Organizations are in need of new ways to create collaboration equity across work modes in today’s post-pandemic world. Specifically, virtual meeting participants often feel left out or unvalued. However, the high cost of technology solutions can prevent them from achieving successful outcomes, according to Verizon and Omdia’s “Time to Change the Way We Work” study.
As a result, organizations seek new, cost-effective ways to improve employee experiences and boost productivity. To drive engagement without the need to replace existing hardware investments, Verizon Business added new features to its BlueJeans Gateway cloud video interoperability solution for Microsoft Teams.
With new features to optimize legacy room hardware endpoints for users, the BlueJeans Gateway will create meeting parity for those in the office with their remote participants. Features include the ability to show participant names on screen while content is being shared through the room system. There are also new lobby notifications on Teams-enabled room systems to allow moderators to accept those in the meeting waiting room from their Teams desktop/mobile clients.
Other features include a “presentation rights” feature, raised hand notifications viewable in the meeting room, a locked meeting status, the ability to self-mute room video from the device’s dual-tone multi-frequency signaling menu, static images for video muted participants, audio/video enhancements and new customizations.
The new customizations to give teams more freedom and personalization, ultimately to do their best work. These include custom background color options for meeting banners and notifications, trusted rooms support for Teams Live Events ensures only whitelisted IPs/domains can join Live Events and enterprise domain name whitelisting enables trusted room systems to bypass the lobby and connect directly into the meeting.
With new additions to the BlueJeans Command Center for Gateway, administrators now have a more holistic overview of Teams Meeting performance. Support includes call quality scores for live and past meetings as well as the ability to search meeting room names and in the history tab, to perform diagnostics and get real-time insight into room system health.
Additionally, to make the in-office meeting experience one that is simple and fluid across services, BlueJeans Rooms and Microsoft Teams Rooms customers will soon be able to take advantage of Microsoft’s Direct Guest Join one-touch capability to connect to alternative meeting services by leveraging the web application on the latest conference room systems.
BlueJeans customer Vincent Pagot, product owner, IT Visioconference and Digital Event, TGITS – EUS said BlueJeans supported his company for more than three years and helped the 100,000-employee base connect their Teams meeting using classic videoconferencing hardware.
The new enhancements to the seamless join experience will continue to help Pagot’s company, and others similar, to continue to drive growth in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem while supporting the well-being and productivity of employees.
Edited by
Erik Linask
