Is It Time to Stop Wasting Time? How Traditional Collaboration Solutions Can Suck the Life Out of Meetings
"I just want to walk into a meeting room or log in from wherever I’m working and start sharing my screen.” Isn’t that what you want for yourself and your users when you need technology to collaborate on a project or make a presentation? Yet too often, that technology steals valuable time from our meetings. Here are four ways that technology can get in the way of collaboration and productivity, frustrate users and cause IT to get overloaded with help calls.
“Let’s connect and connect and connect…”
To share content through a meeting room display, often the first step is to plug in your device. If there's an HDMI cable lying on the table and you have a Windows laptop, you’re in luck. If you have a device that requires a Thunderbolt™ or USB-C connection, let’s hope you brought the right adapter.
Once you get your device plugged in, it goes through a negotiation process with the display in the room, taking time to sync and use the correct display settings (you hope). When it’s the next person’s time to present, you must unplug, hand the cable to that person and the whole dance begins again. Only this time, the presenter has a mini-HDMI port and must find an adapter, plug the device in, wait for it to sync and cross fingers that it works seamlessly.
“Sorry, you don’t have permission to connect.”
Another option provided in meeting rooms is a dongle that connects to your computer to allow you to share your screen wirelessly with the room display.
This can cause a few issues: As you well know, company-issued devices have permissions built in that may prevent you from connecting your device to the dongle. Even if you can, these dongles are typically made for traditional USB ports, which your device may not have. But that’s okay—you know the drill, and you brought the right adapter.
But what’s this? You have to install a driver to use this device, and that requires IT’s permission too. All these frustrating obstacles are show-stoppers—and especially embarrassing when trying to present to clients, outside partners or groups.
“We’re using different collaboration tools. Now what?”
Let’s imagine your meeting room is set up for one popular collaboration solution. You’ve got all the details set up—everyone has the right cables, adapters, dongles and drivers—but your client, who’s connecting remotely, is joining using a different collaboration solution.
What do you need to do? You start thinking and questioning: "What do I use for audio? My computer or the meeting room phone? What do I use for video? How can I present in the room and to the virtual participants?” The answers may not come easily in a room that is not set up to integrate seamlessly with other popular collaboration solutions.
“What’s the display in this room called?”
Wireless content-sharing can have its own issues. Many of the most popular in-room wireless screen-casting devices use browser-based reconciliation processes. That means when you try to connect to the meeting room’s screen, you may see instructions that say, “Press Windows + K and choose the ‘CR3 Windows Display device.’"
When you press Windows + K, depending on the environment, what you end up seeing may be a rather long list of all the possible devices you can connect with. You have to identify the one you need (which may not be so easy) so that you can connect and start screen-sharing. Now, repeat this process every time someone else wants to present.
What If...?
What if you and your fellow participants could walk into a meeting room, enter a secure PIN, press a key and start presenting wirelessly? What if it were that easy for everyone in the room and remote employees on VPN?
If you’re ready to take the complexity, frustration and wasted time out of meetings and deliver an easy-to-use and easy-to-manage collaboration solution, you have a choice.
Learn more about the Intel Unite® solution: The collaboration solution that lets users start working together in seconds, no matter where they are or what device they’re using.