Joining a meeting – how hard can it be?

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Working from Home (WFH), unified communications and video conferencing services are big discussion topics during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the talk is evolving around virtual meetings and video experiences.  Sure enough, people are turning the camera on with some are reluctantly accepting this means of communication as an only alternative, and others discovering a new world of opportunities. Corporate doubters are becoming convinced that WFH works, video conferencing, unified communication and collaboration tools (e.g. Teams, Zoom, Slack and others) have proven to be fit for the real world after all. Maybe it’s even working better than expected.

Returning to the office – what will it be like?

When workers start going back to the office we should ripe the benefits and learnings that have been brought upon us even further, as many now have experienced the full extent of virtual collaboration (willingly or less so). We also know that some people will be in the office while others won’t, which isn’t a new thing as such, but probably more common in the post-COVID world.  The most likely scenario is that more workers will be WFH than before COVID-19, due to cost savings and the fact that many tasks have proven possible to perform from their home. With more remote workers, companies need to ensure that all of their meetings are simple to join and attend. It may sound like an obvious thing, but  think many will testify that it isn’t easy to accomplish.

How to join a meeting in the future – never worry about it again

As a start we need to accommodate for multiple routes of joining and contributing in a meeting. So, meeting invites should as a minimum support the three most common ways of joining a meeting;

1. Allow you to join from your PC or laptop when at your desk or anywhere else
2. Join from your mobile phone of choice (iOS or Android)
3. Dial in from a physical meeting room system, if in the office and/or if you’re joining the meeting together with other people (also located in the same office or building)

It revolves around the user experience, and the aim is to reduce the time leap to start or join a meeting. It is also attempting to reduce frustration caused by dysfunctional or complicated technology. We are all consumers of services that are easy to use, but with corporate security and network or device restrictions, it can be slightly more challenging. But our expectations towards technology remain high.

We have tested our model at Cyviz with large enterprises and demanding organizations, where security is a top priority. As an example, one of the largest corporations in the world is now offering all meeting invites with an option to join from their preferred or available device or place, done in a fashion where there is no notion of the platform support. They are intentionally hiding the underlying technology in the meeting room to provide a seamless experience. And it works more smoothly than ever.

We are reducing the need to think about where or how you are going to join a meeting and providing the comfort and confidence that you can join from wherever you are, with whatever device you have. Bottom line – with more remote workers, the boardroom, meeting rooms, training room, or an operations center, need full video and unified communications interoperability by default. It is possible today, and the route to deliver goes through standardization, with configurable solutions to adhere to the different use cases and workflows. And by the way, this is most likely already on top of any CIO’s wish list.

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