Diversity and Inclusion is a core value at Microsoft. We started the Microsoft Reach mentorship program 2 years ago, driven by this very core value. It was a grassroot effort, but it gained sponsorship from the leadership along the way as more mentors joined and had successful sessions.This program pairs students with mentors within the Microsoft's Design and Experience organization who can provide career advice, networking opportunities, and preparation for students as they enter the competitive job market to work at any company.Turazo has really provided a reliable technology platform and very amazing customer services to help us to be laser-focused and to follow through on our charter.

I love that Turazo allows Teams integration. When we first starting using Turazo, using Teams was not an option and we needed to use the built-in video call tool. Although the quality of the video were good, it was simply not as convenient as being able to hop on a call in Teams directly. We loved that the Turazo team really heard our feedback and acted fast to release new features to make the experience more intuitive. At the end of the day, the easier the software it is to use, the less burden there is on mentors and mentees to take precious time out of their day to learn and troubleshoot the software, and ultimately, the more likely they are going to come back. Thank you Turazo and the team!

One of the biggest pain points that our mentors have is they are unable to block their calendar for days when they will be out of the office. There are some workarounds that we can use currently. For example, mentors can let us know they will be on vacation for the next 2 weeks and on the back end, we can pause them and reactive them when they return. Because it requires manual actions, it can really be time-consuming.

Customization, Salesforce integration, ability to carefully and efficiently manage mentor interactions

Reporting data could be made more comprehensive but I believe these features are on the way. Also, in-network communications are clunky. However, with Salesforce integration neither of these potential impediments are an issue since the customer can create their own tailored communications and performance dashboards.

Good way to connect with professionals outside of your physical network.

Lots of technical difficulties - audio and video did not work properly either time.

The InstaViser team is responsive to all customer needs and is proactive in helping customers to use the software. The program is clean and attractive and overall relatively easy to use.

The functionality of the software and the customer service provided are both successfully designed to make the best use of both mentor and mentee valuable time. Access to mentors is provided in specific categories of expertise and interest and mentors are prepared in advance of sessions enabling them to offer best possible advice in short periods.

The initial set up for the mentor seems challenging to some.

InstaViser customer service worked hard to help us with a successful implementation, and listened to us as we suggested ways to make the tool more useful. Their team is high integrity, easy to work with, and helped us understand ways to optimize our use with existing features we may not have otherwise figured out.

Simple interface, very clear how to use. InstaViser does a great job of focusing on the mentor/learner relationship. Intuitive function and excellent tools to stimulate system use.

Certain features were in development when we began, but this was expected, and InstaViser's focus on customer service made all the difference.

Tracking leads

Tracked my leads efficiently and intuitively

Not as intuitive as mailchimp and salesforce together

I have facilitated the creation of a number of meaningful relationships through InstaViser.

InstaViser does an excellent job of establishing a platform that makes it easy to connect with individuals, eliminating the need for "cold calling." It enables ease of scheduling and communication quite well.

There is very little that I do not like about the software. The only potential con is the frequency with which you get reminders.

I liked that the software integrated video chat instead of using another software extension. I also loved that I got email confirmations for all of the sessions I booked with the employees at Under Amour. The automated reminders helped a lot since I'm very forgetful.

I didn't love the user interface as much as I do other software. I definitely am drawn to very seamless and user experience-tailored designs and would love to see updates in the software's front end design in the future.

The software was easy to use and was generally intuitive. Easy to get what I wanted!

There are a lot of features and sometimes features get lost.

I enjoyed how I can connect and network with other professionals and people in the Under Armour organization. It also displays and gives a background of each employee and recruiter at UA on where they work in the area of the organization. The UA career coaching network can also allow the person to schedule a coaching session with anyone on the platform and have an in-depth conversation about internships, resumes and soft skills plus allowing advice and tips as well.

I say one con is not knowing how to earn more credits after they are used up on the site. Also, I say not including recent interns who done the internship on the networking platform or not having a virtual tour of the Under Amour faculty is something that I would like to see in the future.

Overall, this has been a great tool for us. We started small with our utilization but have expanded globally and plan to increase our users each quarter. This has helped us offer a unique opportunity to potential talent that sets us apart in the industry when the race for talent is so tight.

The Turazo system is very user friendly both for Dell team members and our prospective talent. There are several options for data tracking and metrics that make it easier to gauge our success rates and everyone loves the experience of using the tool.

I do wish there was an easier way to track those folks invited in who did not create a profile. I also wish you could have Admins with a different level of access that were aligned to a specific cohort or group so they could see ONLY their metrics and not the metrics as a whole.

Using Turazo has saved our organization countless hours with mentoring matchmaking, scheduling meetings, and facilitating introductions. The database of advisors is easy to sort through and find the right match - both for administrators like myself and the end user/mentee.

There are some capabilities not available to organization administrators that we have to go through the customer support team for. It also leaves a bit to be desired in its metrics reporting. Still, a massive improvement over the manual system we used before.

Overall, the cost, the red carpet, 5 star customer service is worth every cent. I feel that the Instaviser team is genuinely invested in our clients' success with the platform as well as ours. The communication with our team is awesome and makes not only the software easy to use, but gives our team a piece of mind in what our clients are experiencing--which is a great time! Highly recommend to anyone.

I like that our users can book a session at any point and have a great experience each time. The Instaviser team is always updating the software, adding in new data metrics, newsletter features, etc. You can tell that everyone on the team is invested not only in the software, but their clients as well. I also like that it can be integrated with another one of our service platforms.

Nothing to comment about, we really like the product.

Community-building (and maintenance) through digital platforms is one of the most difficult arenas to enter with the presence of industry go-to's based on social media or professional affinities. InstaViser provided an opportunity for our small organization to connect all of our constituents to each other through an opt-in, easy-to-use platform. The tight design and focus on individual relationships has provided a usage rate well beyond our highest expectations. As an administrator, the feedback from the users has been overwhelmingly positive, evidenced by the near perfect ratings after each session.

There are certainly growing pains with the adoption of any new platform, but the InstaViser team has been extremely responsive to the few minor technological issues that occurred in the first six months of use.

Representatives from Turazo are the best! They are the SMEs & always forthcoming with ideas to problem solve.

The calendar sync is a great feature to everything seamless. Great way to connect with top diverse talent for Recruiting/Mentoring within & outside of your company.

Categorization based on geographical location would be great feature to have.

Reducing the manual work that is associated with a program such as a mentorship program is the largest benefit of using Turazo. The fact that we can customize the matching algorithm for each specific program, based on the needs of that program and its users, is something that we highly value in the tool. Also, prior to implementing Turazo, we would rely on mentors reporting in sessions for tracking purposes. This method is highly unreliable and manual. The fact that we can pull the data at any given time during a program has been a huge benefit to our analysis.

The AI matching capabilities of the software were essential in scaling our mentorship programs. We run multiple programs through Turazo and we would not have had the capabilities to grow those programs if it weren't for Turazo's matching capabilities.

The only negatives regarding the platform were recently address in new updates. Our team is excited to implement these updates into our programs.

We were using this software as a way to connect to knowledgeable people about how to start and grow our business.

This software made going through the many potential mentors at UC Davis' Mentor network a simple endeavor. It quickly gave my team the needed specifics to be able to home in on the individuals we really wanted to meet with. The connections were made easily and the resultant networks have been very useful to our further business development.

That some of the mentors were hesitant to use the features offered to them.

The platform is easy to navigate. My favorite feature is how simple it is to filter the mentor directory by industry or discussion topic.

The software is lacking some features that would be very useful for us, but Turazo is very receptive to these ideas and makes an effort to implement these for us.

I live by the philosophy that a person should surround one's self with successful people to be successful. A mentor network makes it easy to do that. I utilize those who are successful to help me. I hope to pay that forward to others in the future.

Instaviser is an easy to use software that has made it easy for me to utilize the mentor network.

I don't like how the filtering system works.

I've been speaking with potential mentors in different industries about their work and their advice for me professionally

The software has an intuitive interface and makes it easy to search for people based on different factors such as company and skillset

The online connections (especially via video portal) can be difficult to learn and inconsistent, it could also be easier to message through the system or add people to request later, etc.

I have had a great experience because I have been able to get in contact with people I otherwise never would have been able to meet.

InstaViser does a great job of tagging other users in the network by key interests so that you can easily find others interested in the same thing. The audio/visual technology for having video conferences with one another works great.

The software forces you to preset a goal or personal biography, which can be difficult to choose because you set this before reaching out to people. It is true, however, that you can edit it each time.

This software helped my research lab to build collaboration with other labs located in other cities or even states.

I believe having more people using this platform can boos this software to reach it's potential.

Small email and other

Ease and accessibility, it made it simple to contact people.

Not many other users, but good information

I found that this software provided both professional separation between parties while making connection easy and making it reasonably easy to contact the other party outside of the Instaviser software.

I sometimes find the automatic linkage to other softwares such as Google calendar and other products to be more confusing than helpful. It might be better to have everything in one place.

Cool, I guess.

The software is easy to understand. With every software program, there is moments of not knowing what where things are but the UC Mentors platform was an easy one to figure out after a few logins.

The software is straight forward, and maybe a little too lifeless. It needs a spark. Something fun. Something cool. Overall, it’s an amazing platform.