Today there are quite a few players in the video conferencing service category. These companies all provide a very good product allowing you to speak directly with the people you are in a meeting with. Choosing the right network can take a little bit of a time investment on your part, but it is a time investment well worth making. When you find the right software the reward is a service that meets all your needs, including the needs you did not know you had.
However, the market is flooded with video conferencing options and finding the one best suited for you can present a few unexpected questions that we will try to help you answer in this article. When you are thinking about choosing a new video conferencing service, here are a few tips you should pay attention to.
Knowing the environment the service provides, what platforms are accepted with it, whether you can collaborate or not, and what you can store with it can help to make your decision very easy. It is also important to listen to what the community is saying about your video conferencing choices in order to find out how you can optimize your experience as well as the quality of the service you pick.
There are, of course, many questions you should ask yourself before setting out to look for the perfect video conferencing service for you, but in this article we’ll deal with the 4 most important ones.
Create A Realistic Office Meeting Environment
Anytime you are using video conferencing from companies like the Blue Jeans Network, you want it to appear as close as possible to sitting in the same room as the people you are talking to. Look for a service investing a lot of time and money in making sure everyone on the call can feel as if they are actually in the room talking to the other people on the call.
This does not mean you have to feel as if you can reach out and touch the people you are on a call with. Instead, it just has to appear as if everyone on the call is interacting with one another seamlessly, according to TechCrunch. One of the ways you can tell which of these services is providing a realistic environment is to look at the screen capture. If it just looks like the person you are talking to is in a box, they have not invested the right time and effort.
Offer Wider Acceptance Of Platforms
Not everyone coming to the meetings is going to be coming from the same types of platforms. According to CNN Money, some people may be logging in with an iPad while others are going to try to log in through a Skype call. The best video conferencing service can combine all the different platforms into one seamless environment.
You will not know which of the different platforms everyone is checking in through as long as you have a good service. Companies like the Blue Jeans Network, invest a lot of money in making sure the software is compatible with all the platforms. You’ll know you don’t have good software for combining the platforms if your service is always crashing.
The reason the service will crash is because it simply cannot understand the coding being used by the platform in question, and it simply lacks platform compatibility. Rather than displaying an image, the system crashes over and again.
Provide A Collaboration Mode
A good video conferencing service provides you with the ability to collaborate on what you are working on, according to Computer World. This allows your entire team to work on a project all together on one call. This kind of integrated design means you will not have to worry about who is working on what part of the file, because you can all see the files at the same time and make changes in real time.
Keep in mind, the collaborative software needs to be used with caution. After all, if more than one person is working on a file at the same time, there’s always a risk that two or more people are working on something at the same time, but with a different approach in mind.
When using this kind of a tool, it is best to appoint one person in particular to do the work while the rest discuss what is being done and anything else they feel needs to be addressed.
Offer Storage Space
As you are getting ready for a meeting through video conferencing software, it is necessary to have all of your files in place. The only way you can do this is if you have the ability to store things within the video conferencing system itself. This is why it is so important to have some storage space on the video conferencing system you are going to use, according to PC World.
This means when your team wants to share a file, it can be uploaded onto the software and brought to everyone’s attention. Whether your team is going to work on the files together in real time or everyone is going to put in their portion when they have the time, at least everyone will know where they can go to access the files and make the additions they want to make. You may have to pay a little extra to have more than 1GB of storage, but the price is well worth it to know the files are secure and available to all the members of your team.
To pick the right video conference software does not have to be complicated and frustrating, it can be as easy as asking yourself what features you are looking for and what could help optimize the way you work and talk to your team members.
4 Tips For Choosing The Right Video Conferencing Service
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