The good news is that video conferencing applications are widely available to individuals and organizations of all sizes. Video conferencing is so powerful because it offers face-to-face interaction, even when you can’t be in the same room with one another. It also gives you the ability to record your meetings so you can re-watch them later, or make them available to those who couldn’t attend the virtual meeting.

The meeting hosts can share the content on their screens so everyone can see what they are looking at, and some solutions even allow you to hand over control of your mouse, which is great for virtual training. The solutions we will discuss below are excellent for both webinars and video conferencing, and allow you to get detailed analytics on the participation and engagement during your meetings. Zoom is perhaps the most widely used solution out there, but it’s not your only option. Here are the top video conferencing solutions, let’s compare:

• Zoom – Zoom is by far the most popular solution out there for both businesses and individuals. It’s accessible to anyone and simple to set up and operate and has all of the basic features you would expect. | Free for 100 participants, 40 minute time limit
• Google Meet – Formerly Google Hangouts – If you have a Gmail account, you have access to Google Meet. This is a great solution for personal use and community-based collaboration scenarios. It is very simple to set up and operate. | Free up to 99 participants
• Microsoft Teams – Replacement to Skype for Business – This video conferencing tool is specifically designed for businesses and is especially good for organizations that already use other Microsoft applications because it seamlessly integrates with their other Microsoft Office applications. | Free for up to 300 participants, no time Limit
• GoToMeeting – by LogMeIn – This solution is ideal for businesses already using other LogMeIn Products | $12 per month, up to 150 participants
• Webex Meetings – Ideal for businesses that utilize other Cisco products and/or require a solution with a heavy emphasis on security | Free for up to 100 participants, 50 minute time limit
• BlueJeans – by Verison Ideal for large enterprises that require a heavy emphasis on security | $9.99 per month, up to 50 participants

[/cz_title][cz_image id=”cz_90717″ image=”15316″][/cz_image][cz_title id=”cz_39777″ cz_title=””]Once you find the right application for your video conferencing needs, it’s important to know what the best practices are for both participating in, and hosting a meeting.

Best Practices for Attending a Virtual Meeting

#1 Find a Quiet Space

This may be easier said than done, especially if you have kids or pets around, but if you are able to participate in your meeting in a quiet room with a door, that’s the best case scenario.

#2 Keep Yourself on Mute Unless You’re Talking

This one is such a basic courtesy that it’s even becoming second nature to kids doing online school. You don’t want to be the reason everyone in your meeting is distracted. Whether there’s a lot of background noise in your house or office, or your snacking near your microphone, you don’t want everyone to hear that instead of the meeting conversation.

#3 Don’t look sloppy, still dress for the meeting

This can be hard when you’re working from home. You don’t always look your best to work from your home office, but if you know there’s a meeting scheduled, put in some effort to look presentable on screen. At the very least, don’t make your virtual appearance in pajamas.

#4 Test your audio and video beforehand

Being on time to a meeting, only to have the first 20 minutes dedicated to making everyone’s audio/video work correctly is incredibly frustrating.

#5 Don’t do anything during the meeting you wouldn’t want people to see

You’ve probably seen quite a few embarrassing virtual meeting gaffes circulating around social media. It can be funny to hear about when it happens to someone else, but would be humiliating if it happened to you. Never assume you’re out of view or out of earshot when you’re participating in a virtual meeting. Do not do anything during the course of your video conference that you wouldn’t feel comfortable doing in front of your co-workers in an office setting.

Are you in charge of hosting the meeting? You have a few responsibilities above and beyond showing up to the meeting. Here are some things you should consider as you plan your virtual meeting:

Best Practices for Hosting a Virtual Meeting

#1 Create an Agenda

Video conferencing can leave people feeling a bit disconnected from one another. As the meeting host, it’s your job to facilitate the conversation and keep things moving along by having an agenda. Attending a virtual meeting with no clear agenda or leader is often incredibly awkward.

#2 Sort Out the Technical Aspects Beforehand

You’ve probably joined a virtual meeting right on time, only to sit and wait for the host to work out some technical kinks for the first several minutes. If you’re the host, you should make a habit of getting into your meeting several minutes early so you can ensure your video, sound, lighting, and any on-screen materials you plan to share will work as expected. It’s also your responsibility to make sure you know how to use the features of your video conferencing application so you can help other attendees as needed.

#3 Be Punctual

As the host, you should always be the first person in your meeting. Failing to do so is like hosting a party at your home and not being there when your guests arrive.

#4 Eliminate Distractions

If you have a chaotic or cluttered home or office, try adding a virtual background to avoid distracting your attendees. It’s also a good idea to try to be in a room with a door, or use head phones with a microphone so there isn’t as much background noise.

#5 Start With Introductions

If you have a group of individuals who may not know each other, it’s your job to introduce everyone in your meeting before you get into it.

#6 Avoid Dead Air and Interruptions

Don’t waste your attendees time by making them wait around in silence. It’s also not the time to take an incoming phone call or read new messages. Keep the meeting moving along throughout its duration or you will lose your participants attention.

#7 Encourage Mute

After you get through with your introductions, and any other necessary housekeeping, ask your participants to mute their microphones unless they are speaking. This will prevent distracting audio interruptions.

We hope this information helps you navigate your new normal and have successful virtual meetings. We offer Microsoft 365, which includes Microsoft Teams, a great solution for video conferencing that we use within our own organization. Our Managed IT Services experts are here to help you implement a virtual collaboration solution.[/cz_title]

Thermal Comfort

Did you know that human physiology and cognitive functioning is less effective outside of normal core body temperature levels? It’s important to remember that thermal comfort is affected by activity. Seated activities, like participating in a meeting, result in lower body heat production than other activities.

Research from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory indicates that performance declines by 2% for each degree ABOVE 77°F and by 4.7% for each degree BELOW 70°F. The ideal temperature for a meeting room is between 68°F and 77°F, depending on the participants. This is why it’s ideal to provide access to meeting room temperature controls. Giving team members control over their personal thermal comfort can increase productivity. In fact, West Bends Mutual Insurance Company found a 2.8% increase in claims processor performance when employees were provided with control of over-desk temperature.

The bottom line is that if you expect your employees to have a successful meeting, you need to realize that temperature has a profound affect on memory, creative thinking, concentration, and other cognitive functions. We recommend leaving it up to the meeting participants to determine the optimal temperature for their group. In addition, meeting organizers should consider the ideal temperature for the entire group, rather than their own personal preference.

Lighting

Humans are incredibly sensitive to light. Our circadian rhythms, sleep patterns, physiology, health, and moods are all controlled by daylight. When the sun goes down, it triggers a release of melatonin, which tells our brains it’s time to sleep. A lack of daylight in an office environment can have adverse affects on alertness and mood.

A report by WGBC outlines the benefits of daylight in offices, concluding that workers in offices with windows had and average of 46 minutes more sleep per night compared to those with windowless workspaces. Additionally, being seated close to a window increased focused work by 15%, that’s no small jump in productivity.

When designing your meeting spaces, it’s important that it has a balanced mix of daylight, ambient lighting, and ceiling/wall illuminance. However, you shouldn’t forget to consider the quality of the lighting you choose to include in your meeting room. Consider the type of light and the color spectrum, as some lights can be harsh and can work against your goal of creating an optimal workspace.

If meetings are essential to your office workflow, you should prioritize a space in your office that has windows, and invest in quality lighting. Pleasant lighting can have positive affects on social behaviors like cooperation and creativity, as well as speed, accuracy, and comprehension of reading. In our opinion, good lighting wherever possible is well worth the cost.

Tools for Effective Collaboration

Many meeting rooms only have basic tools for presentations, and phone calls. The worst part of any meeting is watching the organizer scramble to set up their presentation, find the correct cables, and connect remote participants. A study by Total Economic Impact found that it takes an average of 10 minutes to set up and get a meeting started. One of the best things you can do to foster productive meetings is make sure your team has easy-to-use collaboration tools at their disposal.

For this, we recommend the Windows Collaboration Display from Sharp. This interactive display is truly “plug-and-play”. A USB-C cable connector makes it easy to connect quickly and easily, so your team can get started sooner. Integrated collaboration tools, such as Office 365 and Microsoft Teams will allow your meetings to be more collaborative than ever. The touchscreen capabilities give you the ability to draw and annotate directly on the screen with a pen-on-paper experience, making your presentations more engaging.

Device sharing is also effortless. Users can wirelessly connect their own devices to the display their own content. Up to five devices can be connected simultaneously, ideal for dynamic workgroup discussions and interactive meetings.

In summary, if you want to create an optimal meeting environment in your office, you need to be thoughtful about the technology you make available, while providing room temperature control, and optimal lighting. All of these factors can have a profound impact on how much your meetings will benefit your organization.[/cz_title]

Transitioning to Remote Work with Microsoft Teams

Enabling remote work is now more important than ever. Even after things return to a relative sense of normal, remote work will likely remain a vital part of business operations. Whether there’s a health crisis or not, giving employees the tools needed to stay productive and connected from anywhere is a smart strategy. Our choice for remote collaboration is Microsoft Teams, a solution we use throughout our own organization.

A Better Way to Stay Organized

Microsoft teams allows your whole team to stay in touch, no matter where they are. Not only is this perfect for remote workers, but also for organizations with multiple locations and departments, as well as employees that travel to various locations to perform their duties. With Teams you’re able to access files on OneDrive, have online meetings and calls, chat with a few co-workers, and more. The Teams mobile app also helps you connect and collaborate from anywhere with a smartphone. You can download the app for iOS and Android devices to begin accessing your Microsoft Teams features on the go.

Set up Channels for Your Team

Your Team is the group of people you choose to set up in Microsoft Teams. It can be your whole organization, or a smaller group of people within a department. The feature that really helps kick your team’s productivity up into high gear is Channels. Channels keeps your team from getting overwhelmed with disorganized information, files, and conversions. You can set up as many channels as you need for a single team, each dedicated to a specific project, topic, or even department. This is where the real work happens, so make sure you take advantage of Channels. You can use your channel to share files, chat, hold meetings, and much more.

Collaborate on Files

You can attach files to your messages via the attach button. The files you attach will appear under the Files tab, so your whole team can access, view, and edit them.

Have Fun With Your Teammates

Teams allows you to add GIFs to your messages. This feature might seem a bit silly, but this little feature really helps you stay connected with your co-workers on a more personal level, especially while you can’t be together. To add a GIF, simply select the GIF button under the message box and insert the one you want.

Easily Transition a Chat to a Video Call

If you’re typing back and forth on chat with a co-worker and realize your efforts would be better served through face-to-face interaction, it’s easy to turn your chat into a video call. All you need to do is select the video call option from your chat. From there you’ll be able to chat over video and even share screens with each other.

Never Miss a Thing with Activity, Notifications and @Mentions

You can customize your notifications in your account settings so you’re always in the loop. Notifications include personal mentions, channel mentions, team mentions, chat messages, replies, likes, reactions, highlights and more. You can choose how you want to be alerted to each type of notification so you don’t get bombarded with notifications you don’t want, while never missing the ones that are most important.

You can see all of your notifications in one place under the Activity tab. Under this tab you will see an activity feed with a summary of all activities pertaining to you. You can filter activities in your feed to only show certain types of messages, mentions, replies, etc.

If you want to be extra certain to get a co-worker’s attention, you can use the @mention feature. In your message box, simply type @ and begin to type their name, then select their profile when it pops up. They will specifically get a notification when tagged.

Pin Channels for Quick Access

Search around less for channels. You can pin the channels you work in most often. When you do this, they will appear under Pinned at the top of your list so you can access them quickly and work more efficiently.

Set Custom Tabs

If you’d like to give your team easier access to files, and other tools they use frequently, you can set up custom tabs. To do this, select the + symbol at the top of your chat or channel.

There are many more great features in Microsoft Teams, but these are just a few to help your business start making the most of this great tool. If you’re looking for an excellent remote collaboration tool, we highly recommend Microsoft Teams. That’s why we use it for our own team. Get a no-obligation consultation.[/cz_title][cz_gap height=”25px”]