The meeting is starting and you are running into problem after problem. Here are our top five tips for troubleshooting from home to get your WebEx meeting started and running smoothly.
Sometimes bandwidth is constrained in our home offices, where it wasn’t previously. Your house and neighborhood is having an effect, whether you know it or not. With families at home attending on-line classes, consuming Netflix, playing games and other streaming; you could be getting about 25-50% of what you were. Anything you can do to keep your family from using non-essential services while you are doing Video Meetings is a help.
Is your computer connected hard wire or using wireless? This becomes especially important if you are doing audio through your computer or iPad (also known as VOIP). Another note, you also might find that your “new home office” is in another part of the house where Wi-Fi is not as good.
You have a variety of options here and it’s important to understand your choices. Many systems are being stressed when many people are working from home. You need to be flexible in how you join if you find the audio isn’t where you like. NOTE: You may need to change during a meeting.
a. VOIP/Computer Audio - While a very easy way to join audio, many things can affect the quality of your audio. Your actual computers age, what’s maybe going on in the background of your PC/Laptop with Microsoft, your microphone or headset quality, your wireless connection, internet speeds, etc. While this is easiest, it is also the most likely to not be the best audio connection.
b. Call Back/Call In – To your desk/home phone. Often the audio option of choice. But if your phone is connected to your Internet, this could have an effect. Usually better than Computer Audio however.
c. Call Back/Call In - To your cell phone. Seems to be a good choice these days with the stress that is on regular phone carriers and home internet connections.
Turning on video gives that “being there” feeling with colleagues/customers. How ever, if you are on a large meeting with everyone using video, you might find turn ing this off may solve bandwidth issues and even sometimes fixes voice issues as well. A possible solution is to have just the presenters on video and turn yours on or off as needed during the meeting.
Are you doing a VPN connection back to HQ/Office, etc.? If yes, you need to think about bandwidth with regards to all this WebEx traffic coming back through a single choke point. You should consider not using VPN to join WebEx meetings or “split tunneling” if you are using something like AnyConnect. IT can help with this discus sion on what will work best for your specific situation.