The Complete Guide to Video Conferencing

Your company is growing, offices are expanding across the world and your employees are asking for flexible work schedules, online meeting tools and more modern and effective collaboration spaces. While you know video conferencing can help address these requests and create better communication and collaboration across dispersed sites, the idea of implementing it seems a bit overwhelming.

3 Types of Video Conferencing in 2020

Before we breakdown the guide, let’s take a look at the current video conferencing landscape.

1. Making Quick Calls on the Go

Cloud-based video conferencing makes it easy to instantly connect face to face with people inside and outside your organization. Use your laptop, tablet or mobile device to quickly invite meeting participants to an impromptu video call. Participants can join meetings from any device, anywhere, at any time by simply clicking on the meeting invite link. No apps or software to download.

2. Set Up Your Team for Remote Working

For teams with remote workers, having a dedicated video conferencing account is the closest experience to being in the same room. Employees can instantly connect face to face, collaborate and engage with their coworkers regardless of their physical location. Video conferencing has the unique ability to bring a human connection to every interaction so remote workers feel connected to the rest of their team.

3. Connect Remote Workers and Multiple Offices Using Hardware + Software

Many enterprise companies have a hybrid workforce made up of traditional in-office workers at one or more office locations as well as remote workers. These companies may find it beneficial to have dedicated video conferencing hardware in their meeting rooms that works with video conferencing software that every employee has on their work laptop and smart device. By using an integrated meeting room system and cloud service, you ensure every employee has a seamless video conferencing experience regardless of where they are joining the call.

What Other Tools Go Well With Video Conferencing?

Project Management

Project Management tools like Asana and Monday.com are designed to help teams organize, track and manage tasks and projects. All projects go through a customized task workflow that controls the status of the project as well as the rules by which it transitions to other statuses. These tools make it easy to see project due dates, assignees and progress to ensure every project is completed correctly and on time.

Communication Tools

Instant messaging tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack are great for quick impromptu text-based conversations to help keep your team connected throughout the workday. In addition to texts, you can also send GIFs and videos on the platforms, making the messages more exciting. All files and chats are synced, archived and searchable, so you can find chats and documents in the future. You can also create unique channels so smaller groups of people or departments can work together on tasks and projects.

Whiteboarding

Whiteboards are great for quickly sharing ideas, brainstorming with your team and making visual concepts easier to understand, but if you’re calling into the meeting over video it’s easy to feel left out. Lifesize Share with the Kaptivo whiteboard camera system lets you digitally capture and share content from any standard whiteboard. Kaptivo removes people, reflection and glares from the whiteboard session and presents a clear and sharp digital image to everyone on the call in real-time. After the meeting you can easily download or share your whiteboard session with your entire team or people outside your organization.

Video Conferencing FAQs

What is an alternative to Zoom?

With the recent issues involving Zoom around data privacy and security issues, many companies have been seeking an alternative. Thankfully, there are a number of secure alternatives to choose from, Lifesize being one of them. Lifesize offers enterprise-grade security enabled by default, so you can rest assured no one will be eavesdropping on your video calls and all your data will be safe.

What are my options for video conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic?

In response to the unprecedented outbreak, Lifesize is offering free, unlimited video conferencing to all global businesses for six months. We want all organizations struggling with these challenges to have the ability to keep working effectively without complexity or compromise.

What are the best video conferencing solutions?

When it comes to video conferencing providers you have a number of different options to choose from like Lifesize, Bluejeans, Skype, Google Hangouts and Zoom. So how do you decide the one that is best for your company? All businesses have different priorities when it comes to their communication and collaboration strategy and needs. For some organizations, cost is the primary consideration, while others focus on security, reliability and support. Of course, many fall somewhere in the middle, making it all that more important to understand the differences between video conferencing solutions. Check out this guide to Lifesize vs. others for a deeper look into how Lifesize compares.

How does video conferencing work?

Today’s video conferencing solution comprises a central cloud-hosted infrastructure routing calls and transmitting video, presentation and audio feeds in real-time between personal device clients like laptops and mobile phones with embedded webcams and dedicated meeting room video conferencing device endpoints.

What are the basic requirements for video conferencing?

The minimum requirements for video conferencing includes three things: a high-resolution camera, ample computer processing (minimum 2 GB of RAM) and a reliable internet connection (about 2 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up of internet bandwidth on both sides).

How do I set up video conferencing?

In the meeting room, simply connect your video conferencing system to your meeting display and pair it to your account. Outside the meeting room, just download your favorite video conferencing app to your personal device, select to use your embedded webcam and microphone and connect to your virtual meeting room.

What is videotelephony?

Videotelephony describes any technology that can simultaneously receive and transmit audio-video communications. This technology typically includes a display screen, a microphone and a speaker component, and is used by people in different locations to interface in real-time.

 

 

For inquiries, email us at info@agdatacom.com

Source: https://www.lifesize.com/en/video-conferencing