Free videoconferencing tools: 5 creative ways they can help you get things done - browncritheing

A free videoconferencing tool belongs in any productivity kit, and not just for meetings. Ill-used creatively, the compounding of webcams and collaboration features can aid you streamline other tasks and interactions in your workday, in ways you might never have considered.

Here are cardinal extra ways you can put a free organisation to work for you.

Host Shorter, Smaller Meetings

At many companies, mammoth meetings with dozens of participants are the average, all the same managers and attendees alike complain that meetings are unquiet and ineffective. In BusinessWeek, consultants Bob Frisch and John Peck write that the paragon number of participants in a meeting where decisions are existence made is just three to six mass, a figure that fits in pretty well with the limits happening many absolve videoconferencing tools. You can use such a tool to force yourself to keep the invitation list inferior.

Remember that online meetings needn't be limited to just vocalization and video. By victimization coaction systems like online whiteboards and screen sharing tools to bring home the bacon time period presentations, you can incorporate helpful visual AIDS into your confluence.

While you're at it, try keeping the meeting duration to a minimum. (Use your computer or mobile device's timer to set a strict start and end time.) Combined study suggested that attendee attention span begins to drop soured precipitously after the 30-atomic mark.

Espouse the Realistic Office

A generation ago, companies were founded by close friends who worked together, often in a spare board or garage until they could afford proper office blank space. Today that formula has shifted. Companies are launched by groups flung around the world. In some cases, founders may never have met in mortal.

Web-based videoconferencing makes it easy to care and collaborate with other workers atomic number 102 subject where they are. With a solid videoconferencing plan, you are free to hire employees and work with contractors no matter where they reside.

Image: Christopher Null

You can collaborate crossways continents or coach new hires with a free videoconferencing tool.

Railroad train Parvenue Hires without Leaving Your Desk

So you wealthy person to show the new hire how to use up the CRM system. How to download a pay out stub. What PC LOAD Alphabetic character substance. Many an office worker knows the chivvy of constantly respondent emails or having to walk to person's desk to show the ins and outs of the business.

Videoconferencing is a much many convenient and businesslike solution, putting you face-to-face with the trainee so you can more easy tell whether the lesson's sinking in. You give the sack use screen-sharing features to control a desktop remotely and show someone the ropes.

Some videoconferencing tools let you record your conferences, though these features aren't usually available in free installations. Alternatives include tools equivalent Applian Replay Telecorder for Skype ($30) to record your calls with one get through. This can be useful for ofttimes asked questions that would otherwise require numerous one-on-unrivaled training sessions. Just upload your most common training scenarios to YouTube or another television-communion locate and channelis the curious in that guidance.

Wee-wee Brass-to-Fount Interviews Less of a Hassle

Videoconferencing can streamline the interview part of screening prospective employees. Rather than setting up a phone screener and in-somebody consultation, get them some done with a videoconference. This lets you see how poised the candidate is over what pot often be a somewhat awkward communication theory mass medium..

Video interviews besides make information technology easier for you to take notes about the candidate by typing them up straight along the screen while you're chatting. Just make a point you use a quiet keyboard.

Impromptu Security system and Surveillance

One of the more intelligent uses for videoconferencing software requires no more one on the early stop of the line at all. Scarce set up a webcam on a electronic computer at your office, initiate a TV chat with that webcam from your house or mobile phone, and let the connection run.

The webcam whole works as a tangible-time surveillance tool, which you arse use to sustenance tabs on the office after hours, keep apart an eye connected the cash file, or simply play Big Brother at the office when you're away. Greenbac that seclusion laws in near U.S. jurisdictions—as healthy as popular decency—require signage [PDF] to be posted in businesses where video monitoring occurs in a semi-public infinite surgery an area used by employees.

The snap, of course, is that you need someone on the other end of the line of work to "answer the earphone" when you first initiate your visit. Unity easy way around this: Remote desktop or remote control computer software. Earlier you pioneer the videoconference, just inflame software same Chrome Remote Background. When the call comes in, accept the incoming call happening the remote computer through with the Remote Desktop connection. You can then end the Remote Desktop session and let the video feed run undisturbed.

Citrix GoToMeeting gets gold star for unselfish

This feature was inspired past Citrix, which launched a zero-cost version of GoToMeeting called GoToMeeting Free earlier this year. The company latterly added several fres features.

Image: Christopher Null

Citrix GoToMeeting Free lets you share screens, a of import solution for breeding and troubleshooting American Samoa well as collaboration.

Original is screen sharing. Users can now get together in real time via video patc share-out their computer display, which is great for both presentations and troubleshooting sessions. The serving has been upgraded to fend for 25 languages (automatically loading whichever language your browser uses) and straightaway whole works on Android phones. Finally, while GoToMeeting Free was formerly available only on the Google Chrome web browser, it now works with Firefox likewise—no additional downloaded software required.

GoToMeeting Free does have limitations, of course. The biggie: Only three users can join a conversation simultaneously (a common restriction among free, business-focused video recording chat services).

GoToMeeting Free is just one solution of many in that grocery store. Whichever one you exercise, it'll pay to think extraneous the squawkbox nigh what else they could assistant you do more or less the office.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/435898/free-videoconferencing-tools-5-creative-ways-they-can-help-you-get-things-done.html

Posted by: browncritheing.blogspot.com

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