Video Conferencing Platform & Meeting Rooms

Currently using HighFive for video conferencing but users are asking for Zoom Rooms. What’s everyone using for their VC platform and can you go into how you’re designing your meeting rooms. Using O365 for calendaring/resource management. Anyone using QSYS for AVL room control? We have Extron, but requires a certified programmer.

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Have you tried Teams conferencing? It integrates well with the rest of the ecosystem and the rooms equipment is …getting there.

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We just use Google Hangout when needed but definitely need something more robust.

We use Google Calendar to track our conference rooms and eSpace for facility management.

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We use zoom. We decided to go with their online option rather than the option that pins you down to one conference room. Now people hold meetings wverywhere in our building.

There were discounts for Zoom in techsoup.

Zoom’s support is fantastic. I’ve got a department head here that will jump on my head at the least hint of trouble. I had no way of proving it wasn’t me when we were using oovoo.

Zoom can pinpoint it to the exact component on the computer that’s failing. It turns out one of the participants on a regular Wednesday web meeting had a host of things wrong with his computer AND his network. I was never able to get him to pursue the audio problems. (I think he grew tired of me finding things wrong in his setup. So he has to use the phone.).

Anyway, I was on my way to an ulcer beforeZoom. Now I don’t dread Wednesday’s anymore

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Yes, some of our users are using it point to point. It’s defintely something we’re watching. Hope MS continues to develop it.

Hey Rob, I know this is an old thread but I’m interested in hearing which way you went?
I like Teams and have been using it quite a bit for point to point, but we’re being asked to evaluate Zoom Rooms as well.
We’re currently using GoToMeeting and it’s worked well for us, but it seems everyone wants Zoom now.

We just tested Zoom H.323 support. Our schools all have legacy Radvision systems. It worked beautifully. So, now we can use zoom with every video camera in production – from the talking head web cams, to the mid-sized Logitech conference systems and our H.323 systems.

The other feature we use very heavily is the break out rooms. One of my users teaches a class everything week. She regularly breaks the group out into smaller groups and then seamlessly brings them all back together.

Found this thread about Teams. There is some good discussion on it and one guy shared a features chart I found helpful.

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We utilize Zoom Rooms now, migrated away from LifeSize last year… we couldn’t be happier. From an IT standpoint, I like that we can pick our own hardware and not be tied down to proprietary cameras and controllers, etc.

In our two bigger conference rooms, we utilize a Crestron Mercury speaker phone that has native Zoom Rooms support, everywhere else is just rocking a Logitech Brio webcam and an iPad and we have not run into any major issues.

I’m a LITTLE hesitant towards Microsoft Teams Rooms simply because Teams is such a new product and Microsoft is so new to the conference room game. Plus, again, their hardware integration is limited as compared to Zoom.

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We migrated to Zoom/Zoom Rooms in February 2019, leaving Highfive and haven’t looked back. It’s been a very reliable, easy to use platform. I have only experienced a single outage (b/c AWS was having issues) If you’re a RingCentral VOIP customer, you get a ‘slimmed down’ version of Zoom bundled with your service. Techsoup also has discounted licenses for smaller organizations, but we needed more seats and the ability to host larger meeting forums.

So far so good with Zoom. We’re fully deployed and the ability to use any off the shelf cameras, microsphones, speakers is proving a lot more beneficial than we expected. From executive meeting systems, to huddles, to full blown Zoom rooms - it really allows us to configure to use and budget more effectively than dedicated hardware. No vendor lockin. Just be aware that their pricing is not as easily extensible when you add more licenses. We were not able to add 5 more licenses and a zoom room at the negotiated price. They were happy to add those licenses but at full retail. If we committed to more zoom rooms up front, they were willing to give us a buy 2 get 1 free. Hope that helps.