Worksighted NXT Webinar | How to Turn Your Tired Conference Room Into Collaboration Spaces
There is no doubt that 2020 has brought on changes that will impact how we work forever. One of the things that you might be thinking through is how to keep in office and remote workers connected and able to collaborate effectively. One piece of the collaboration puzzle is meeting spaces in the office, like the traditional conference room. This is no longer just a place where 6 people gather around a whiteboard but a space where users need the ability to connect with teammates near and far as well as seamlessly collaborate. Conference room tech has frustrated users and IT teams alike for years and there is no doubt that a solid solution is needed now more than ever.
So, what’s needed to create a next-generation collaboration space? Consider the normal video call setup: speakers, mics, screen share, maybe a virtual whiteboard. There’s also the peripheral considerations: scheduling, ease of use, and follow-up features. What’s more, is that conference rooms themselves are finite resources. Understand what your employees need and empower them with the necessary tech.
We discussed a variety of topics including:
- How to pick a platform
- Conference room technology
- Creating collaboration spaces beyond the conference room
What’s Next?
- Fill out our quick Conference & Collaboration Strategy Survey to help us understand where local organizations are at with their collaboration strategy
- Schedule a Power Hour with our team to discuss your collaboration goals and make a plan to get your team set up for success
Let’s Jump In:
Adam Devereaux:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Worksighted NXT.
Killian Smith:
Hey, hey.
Adam Devereaux:
I’m here with Killian.
Killian Smith:
How’s it going?
Adam Devereaux:
My name is Adam Devereaux, for those of you that may not have tuned in before. I am actually our cloud and security manager, which is a new position for me, so I’m pretty excited about that. Killian, do you want to tell them a little bit about yourself?
Killian Smith:
Yeah, absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
They may have seen you before in some of our videos.
Killian Smith:
Yeah, in some of the videos. They roped me back into doing some more, probably because I love the camera so much. I run our field and our Noc team here at Worksighted. I’ve been here about five years.
Adam Devereaux:
The camera loves you too.
Killian Smith:
Hey, thanks.
Adam Devereaux:
We are here today to talk about collaboration. It’s a bigger subject, because obviously there’s a lot going on in the world that it’s relevant in terms of how we collaborate, who we talk to, how we talk to people. Really, in a lot of ways, we talk about conference rooms, but that’s really just a part of it, right?
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
We also have Matt Maines on with us here. He is going to be our chat moderator, so go ahead and ask questions as you go along, and we’ll answer some of them via chat. Then at the end of the webinar, we’ll have a Q&A section and we’ll answer questions live.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
As always, Rebecca is our producer in the background. You may hear her occasionally as well. A little bit about the webinar itself. We want to be super interactive. Ask those questions. We also will have a survey afterwards. We’ll talk about that a little bit. You do have an opportunity to win a $25 gift card as well. Let’s get started talking about collaboration.
Killian Smith:
Let’s jump in.
Adam Devereaux:
One of the first things that we want to define is what we mean by collaboration. There’s a bit of a history here. Obviously, there’s audio. There’s the fact that a lot of our collaboration historically has been face to face.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
By collaboration, we mean trying to coordinate with coworkers, with outside parties on information, on projects, on documents. We want to brainstorm. Maybe it’s more of a messaging. There’s different types of communication that we want to achieve, but more and more that collaboration is with people that are no longer in the physical space that we are.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely. I think that’s something, like you were saying earlier, that in this world today, it’s one of those things where you absolutely have to have it down. There’s been so many unique challenges that we face right now with it all.
Adam Devereaux:
In a lot of ways, I think that this is a part of a larger trend of what we’d call a digital transformation for organizations. The tools themselves, the platforms themselves, they’ve continued to evolve and change and what’s available to people is evolving and changing as well. Really then, which really wasn’t necessarily that long ago, we were often either in the same physical space or we were on a phone call. Files are saved to a server and accessed separately on a file server, old school. I’ve got my computer, you’re on your computer.
Adam Devereaux:
In conference rooms themselves, there’s often challenges historically around accessing that content. We’ll talk a little bit about the level of technology in rooms later on, because we’ll get into some specifics as well. Now, video is a big thing. You know how that is. You’re actively engaging with not only your team members that you manage, but a lot of our clients. Do you feel like video has been an important part of that for you?
Killian Smith:
Absolutely. One of the things about this slide as I was putting it together that I thought about is even some of these technologies existed in one form or another really for quite a while. You could say, “Oh man, we’ve had Skype for years,” but there was so many instances where we just forced ourselves not to use it. We made it mandatory to be in the office. We just weren’t comfortable working on some of the new collaboration platforms and that’s again something that really this whole situation has really forced us to do is like, “Well, now there’s no choice. Now, we have to heavy ramp up.”
Killian Smith:
To answer your question, absolutely. Video is absolutely paramount. There’s such a big difference that I notice when having meetings with even webcams turned on versus off.
Adam Devereaux:
It’s interesting is that obviously we don’t know quite what the future has ahead of us, but there’s a lot of organizations that are already making longterm planning. Every one of our clients has had a different experience with work from home, with remote collaboration. They all have different planning. When we look towards the future, it’s interesting to even look at the big tech giant. I heard the other day that Google is going to have 200,000 employees move to work from home.
Killian Smith:
Wow.
Adam Devereaux:
Twitter has gone full time work-from-home. It’s a permanent option for staff. Amazon is pushed out until at least January of 2021. It’s a much bigger subject when we start talking about commercial real estate and the offices of the future. We’ll talk a little bit about the physical space, because really what we’re talking about is marrying the physical spaces and the virtual spaces that we’re now collaborating. What’s been interesting is that the return to work and a lot of people coming back into the office for us, as well as our clients, a lot of them are having more of a challenge to be back in the building.
Adam Devereaux:
Because now, it’s like some of the people that I’m collaborating with are here and some of the people are remote. So, where do we go to have that hybrid meeting?
Killian Smith:
The hybrid’s almost harder, because for us, we use Teams. It was easy. You could have a meeting with 12 people. If everybody’s just logged in on your computer, then that works. Now we’re totally getting situations where there might be four, six or whatever there and all around, just like you’re saying.
Adam Devereaux:
Sometimes it’s even the two or three people meetings that sometimes are difficult too, where it’s like, I’m here with you and we need to contact one other person. Do we each sit at our desks? I’ve been in a lot of meetings where I’m literally sitting next to somebody who’s also on the same meeting.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
This is something we’ll talk a little bit more as well.
Killian Smith:
For sure.
Adam Devereaux:
The ethos that I want to think about here too is it is about accessibility in a way too, right?
Killian Smith:
Right.
Adam Devereaux:
Because it’s about those work from home people, those remote workers not being second class citizens, as I would call them. Not being at a disadvantage to collaborate. One of the examples might be you and I could be here with the whiteboard, and we’re working away on that. If we’re working with somebody remotely, they can’t see it, they can’t participate in it. They’ll tune out. They’ll be discouraged. They feel disconnected.
Killian Smith:
It’s almost like an excuse. There’s been meetings that I know in the past where it’s like, “Well, I could remote into this, but why even bother? This meeting isn’t really worth that. Unless it’s just a meeting of just disseminating information where I can just listen to it as if I was listening to a podcast or something, it’s useless for me to be in the room,” but that no longer can really be an excuse. Right?
Adam Devereaux:
Exactly. Really, the reality is none of us are making the technology that we use. It’s commercially available platforms. That’s one of the most important things to think about is what your platform is that you use. When we look at establishing a next generation collaboration strategy, one of the first things that your organization needs to do is really pick and standardize on a next generation collaboration platform. Something that is applied towards everyone. We’ve seen over and over where five users use Webex and some people use Zoom and some people use Teams and you’re working with …
Adam Devereaux:
If you pick something and make sure it’s available to everyone, it’s a far more powerful tool. Then, that can help inform your future choices around the technology, because we want the tech to be seamless.
Killian Smith:
Yes. That’s exactly right. There used to be a time, and maybe this is because I’ve worked in technology for over 10 years or whatever, but it’s like, “Oh man, we’ve got this cool new gadget. Look how cool it is. Let’s make this piece of technology the center stage and make all of our collaboration revolve around this technology.” The problem with that is then it’s just in the way. Then you’re feeling like you have to use it. I think of different products that just don’t work really well, like the old school SMART Boards are something that I think about in classrooms.
Killian Smith:
They were just really clunky and they didn’t work really well. The teachers felt like they really, really had to use them, because they invested all this money in them, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, what the goal really needs to be, not just from a product design standpoint, but as you’re thinking about how you’re going to be implementing this technology into your office spaces is, how do I make it so it’s basically not here? How do I make it so it’s disappeared? That’s what we want to discuss a little bit.
Adam Devereaux:
Yeah, and disconnected. Right?
Killian Smith:
Yeah.
Adam Devereaux:
Historically, you had islands of technology. It wasn’t a cohesive experience. This is something I’m passionate about, ultimately, when I bring up digital transformation. This is a word that’s popular in marketing terms, but it means something real. The reality is, the world is still going through an impact, a change from the technology that’s been so rapidly developing over the last 30 years, 40 years. We look at the PC revolution, then mobile computing, then the internet. All of these things are still having an impact on tons of different industries.
Adam Devereaux:
Some of them have been majorly transformed when we look at video and the movie industry and everything else. I would argue that it’s now impacting every industry, and then that impact curve has been accelerated by this whole situation that we’re in now.
Killian Smith:
Precisely. You can even think of examples of like, if you think about whether you’re new to the Teams or whether your work has now shifted over the past four months. You can probably name three things off the top of your head that maybe four or five, six months ago you didn’t even know were a feature. Now that you’ve been using this stuff, you’ve learned them just out of habit or out of necessity, or somebody showed you something cool. Those are examples of things that, like what you’re talking about, that kind of stuff is getting accelerated. We just need to be able to use our technology that much better.
Adam Devereaux:
We really, I think, run into some interesting situations with remote work in terms of how well the organization is set up with the right software platforms, employee engagement, communication platforms, all those things, in terms of how well they were able to adapt. But it’s not this perfect world to have remote work. There’s still a lot of challenges ahead of us. I think organizations are struggling with a new hire. That seems to be a common theme, but at the same time, there’s like Pandora’s box is open.
Adam Devereaux:
Let’s figure out how we can more effectively collaborate, have that presence, and have these virtual spaces that aren’t really just about a video meeting, but also where we can collaborate on files. We can have other forms of meetings and collaboration and communication as well.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
We’re going to get more into the meat and potatoes of conference room technology. This is just something I’ve made up, but I like to break these up into four levels here. A lot of you may have this now. In fact for us, we still have rooms that would fall in what I would call more of the last gen style feature sets. But if we turn back the clock, a lot of times the conference room just had a conference phone in it. A phone, a Polycom, a Cisco phone or whatever brand, it’s a conference phone. What that allowed you to do was dial phone numbers.
Adam Devereaux:
Maybe you could call somebody else on their extension, but it was very much an audio only thing. Then, the next step really was getting a TV or a projector in that room to be able to show content to everyone in the room as well. That means that you have to have a laptop to plug into that, or maybe you’re using a Chrome cast or some other way of doing wireless presentation. The reality is that, you’re still dealing with two separate world; the video that you’re sharing and maybe you’re dialed in via audio to some sort of meeting room like Webex, GoToMeeting, et cetera, et cetera.
Adam Devereaux:
The challenge for a lot of organizations was only the users that had laptops could really effectively use that. The tech was not a great experience in all instances. One of the next steps was put a PC, a dedicated PC in that room. Whether it’s in a credenza under the TV or behind the TV or whatever, PC in the room, and have a wireless keyboard and mouse. This is an interesting option, because the reality too is it’s fairly flexible and powerful. I can log into that computer with my account and I can, in theory, get to my programs and files, but the reality is, my programs and files often aren’t on there. They’re on my computer. They’re on my laptop.
Adam Devereaux:
It’s very hard for a lot of users to use it where maybe a couple of people in the organization use it regularly, but the majority of the other people don’t know how to use it, or they log into it and it takes forever. So then they just give up on it.
Killian Smith:
All that stuff. You’ve got to almost show up a half an hour before your meeting. Then, sometimes you can’t, because there’s a meeting in there before you or something like that.
Adam Devereaux:
There’s pros and cons to that. Pro is of course that it’s flexible and you can use it with any service, but the con is it’s difficult to use. There wasn’t good adoption of it for a lot of organizations, and then challenges to get to the resources that you need.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
When we look at room systems, and that’s a term that we’ll use a lot, what we’re really talking about is more dedicated hardware in a room that allows me to join a meeting, even if I bring no technology in with me. Now, it pairs well if I have a laptop and I have my cell phone and other things, but it allows me to join a meeting, participate in a meeting with dedicated hardware with a more simplified interface and just join that meeting wherever I’m at. The downside is less flexible, because room systems, it’s a Teams Room system or a Zoom Room system.
Adam Devereaux:
There are other room systems now that Cisco, like Teams … Unfortunate name, but basically they have their room systems as well. Of course, Cisco has had really expensive ones for years and years, but they’ve often been difficult to use. We’re starting to see these newer versions specifically with Teams and Zoom. We’re going to probably use teams as the predominant example, because it’s our space that we’re largely in and working with our customers on Teams and Teams adoption. We’ll use that as an example, but the reality is that your most effective using that if you’re joining Teams meetings with people.
Adam Devereaux:
Then, if you’re joining other meetings, how do you use it? There’s some compromises there. If I have a Teams Room system and I want to join a Zoom meeting or a Zoom Room, and I want to join a Teams meeting, now the manufacturers have announced interoperability. Microsoft has announced interoperability between Zoom and Cisco. They are supposed to be putting together a way that you can join the meetings with other people, but the reality is that we don’t quite know what that looks like yet. We’ll find out more before the year’s over.
Killian Smith:
For sure.
Adam Devereaux:
We’re going to talk a little bit about the specific hardware. Sorry, one second. My battery is dying. Tech problems.
Killian Smith:
Yes. So much preparation in something like a battery.
Adam Devereaux:
Exactly. Batteries, who needs them?
Killian Smith:
Who needs them? You do.
Adam Devereaux:
Yeah. Right now, especially. Let’s talk a little bit about the rooms themselves, because we talked about somewhat the history technology. The reality is, it’s not just about the one conference room that you have in your organization. It’s about all of the collaboration, what I call micro collaboration has to take place all over the place, at people’s desks. These actually are some ways that Microsoft has broken out their spaces. On the go is really in transit, in public. The specifics around this really are about audio, and then ultimately your video capture.
Adam Devereaux:
Video quality does matter, but audio quality is the most important thing. We’ll talk about individual solutions that we recommend. Obviously, a headset is one of the most important things, something that has good noise canceling. Whether that’s physically, because it has a boom mic and it’s close to your mouth and it just doesn’t pick up other things in the background or more advanced headsets like an Apple AirPod Pro or some of the other ones that are out there. Or even just using one that comes with your phone. A lot of times a headset will give you a lot better noise blocking.
Adam Devereaux:
That’s really important to help make sure that there’s good audio quality. A lot of times when people are using their laptop as a speakerphone, what we find is that’s the number one source of feedback when there’s echo and it doesn’t sound good not having a headset and just using your laptop. The reason is because it’s echo cancellation, right?
Killian Smith:
Yeah, absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
It lacks good echo cancellation through your laptop. It’s picking itself up on its own microphone, and it’s feeding back through. It’s very close together, the speaker and the microphone.
Killian Smith:
When it comes to just audio stuff in general, the closer you can get the mic to the source, typically the better, because then that mic can be much more tuned. Mics can be wide open and taking a lot of noise, or they can be much closer together and take not a lot of noise. The things like what Adam was holding up, things that can get close to your mouth, those microphones that are in there can be designed specifically for the frequencies of voice and also specifically for something that’s closeup. So, that if like a car is driving by, or if people are talking around the office or anything like that, it tends to handle those kinds of things a little bit better.
Adam Devereaux:
What’s funny too is like some people that had good gaming rigs, or even people who were streamers, they are some of the best at having good quality road experiences, because they were already concerned about audio.
Killian Smith:
Well, that’s exactly it. That’s funny, if any of you guys had any of that, when you guys did go remote and then all of a sudden everybody’s on … You see what their space is like. For me, I play all sorts of music and guitar and record and all this different stuff, so I experimented my microphones for the meetings, but not that everybody has that luxury.
Adam Devereaux:
Some specifics here too. This is a Yealink, a USB headsets, one of the Team certified devices. It has some nice controls in here, plugs in via USB into your desktop or laptop. When you look at Poly, Jabra, Sennheiser, there’s a lot of companies out there that make good headsets. It doesn’t have to break the bank. For under $75, you can get a really good quality USB.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely, headset.
Adam Devereaux:
The other thing to keep in mind too is like when I’m on a call and it’s audio only, I can just use my cell phone as well as a call in many cases.
Killian Smith:
Sure.
Adam Devereaux:
I don’t have to have it on speakerphone. When we start moving towards the office and at home as well, then we have personal spaces. This is where, again, a headset can be so crucial when we look at like an open office scenario, because I’m sitting next to somebody else or even with social distancing and we’re six feet apart, it’s still a very noisy environment when you have a lot of people back in the office. We’re very quickly seeing almost an interesting scenario where you’ve got a whole bunch of people sitting in close proximity, all on meetings, talking to themselves on the computer.
Killian Smith:
We’ve been dealing with this problem for years, simply because if anybody’s ever been to our office, we have a help desk and it’s all right next to each other and they’re all fixing problems on the phone. That’s been a problem that we’ve had to fight and to go back to what we were talking about earlier, a lot of our stuff was picking the right headset for long.
Adam Devereaux:
Super important. Now, there’s another option too, that can work for offices and executive offices, I think is a good example of this where you may have … It’s like a mini collab room too, because you might have a table set up where you can have two or three people in your office with you or you just want a good speakerphone experience. There’s a lot of good options now with USB or Bluetooth speaker phone devices. This is another Yealink device, the CP900. I can just plug it into my computer and it works really good for if I want to have a meeting with multiple people in the room.
Adam Devereaux:
We’ll talk about huddle rooms and things like that, but for offices, these are great as well. Jabra makes a couple of really good ones as well.
Killian Smith:
I think this guy can be Bluetooth as well.
Adam Devereaux:
It is Bluetooth, so I can pair it with my computer or my phone via Bluetooth, or I can just plug it in and it works just like that. These are good for personal offices. They’re not good for open offices.
Killian Smith:
No.
Adam Devereaux:
All right. Now, we get more into the dedicated spaces. What we often are finding too is that a lot of buildings don’t have enough of these right now. You have to start thinking about, where can we enable there to be different shared spaces that are smaller for more of these meetings?
Killian Smith:
Sure.
Adam Devereaux:
Because some offices aren’t as accepting of everybody’s sitting at their desk and having meetings and talking on the computer all the time. It’s very distracting. A phone booth style room is one that’s typically one person. It’s a cognitive space as well. We’ve gone towards these open offices, because it’s all about collaboration, but the reality is that we all need cognitive spaces. We need to get away and be able to think sometimes.
Killian Smith:
Time to think, time for that clarity break where you do need to close out the noise.
Adam Devereaux:
Looking around your office, there may be some rooms or spaces that you can configure in this way, but there are companies that have literally portable pods you can bring into your building to create these as well. Now, huddle room, huddle space, it’s an interesting … Different people will use the term differently, but in this context, huddle space is really more the open spaces where you have some resources that people can quick get together and collaborate on something.
Adam Devereaux:
Might be a whiteboard plus a TV, a video camera, whatever the case may be. You can have equipment that’s optimized and easy to use for you to have these quick open collaboration discussions. When we start talking about a focus room or small conference room, the line blurs a little bit. It’s like three to five people, depending on how you define it. This is where we start looking more into the Zoom Room system, but depending on your organization, if you’re all laptops, you may consider even just using like a USB speaker phone and then somebody plugging in their laptop.
Adam Devereaux:
We talked about there’s like Level 2 display with an HDMI cord, but it’s an old standby. It works pretty well.
Killian Smith:
Yeah, it does.
Adam Devereaux:
There are some room systems now that really can make that easier to use, more effective. Doubles as a conference phone and everything else all in one go.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
The continuation of that is when you start looking at-
Killian Smith:
Who knew there were so many rooms? There’s so many room types.
Adam Devereaux:
This is a little much. I say small meeting room, large meeting room.
Killian Smith:
We’ve got 18 slides of different meeting rooms.
Adam Devereaux:
Exactly.
Killian Smith:
Just a comment that I had. Keep going.
Adam Devereaux:
Another term that I use on large meeting room is executive meeting rooms. Executive-
Killian Smith:
Yes, because they feel important.
Adam Devereaux:
The premium chairs and everything else, but it often is size. Where do we put microphones, all those things, because there’s a lot of flexibility with systems out there with mics.
Killian Smith:
Sorry. What I was going to say was the reason that … You saw Adam and I, we have an executive conference room, and we tried to use one of these things and it really just doesn’t work very well. We probably need three or four of these. Again, a lot of that comes back to what we were talking about earlier is a microphone, is not a microphone, is not a microphone. Meaning, they’re designed for different stuff.
Killian Smith:
We can certainly help answer those questions and what they’re for, but really, really understanding what each product is for and the kind of room it’s designed to create, I think that’s why we’re going into so much depth with this. Because you can fine tune each of basically the equipment types to really, really nail down what you need.
Adam Devereaux:
When we talk about like a full room system, versus some of the newer options that are available, you’ll know in these pictures, there’s a tablet-like display on the desk. Now, the downside to these types of systems is you often have to have wires that run to the table. There can be some challenges around that, but at the same time, they are the most powerful at having lots of different options and tuning that audio and video setup to your room. However, if you’re talking about the smaller spaces, there’s some newer options too where we look at what they call collaboration bars.
Adam Devereaux:
This is an example. It’s the Poly X30. Yealink has the VC210. Essentially, this is a computer, all in one. It’s an Android-based device. It just goes on top of your TV, and in this instance, it has the microphone and speakers and camera all built into one.
Killian Smith:
When you say Android device, we can even spin under here. This little dongle here, this is a keyboard and mouse dongle. It literally doesn’t need the computer built in behind it. That’s what Adam means when it’s a computer built-in.
Adam Devereaux:
Yeah, exactly.
Killian Smith:
You plug it in, you turn it on, connect it to the internet.
Adam Devereaux:
Connects to wifi, ethernet, you’ve got HDMI out. What’s nice about these two is if you have the touch screen option, then it works really well. I can just walk in, hit Join on the computer.
Killian Smith:
Like the TV would be a touch screen?
Adam Devereaux:
Exactly.
Killian Smith:
Cool.
Adam Devereaux:
It’s such an interesting option.
Killian Smith:
How difficult would this be to move from room to room where if I have six conference room, but I only want to buy three devices, and I want to check them out or rent them. Is that a viable option or does that get a little trickier with this?
Adam Devereaux:
It’s a good question. Here’s one of the challenges. When we start looking at how to make this easy to use, and we look at say Teams specifically, we recommend room booking. Having a conference room display is best practice where it got a display outside the room. It shows the schedule for that room. As these are more hotly contested, that becomes a really valuable resource to know, is this room available? When is it available? Or it can just look in Outlook and look at what rooms are available as well. So, just different spaces.
Killian Smith:
For sure.
Adam Devereaux:
If you do that, this is actually logged in to Office 365 as a room system account. You typically want to tie that to the room name. Then, I book the meeting in Outlook, I add the room to it along with the other people that are going to join it. Then, when I walk into that room, it has a big Join button on it, and I can either click that with the mouse or some of them have accessory displays. Or if it’s touch screen or whatever way that I interact with it, I can hit Join and I’m in it. It’s really easy to engage with in that regard.
Adam Devereaux:
That’s what makes swapping in and out difficult. Where these are more affordable, it enables you to enable all those spaces. Or maybe for some of the smaller spaces that you don’t want to put these in, you could just start with just even a desk phone. There are video desk phones as well. We talk about that a little bit potential here. Executive officer and personal office, there’s options now where it’s literally a desk phone. This is a Team’s device, a Team’s desk phone. I have my Teams interface on here and I can see my calendar, join meetings, all those things. There are ones that have video built in as well.
Killian Smith:
I’ve got to say, that’s one of my favorite parts about all this stuff. We utilized something like this yesterday, even getting ready for this. We were putting the finishing touches on this presentation. We walked into the room. I had Join on the thing. I didn’t even need my laptop. Even if I’m in a Team’s device, I don’t have to find the link. I don’t have to go back to some email to find some Zoom link. You just go to your calendar, you click the Join button. That’s ultimately what a lot of this stuff allows you to do on a bigger scale, which is awesome.
Adam Devereaux:
That’s the main message here is there are good options available now that allow you to have a more seamless experience and make it easier for your users to effectively adopt those rooms and get a benefit from them.
Killian Smith:
For sure.
Adam Devereaux:
But going back to that original point of picking a collaboration platform, focusing on adoption and getting everyone to be trained and understand how to use that platform is really one of the main enablement methods there. That’s the way that we’re going to get good adoption is to train people on it, to make it available for everyone in the right way.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
Where it’s like, “Well, these five people have a GoToMeeting license and they can send out an invite.” It’s such a barrier to effective collaboration.
Killian Smith:
Yes.
Adam Devereaux:
As we look towards future tech too, it’s interesting some stuff that was announced when we look at like a Team’s phone, that’s a classic phone with the handset and everything else. There’s a couple of devices now, both for Poly and Yealink where it’s just to display, Lenovo as well. It’s almost like a dedicated tablet on your desk that you can use to join Teams and interact with Teams. It’s an interesting device. Then, one thing too from a next gen feature set, we can talk about the fact that there’s some new meeting experience options that are coming out in Teams specifically where you can interact with the room through the Teams up on your phone, so that it’s contactless. I can use my phone as a Teams remote control.
Killian Smith:
Like a control, basically. So that if you had one of these set up, you could control it right here.
Adam Devereaux:
Or with voice, with Cortana, which is an interesting thing too.
Killian Smith:
Robots are taking over. They’re coming for us.
Adam Devereaux:
One last space I want to quick talk about, I would classify this as the training room, a classroom, large conference room. One of the unique features about this is it’s reconfigurable. The tables can be moved around, and this room that we’re in is a good example.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
What we call our bunker. All of our rooms are named after presidential themes. That was a contest.
Killian Smith:
Government themes.
Adam Devereaux:
Yeah, government themed. It’s really difficult to have a good system in here that’s fixed, because the tables move. We have to be even more creative around making sure that the sound goes throughout the room, that we can have microphone options that work with all the different use cases.
Killian Smith:
That we can control it too. We’ve had instances here where we’ll have small breakout sessions and there’ll be a sector of remote people. When they log into the meeting, all they hear is rah-rah-rah-rah-rah, because there’s just a microphone sitting somewhere, picking up everybody’s noise. Being able to control a lot of that stuff a lot better. We’ve got, I think second, all staff meeting coming up that we’ve had since we’ve been remote. This one will be potentially more of a hybrid type situation. Before, everybody was just logging into the computer.
Adam Devereaux:
I think that’s a good summary. It was either, or, right?
Killian Smith:
Yeah.
Adam Devereaux:
For a lot of organizations, it was like all remote, and then we assumed it was going to be, “All right. Everybody’s back in the office.” The reality is not so neat.
Killian Smith:
I want it to be in the office, because they usually buy us food.
Adam Devereaux:
Even if you’re in the office, I don’t know if you’re going to get any food.
Killian Smith:
That’s probably true. They’ve learned.
Adam Devereaux:
The interesting thing too, though, is even if your organization is nearly a hundred percent back in the office, like your employees, your coworkers are in the office, a lot of times it’s the external contacts that still need to be remote. Whether it’s customers, vendors, prospects, interviews. You want to have a good experience with those systems.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
How do you get a good sense of somebody and their manners and how they carry themselves and conduct themselves if you don’t have a good video?
Killian Smith:
That’s 100% true.
Adam Devereaux:
All right.
Killian Smith:
Can’t be hiring a bunch of weirdos, can we?
Adam Devereaux:
We talked about the room systems. Again, it’s dedicated hardware and what I would call a full system. Typically, there’s some sort of interface that I can use to control that hardware. Anything else that you want to cover? I think that’s just about it.
Killian Smith:
What are some things that you’ve kind of discovered just about yourself over the past four months in working remotely? What are some of the challenges that you’ve faced and what are … This is a big question, and this is a surprise question. He doesn’t know I was going to hit him with this, but-
Adam Devereaux:
It’s good.
Killian Smith:
… what have you learned about yourself over the past-
Adam Devereaux:
This is one of those interview question?
Killian Smith:
It is. It absolutely is. A little bit.
Adam Devereaux:
I think for me, and this is something we’ve talked about in terms of asking a lot of the different people here, like, “Do you like working remotely?” For me, I actually find being in the office was more productive for me. I can do certain tasks at home and do those well. Meetings are often one of the ones that are fine. If I’m in lots of meetings for the day, that’s not as much of an issue, but I have three boys. They’re teenagers now. I have animals, and there’s lots of things potentially going on at home, so it’s a distraction. Things that I need to work on and think, working from home is difficult in that regard.
Adam Devereaux:
But I know a lot of other people have said, “That’s great. I can get so much done. I’m so much more productive. It’s fantastic.” I think that’s what’s a challenge is, how do we make it so that we have the flexibility, especially not knowing what’s going on with schools? Again, my boys are teenagers, but a lot of other people out there have younger kids. If they’re not going back to school, employers are going to have to work with people, one way or another, to make that work. So, there’s some real challenges there.
Killian Smith:
I think so. For me, I’ve discovered two things. One, I love a whiteboard. I always knew that about myself before, but I love getting up in a room and just brainstorming and like, “All right, let’s whiteboard this out.” I’m very tactile, I’m very visual. I like to see what our thought process is, maybe because I have the memory of a goldfish. It’s usually … So if I can get it on a whiteboard, then we’re better off.
Adam Devereaux:
You’re a visual learner.
Killian Smith:
Yes, something like that. Then, another thing for me too is it’s really hard to present via … Even this, just personally, I would much rather this webinar be hosted in a room full of 500 people. I’m sure there’s tons and tons of people logged in, but I’d rather it be personal, so I can interact. One of the biggest challenges that I’ve had to face is when you’re in a webcam, even if you have somebody’s faces, they’re usually not interacting with you. That’s been a very interesting thing, and that’s why I’m very curious to see how the technology continues to evolve and develop to … Because I know I’m not the only one. I brought that up before and other people around it said they struggle with that.
Adam Devereaux:
What’s interesting is I enabled the Together Mode in Teams on my client yesterday, and you had a pretty strong reaction. You said you hated it.
Killian Smith:
I hated it. It just stuck your head in a bunch of chairs. I don’t know. I was being a little bit of a baby about it, I guess.
Adam Devereaux:
I’ll be interested to see if your opinion changes over time and whether that is something that you end up liking and feeling like it’s more interactive. For those that don’t know, Microsoft Teams has had the ability to create background image effects, similar to other platforms as well, where you can replace your backdrop, so it cuts you out. According to Microsoft research, and they’ve done all this cognitive analysis and brain scans and everything else, they developed this new mode that’s rolling out right now called Together Mode.
Adam Devereaux:
What it does is it takes all of the people that are on video, it cuts them out, and it places them all in a virtual backdrop of people sitting in like a-
Killian Smith:
Chairs, basically.
Adam Devereaux:
Auditorium or something like that. You’re just seeing their faces, and they’re together. Supposedly, it’s less fatiguing, because that’s a real thing. I’ve definitely found that meeting fatigue is a real thing. I don’t know quite what it is.
Killian Smith:
I think I have a theory on this, actually. I think that when two people are interacting, there’s a little bit more space for not talking to happen. There might be moments where I’m reading your body language or doing this. The silences can last a bit longer, but when you’re in a Teams meeting, I think you’re always having to fill that silence. The awkward pauses get much more awkward much more quickly. Because of that, you’re constantly talking all the time. We’re just laughing, because I talk all the time anyways. My silences are always awkward. I don’t know. Like what you’re doing right now. That’s it.
Adam Devereaux:
I do it oftentimes.
Killian Smith:
I agree. I think that’s what it is, because by the end of the day, I’m in meetings all day long. When we switched to this, it’s like, “Man, my voice is tired. My eyes are …” I don’t want to think about anything, stuff like that. The fatigue hit me significantly more.
Adam Devereaux:
I’ve found headsets help somewhat, but I did find two. This one, for example, comes in stereos that goes over both ears or one ear. I’ve been using a stereo one. I like it, because it’s good for music and things as well too.
Killian Smith:
Sure, of course.
Adam Devereaux:
But I would say the one year is less fatiguing in a way. There’s less like, “Oh, I need to get this off my head,” after a while. Sitting for seven, eight, nine hours in front of a camera and staring at people and having those conversations, I found that video is huge for the relationship development.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
But it definitely can be tiring.
Killian Smith:
One thing I’ve noticed too is if I have both over like this, I tend to yell, because you can’t hear yourself. That’s a thing. I end up taking one earphone off, so I can hear myself speak. So, I talk at normal people volume.
Adam Devereaux:
Use your indoor voice.
Killian Smith:
My indoor voice.
Adam Devereaux:
I’m sure you’ve heard that a lot.
Killian Smith:
My whole life, “Shut up.”
Adam Devereaux:
All right. One thing that we talked about as we get to the Q&A section here was that there will be a survey that gets emailed out. It’s in the chat, email to everyone who’s registered. If you fill that out, then you’re entered into a drawing for $25 gift card. What is that gift card for? Have you decided? An Amazon gift card, got you.
Killian Smith:
Can I win it?
Adam Devereaux:
No, you’re not eligible, but-
Killian Smith:
I wouldn’t have agreed to doing this, if I knew that.
Adam Devereaux:
I’ll send you some bonus. Sorry.
Killian Smith:
Thank you so much.
Adam Devereaux:
Last minute terms. I think we’re to our Q&A section. Matt Maines has been answering some questions as we go along here, but let’s check in with the backend and see if there’s any we want to answer here on camera.
Killian Smith:
We actually don’t have any in our Q&A section. I want to encourage everybody to go in there and ask a question. Whether it be specific to your conference room, what you are thinking about or dreaming about or want to do and wondering how to do it. I bet other people have a similar question. Go ahead and head on over to our Q&A section, and put in a question. Maybe before that, Adam, can you talk a little bit more about some of the changes happening in Microsoft Teams meetings? I know you mentioned Together Mode, but there’s some other you’ve been sharing with us.
Adam Devereaux:
There’s definitely pros and cons of different platforms. All right? One of the shortcomings on Teams historically now has been how many people can be shown on screen at one time. That’s one of the other changes they just rolled out with the new meeting experience changes that are rolling out to all Teams users right now. That allows up to 49 people, to 7×7 view. They actually rolled that out first to the Education, because there’s Microsoft Education or Microsoft for education there. There’s a whole kind of wing focused on that.
Adam Devereaux:
Obviously, when a teacher needs to be able to see all the students, that was the highest priority use case for that. They rolled that out to those customers first. So then, now that’s rolling out. Once you have that new meeting experience, which is something that you can enable in Teams. If you go up to your face and go to settings right there in general, if you have the new clients and it updates automatically in the background, there’s a checkbox where enable new meeting experience. I encourage you to do that, because I think it’s much better.
Adam Devereaux:
Pops out the meeting into a new window, so you can have your meeting window. You’ve got your general Teams window, and overall it’s a better experience and interface, in my opinion. The other change is around accessibility with integration with Cortana. Some of that stuff has been announced and revealed, but all the details aren’t out, but it really looks pretty cool. There’s some interesting videos online too that detail that, but it does highlight one of the advantages ultimately that Teams has, which is the integration to the rest of the Microsoft platform, right?
Killian Smith:
Sure.
Adam Devereaux:
The ability to store files and collaborate on files simultaneously really becomes an important factor there, like for making a presentation. We will store that in Teams, so that we can all be working on it at the same time.
Killian Smith:
Like we did five minutes before this started? Where were like, “Get the pictures, and get the-“
Adam Devereaux:
Yes, exactly. We weren’t supposed to say that part.
Killian Smith:
That’s showing how the sausage is made, huh?
Adam Devereaux:
Yeah, exactly.
Killian Smith:
Just a joke.
Killian Smith:
All right. Looks like the Q&A wasn’t actually open. That was my fault, everyone. I apologize. It is now-
Killian Smith:
First mistake she’s ever made. Crazy.
Killian Smith:
… open, and we have a question. Are SMART Boards a thing of the past now?
Killian Smith:
No. I just think they’ve come a long way, and you do have some competitors too. Like there’s the Eno board, which is a thing. Then even like Microsoft’s massive tablet, what do they call that thing?
Adam Devereaux:
The Surface 2.
Killian Smith:
The Surface 2, they had that big honking thing. Is that called the Surface 2 or is it called the big honking thing?
Adam Devereaux:
It’s the big honking. Yeah, exactly.
Killian Smith:
Are they a thing of the past is the question. No. They’ve just come a long way and different touch technologies have been implemented and things like that.
Adam Devereaux:
What’s interesting is I agree with you, and I think the old smart displays have often been a good example of a technology island. We worked with some of the Epson touch screen projectors. Those are commonly found in classroom settings as well, where it’s ceiling mounted. That’s one of the cool advantages is ultra short throw projectors. There’s some really awesome laser ultra short throw projectors out there that are available, that they can sit right in front of the wall and then cast a huge 4K bright image. But they did have touch capabilities, so I could interact with it.
Adam Devereaux:
Those systems actually can tie into a Teams Room system. You can connect that to a Teams Room system and use that big touch surface as essentially a touch screen monitor for the Teams Room system.
Killian Smith:
That’s awesome.
Adam Devereaux:
It allows you to walk in, hit Join, and Teams has an integrated whiteboard as do a lot of other conferencing platforms. So, you can do the whiteboard. One of the other things too, that we didn’t talk about, is the camera capability with Teams. That’s where you have a second webcam that’s pointed to a whiteboard, a classic original whiteboard. Not a SMART Board, but just a real whiteboard. That allows you to be doing whiteboard things in physical presence, but then it pops out for the remote participants into like a whiteboard. So then, they can see that in a much easier way.
Adam Devereaux:
I think there’s still always challenges with remote whiteboarding, some of its interface. Like if I have a touch screen tablet or laptop and I have a pen, that’s a much better experience. But if I’m just on my laptop and I’m trying to use my mouse or my track pad to make text and circles and things, it’s a little awkward. At least if we can see it together, that can be an enhancement, right?
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
If you are doing your whiteboard thing and I’m remote, at least I can see what you’re putting on it. That’s what’s really cool about that.
Killian Smith:
Great. Similar question to what you’re just talking about. Do you have any customers using Microsoft Whiteboard, and is there other whiteboard software that you’d recommend?
Adam Devereaux:
We use it, somewhat, internally. I think it struggles with what I talked about. The fact that oftentimes interacting with a virtual whiteboard just on a laptop or desktop can be a little, you know.
Killian Smith:
That’s why I haven’t jumped into it. I’ve tried to play with it, but it’s difficult to interact with. I need to start using it on my iPad. I was playing with that a little bit, and that seemed to go better.
Adam Devereaux:
That actually has me thinking about a 2-in-1 with the touch screen as my next laptop. I need to get a new laptop. I’m looking at like the XPS 13 or XPS 15, but now I’m considering the 2-in-1 as well, specifically for whiteboard feature in meetings. I think that’s a potentially a use case that hasn’t been there before.
Killian Smith:
That would be the only good one that I’ve ever heard, I think, for a touch screen laptop-
Adam Devereaux:
That’s pretty much right.
Killian Smith:
… in case you guys wanted opinions today. Cool. What’s next?
Adam Devereaux:
I think that’s what they’re here for.
Killian Smith:
Do you have access, and that’s on Surface Hub 2 boards? I know you already mentioned that, but-
Killian Smith:
The big honking thing.
Killian Smith:
The big honking thing.
Adam Devereaux:
That’s the word I couldn’t-
Killian Smith:
That’s what it was.
Adam Devereaux:
It didn’t quite pop into my mind. It’s a really cool, and they announced some new capabilities where you can have a Surface Hub 2 and a Teams Room system, and they can synchronize and you can have different content on your different displays. So, it looks really cool. They are fairly expensive.
Killian Smith:
They’re pricey.
Adam Devereaux:
That’s the downside, especially if you go all out and you get like the Steelcase frame and you get the APC battery. It’s really a cool solution. It’s just, I think, about $14,000 all together, when you add the frame and the battery and everything. Baseline is around eight, $9,000, depending.
Killian Smith:
Would be a super cool investment for like one or maybe two rooms, depending on the size of your business for sure.
Adam Devereaux:
Putting it on a cart I think is a great idea, because then you can move around and use it.
Killian Smith:
That makes it totally worth it, and the check in and out kind of system.
Adam Devereaux:
It depends on how much you think whiteboard value and being able to use that. There’s two whiteboard functions. There’s external collaboration with a whiteboard, but the other use case is even just us collaborating with a digital whiteboard. What’s cool about the Hub is that I can draw shapes and things, and it cleans them up, and then I can export that whole slide and save it, snap content out. It allows me to have a life beyond just text on a whiteboard that gets erased.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
But I think it needs times, especially for a lot of small medium companies out there. It’s a big investment for that same amount of money you could put in a whole number of collab bars or Teams Room systems, or outfit everybody with headphones and a bunch of people with speaker phones. It’s like, if you’re there and you want to take the next step, getting something like the Surface Hub 2 could be a really good investment. If you’re starting from, “Our users are frustrated in meetings, because they are having a good experience,” start with basic tech like headset, speakerphones
Killian Smith:
Webcam-
Adam Devereaux:
… a few room systems. Webcams, that’s a good point.
Killian Smith:
If you can find one.
Adam Devereaux:
USB webcams for desktops, or even people who have poor webcams on their laptops. It’s been a real challenge, it’s crazy.
Killian Smith:
That’s a surprising upgrade, actually, is getting that nicely, but we’ll-
Adam Devereaux:
Moving on. Hopefully that answers the question.
Killian Smith:
How about touch screen TVs with the 4K panoramic video systems?
Killian Smith:
A lot of big words. I’m going to let you take this one.
Adam Devereaux:
A couple of things from a design ethos. I really like having the video be close and personal. The large impersonal from a distance video, it just creates a bad experience. It feels like you’re othered, like you’re separated out from the meeting. You’re viewing down and you don’t really feel like a first class citizen of that meeting. There are things like the Meeting Owl, the PanaCast 3 now. The Meeting Owl is a 180. Meaning, you put it in the middle of the table and it takes a video of everyone around. It tries to do some software magic and things like that.
Adam Devereaux:
There are some integration challenges, but it’s a pretty cool device. The PanaCast 3 is really great for smaller conference rooms, huddle rooms, because it’s actually three cameras. Instead of … I said 180 with the Meeting Owl? I meant three 60. The PanaCast is a 180.You want to put that typically below the display, you get a nice close-in view of everybody’s faces. What’s nice about the touch screen side of that is it makes interacting with the room system really easy. Because I can just walk up to it and hit Join. I can use whiteboard. I can do all that stuff.
Adam Devereaux:
The problem is, big touch screen displays are expensive as well. That’s one of the hindrances. A lot of companies don’t adopt those. If I’m in a larger meeting room, like we talk about the executive conference room, that larger meeting room, I’m typically going to have a webcam mounted somewhere or maybe two on a higher end system. Somebody can zoom that in and control it. That is when Zoom is really nice, because then I can zoom in on speakers. Ideally, in some instances, maybe I have cameras on opposite side of the room, so I could have like a speaker cam and a table cam and things like that.
Adam Devereaux:
The touch screen is really cool if you can find the right technology. Getting anything larger than like 42 inches that’s touch screen starts getting pretty expensive.
Killian Smith:
Sure.
Killian Smith:
All right. How are you doing Teams in large rooms?
Adam Devereaux:
That’s a good question. I would say one of the first things that’s most important is audio.
Killian Smith:
By far.
Adam Devereaux:
Let’s say you have a scenario where everyone brings a laptop in. I want to have a good audio system, so joining a Teams Room system, having a team’s room system in there that has effective mic coverage. Whether those are wired mics that are placed out on the table at appropriate distances or wireless mics that allow you to place them where you need them. The audio pickup is one of the most important things. You could always have people join the Teams Meeting from their laptop with audio off and use their webcam.
Adam Devereaux:
You can get a face cam view of everyone in some ways that almost can be a little bit better experience than everybody being seen from a distance view, from a webcam. That’s something to consider is the audio. It’s my first priority, and then video is really the second. Think, from a strategy standpoint, do I want like a webcam under the TV. and so we can zoom in on different parts or do I want to use something a little bit more creative?
Killian Smith:
A lot of times too, I think it’s important to remember, what what’s the meeting about? Is it a brainstorming where there’s going to be a lot of content going around? Is it more of an Elton style where we’re going to bring up an issue where maybe the content is a little bit … You could have it in a word pad or it’s words. It’s not necessarily much else. In that instance, you could have the camera with the whole room. Then, what we’ve done a lot of times in those is made sure that people that were remote were up on a bigger TV.
Killian Smith:
The audio is already set up really, really nicely, because that’s the first thing. If that’s not in tune, like Adam was saying, that they’re going to be checked out of the meeting. But if Adam and I are in a room and we’ve got four other people and we’re having a conversation, I can read his body language, I can see his face, I can do all the reactions. Being able to do that with people that are remotely, having them be able to be up on the TV so that everybody in the room can also see the emotion that they’re conveying. I think that’s the biggest thing is being able to capture body language as best you can.
Adam Devereaux:
The non-verbal aspects of collaboration, which is an interesting challenge for sure. Speaking of the accessibility aspect, one of the features that some systems have like Teams is realtime transcription-
Killian Smith:
That’s another cool feature.
Adam Devereaux:
… and speaker attribution. That’s a new feature that’s cool, a speaker attribution with transcription.
Killian Smith:
Meaning it’ll know who’s talking?
Adam Devereaux:
Exactly, and it will say, “Megan is saying this, Rebecca is saying this, Killian is saying this,” and it does it like realtime.
Killian Smith:
The computers are taking over, everyone. That’s what I’m hearing you say.
Adam Devereaux:
Speaking of the audio first mindset, again, we’ve done meetings where three or four people in a room, one person joins the meeting with the audio using a USB speakerphone or Bluetooth speaker phone. The other people still join to be able to present content, to show their video, but they join with audio off and then turn their video on. That works really well.
Killian Smith:
The reason for turning that audio off obviously is feedback. That’s what gets that really, really screeching noise. The, if you come in-
Adam Devereaux:
“You need to mute your mic.”
Killian Smith:
Yeah, please.
Adam Devereaux:
There’s some funny videos out there that are like the meeting experience. All right. Hopefully, that answers your question.
Killian Smith:
Yeah. If we purchase a Teams Room system, what happens if there’s a Zoom Meeting or other platform like GoToMeeting that the users need to join? Does the system not work at all and have to be bypassed?
Adam Devereaux:
With like a Zoom Room system or a Teams Room system, you have the ability to just use it for screen presentation. Essentially, the biggest challenge with the Teams Room system and joining a Zoom Meeting or vice versa is the video. You can still use the audio, because you can dial into the meeting typically. I can use my laptop and present my screen, but it shifts. I can’t natively join a zoom meeting from a Teams Room device on the device, so I still have to bring my laptop in, join the meeting in my laptop, and then present my screen. The same as vice versa.
Adam Devereaux:
Now, they have announced and say that they’re working on interoperability, so that I could join a zoom meeting natively from a Teams device. I can join a Cisco Webex meeting natively from a Teams Room device and vice versa.
Killian Smith:
So, the companies are working together to get that done.
Adam Devereaux:
They’re working together to get that done, because they recognize this as a pretty big shortcoming. Right?
Killian Smith:
Sure.
Adam Devereaux:
Now, what I will say is that if you picked your platform. Let’s say your organization has widely adopted Teams, and you have Teams Room systems, and you’re going to have meetings with outside parties who don’t necessarily use Teams. You can be the one that sends the invite, because you have a choice, you have a preference, you have wide adoption on this. You can be the one to set Teams as the meeting that you’re going to be joining. Oftentimes, when you’re joining meetings that are much bigger, let’s say it’s a couple hundred people in a GoToMeeting or something like that, that’s usually where there’s less of a need for video in return.
Adam Devereaux:
You want to see what they’re presenting, and they need to hear you potentially and vice versa, but there’s oftentimes less need for them to see you. Just calling the conference number or joining the meeting from somebody’s laptop so that they can present the screen oftentimes is sufficient there as well. It’s less of an issue in the real world, I find, than what people might think. Especially as more and more of the meetings that we have are internal as well, needing to bring in-
Killian Smith:
Also true.
Adam Devereaux:
…internal resources.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
So, people who don’t use teams can still join Teams meetings, people who don’t use Zoom can still join Zoom meetings. You don’t have to be licensed for either one of them-
Killian Smith:
Correct.
Adam Devereaux:
… to join them as an external contact.
Killian Smith:
Do you have any example customers you can demo for Teams versus Zoom versus Webex collaborations?
Adam Devereaux:
We predominantly work with Teams, so that would be the first thing. We’ve used Zoom ourselves.
Killian Smith:
We have.
Adam Devereaux:
A few years back, we switched. Even within the last 12, 18 months, we really switched full-time to Teams.
Killian Smith:
I think Teams has really come a long way. Teams, when it first came out, had some growing to do, and it’s really, really come a long way.
Adam Devereaux:
For those organizations that are on Office 365, I would strongly recommend Teams be your default platform.
Killian Smith:
For use. It’s going to continue tying in. There’s so many other things that you can do just with the Microsoft 365 platform in general. The more-
Adam Devereaux:
Tasks, which is rolling out this next month, being one of them. Using a cohesive task to do experience is really going to be a powerful thing for a lot of organizations.
Killian Smith:
Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
There’s some challenges with Zoom for us around like, do you license everybody? What’s nice is you’re already licensed for Teams. It’s a built-in capability and it’s so integrated into the rest of the platform. Now, again, with the new meeting experience, the 7×7, there are certain features that there’s not comparable. Each platform, Zoom versus Teams, I’d say those are probably the two big players right now.
Killian Smith:
I would say so, yeah.
Adam Devereaux:
Zoom has some features that Teams doesn’t have, and vice versa. If your organization is like G Suite and you’re using Slack and you’re using Zoom, it’s a great platform still. I’m not going to dog either one of them. They just have their pros and cons. We have customers that have Zoom Room systems, we’ve had a Zoom Room system, we have customers that have Teams Room systems. What we’re working on right now is because of this significant need is really investing heavily in … develop some best in class solutions.
Adam Devereaux:
We’re testing a lot of the hardware that’s out there, trying to figure out what works, what doesn’t work and be able to help you to find exactly what would work best in your different rooms.
Killian Smith:
That’s a big focus for us, even getting some of our conference rooms to a point where we can demo them and show them off and stuff with different solutions and all that.
Adam Devereaux:
Being a showcase. The challenge too, though, is that it’s really more than just the initial install. You also have to think about ongoing training, the training content, management of the rooms, because the last thing that you want is a room to have worked perfectly for a month and then a vice president or owner of the company or something walks into the room and it’s broken. It’s crashed, shut down, something’s not plugged in right, somebody mucked it up right before this important meeting. That always has been-
Killian Smith:
Somebody always mucks it up.
Adam Devereaux:
That’s where having monitoring is an important thing too. So, having like a managed room where somebody is monitoring that, making sure that it’s working correctly, it’s getting updates, all those things can be a really good value add, something to consider.
Killian Smith:
Can you touch on Teams Rooms pricing, standard versus premium?
Adam Devereaux:
Premium is a really new thing that Microsoft has announced. Standard pricing for a monthly cost … There’s the upfront cost, and then there’s the monthly cost. For Teams, this is actually a pretty big advantage, because a Teams Room base license cost is $15 a month. But that doesn’t include any sort of management or monitoring. You have to be prepared to be doing that yourself. Premium is a new option for $50 a month, which is essentially the same price as a Zoom Room license. Microsoft does some of the monitoring and management on the backend within their cloud.
Killian Smith:
What does that mean? What are they monitoring for?
Adam Devereaux:
It’s a good question. What exactly they’re doing, we don’t quite know, because it’s a relatively new announcement. They used-
Killian Smith:
I see.
Adam Devereaux:
… to call it Managed Teams Rooms.
Killian Smith:
I thought you knew everything.
Adam Devereaux:
I only know what is released, what people tell us. We’ll find more about that. I would say that, for us, we’re looking at, how do we do that essentially as a part of the service, right?
Killian Smith:
Sure. Absolutely.
Adam Devereaux:
That you can outsource that role for your organization to us as well.
Killian Smith:
Great. It is 12:30, so I think we should go ahead and wrap up. I’m so glad we got so many great questions in there.
Adam Devereaux:
I’m glad the Q&A was open, and people were able to post questions.
Killian Smith:
Just a quick reminder to fill out that survey. The link is in the chat and will be emailed out with the recording here shortly. Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining.
Killian Smith:
Awesome.
Adam Devereaux:
Yeah, thanks.
Killian Smith:
Thanks everyone. Take care.
Worksighted Team
We are a team of over-enthusiastic people, ready to help our clients utilize technology to spur growth! We love technology and come to work every day eager to solve problems and find ways to impact our clients.
