Meeting rooms are essential to getting work done. But meeting rooms without the technology capabilities your teams need to collaborate can become the source of a lot of frustration and lost time as users struggle to get equipment and meetings up and running. 

Having the right meeting room capabilities can help solve your most challenging audiovisual and conferencing problems. So, what are the must-have AV capabilities for your meeting rooms? Keep reading to find out. 

Get Your Meeting Rooms Working Right with These Must-Have Capabilities 

Here are eight meeting room must-haves to keep your team productive and working efficiently.

1. Video conferencing. The future of work is a hybrid model, with some employees working in-person and others working remotely and lots of people moving in between the two. The right solution will help teams collaborate quickly and easily from anywhere. With standardized software across your company, your teams can use a familiar system no matter where they are.
   
2. Clear audio. Video conferencing often steals the spotlight in meeting rooms, but clear audio is even more important. Colleagues can collaborate without seeing each other, but nothing gets done when people can’t hear each other. Getting clear audio for your meeting rooms includes choosing professional grade audio solutions and installing microphones and speakers in the right location within the room.  
   
3. Content sharing. With teams working from anywhere, being able to share content—from images and videos to PowerPoint presentations and digital whiteboards—is more important than ever. Make sure your meeting rooms have the hardware and software employees need to keep collaborating.
   
4. BYOD connections. Solutions that let participants connect their own devices—laptops, tablets, or smartphones—to the meeting room system make it easier to launch meetings and share content. They also reduce touchpoints in the workplace.
   
5. Touchless control. Touchless control can include personal device connectivity, voice activation, or room occupancy sensors that turn on lights, video conferencing systems and other meeting room solutions.
   
6. Help button. With a tool like AVOS from AV Solutions, an all-in-one controlled meeting room system, you can increase productivity, eliminate IT support calls, and deliver a consistent experience across all your meetings and meeting spaces. AVOS makes it easy to launch meetings on time and catch and correct costly mistakes before they impact you. When an issue comes up with your AV system simply press the help button. 
7. Remote diagnostics. Meeting room AV technology that fails impacts both in-room and remote users experience. The ability to diagnose AV issues remotely is important to reducing lost productivity as well as limiting in-person exposure.  AVOS provides real-time auto-recovery, automated diagnostics, remote diagnostics toolset, and real-time automated diagnostics configurability. AVOS will take a snapshot of your system’s diagnostics and send it to your support staff and to AV Solutions for a quick resolution. 
8. Room usage data. In 2020, IT staff became increasingly remote from the meeting room. Because of this, it is critical for your IT team to have access to room usage data. This data will help your team understand how often and how long meeting rooms are being used. This data will also let your team what AV technology functions are being used—and what’s not being used—within meeting rooms. This data will provide your IT team with the insight needed to continue to invest in key technology that is heavily used, which will save the organization time and increase productivity. 

Make a Plan to Support Your Meeting Rooms  

When it comes to AV capabilities for meeting rooms, your solutions are only as good as the support you have to keep them up and running. Many organizations don’t have a person on-site to support users and provide immediate help when things go wrong. 

It’s imperative you have a plan to support users before, during, and after a meeting so you can minimize user delays and reduce the workload of your IT department. 

• Before: Make sure end-users know which meeting room they’ll be using and how to operate the technology in the room. For example, users can scan a QR code with their phone to access simple directions on how to operate the room’s AV system. 
• During: AV Solutions can have technicians available in-person or remotely during your meeting to assist the IT staff and meeting organizers with any tech issues that may arise. 
• After: The ability to log errors after a meeting can help them get resolved faster. For example, a QR code can connect users to a short survey on the room functionality. 

Get the Help You Need When You Need It with AV Solutions 

With AV Solutions you can close the gap between when users need help and when they get it, which means users can launch meetings quickly and work productively without interruption. We believe your AV system should be easy to use and work reliably every time. Ready to get started? Get in touch today.