example version: 1.0.22308.6
1.0 

Baseline Version

22 

Year

308 

Day in the year

.6

Build on that day

 

Luware support

🤔 Got further Questions? Make sure to visit the FAQ and Troubleshooting section. Visit Documents for further technical reference.

Need help with your Nimbus Installation or got questions on any other topic? Don't hesitate to contact us:

Support Address

 Luware Website https://luware.com/support/
Luware Helpdesk https://helpdesk.luware.cloud 
Cloud Service Status https://status.luware.cloud/
Luware support contact details

More sources

INC External News Resources