Nearly 79% of business executives agree that video conferencing is significantly more effective than audio conferencing, delivering many of the same benefits of face-to-face meetings. If your business struggled to keep up with technology demands brought on by last year’s global pandemic, take the time to make sure that you are effectively using all the tools that video conferencing has to offer. Whether you are using Teams, Zoom, or another system altogether, you’ll increase collaboration and communication across the board both in quality and quantity. Two things that every business strives to improve no matter the circumstances. We have compiled a list of best practices, security measures and tips to improve your video conferencing experience.
Watch this quick video on how not to appear in a video conference.
Best Practices
Record Meetings and Trainings
Unless you are handling sensitive or privileged content, one of the most important things you can do is press record. When staff members are absent or unable to attend, you can share the recording at a later time, freeing up the valuable time someone would have to take to recap the meeting or training.
Press Mute
One of the easiest things you can do to avoid disruptions in a large meeting is to mute all the participants at the outset. Doing this will save frustration and possible embarrassment from a barking dog or even a nosy toddler.
Adding or Removing Filters
Whether you’re looking to add a little fun to your next meeting or you suddenly find yourself on-camera with an inexplicable cat filter, there are a few simple steps you can take to add and remove filters during video conferences.
To take advantage of a wide range of entertaining filters during Zoom meetings, simply install and run the Snap Camera app on your device. Then, launch the app and minimize it to keep it running while you open Zoom. Navigate to the Settings icon that is located near the top-right corner of the Zoom app, just below your profile icon. Click on the “Video” tab and select “Snap Camera” in the drop-down list. Now, you can participate in Zoom meetings while simultaneously enjoying Snap Camera filters.
On the other hand, if you would like to quickly remove a filter during your video conference, simply return to your Zoom Settings, open the “Video” tab and select your default camera option in the drop-down list.
Manage Live Events
When your business hosts a live event, there could be a large number of participants. While you should follow the best practices we have listed above, you’ll also want to think about a few other handy tricks. It can be beneficial to have participants submit questions in advance to an email address to minimize disruption during the event and disable the meeting chat while the event is in progress, except for presenters or moderators.
Another great tip is to implement a control freeze for 24 hours before the live event. There is nothing like a network outage during your important annual meeting to ruin an otherwise amazing piece of technology.
Make Meetings Secure
Pre-meeting Settings
There are multiple features that you can take to implement security features before a video conference. Zoom has a Waiting Room feature that allows you to let individual meeting participants into your meeting, prohibiting unwanted attendees. In addition to the waiting room, you can also require a passcode to join a meeting. There are different settings available for passcodes however, we recommend using randomly generated meeting IDs for public meetings.
In-Meeting Settings
Once you have started a meeting, there are additional steps that you can take to make the meeting secure, like locking your meeting from the security menu. This prevents anyone else from joining the meeting. You can also remove participants at any time.
These newish security features help avoid some of the issues experienced by the mass adoption of video conferencing early in the pandemic. In April of 2020, 500,000 hacked zoom accounts were given away on the dark web. Now that Zoom and other video conferencing platforms have introduced new security features, it is harder than ever to gain access to a meeting unless you are a meeting participant. Call In The Cloud Technologies at (857) 321-8458 today to learn how the implementation of our recommended best practices and security features will help you improve video conferencing in your business.
