Tips for Ensuring Your A/V System Works Flawlessly for That Big Meeting

A well-designed, high-tech board room serves as a showcase to impress customers and investors. A large, well-outfitted team meeting space provides a facility for training and “all-hands” meetings. Equipped with the latest conferencing and collaboration gear, these rooms bring a geographically dispersed workforce together by allowing personnel around the world to participate in organizational events.

But while large meeting spaces play a critical role in the modern workplace, they really aren’t used that often. The company board room may be used for quarterly meetings and earnings reports but otherwise sits empty. A team meeting space may be occupied during monthly meetings and holiday parties.

Meanwhile, all that A/V and conferencing equipment is sitting idle — or so one might think. In reality, network-connected equipment is quietly downloading and installing patches and updates pushed out by manufacturers. Firmware and software updates are, of course, essential to the proper functioning of the gear. However, updates can sometimes cause incompatibilities that prevent the various components from working together properly.

All too often, meeting coordinators will go into the board room, turn on the conferencing equipment, and find that it’s not working. The quarterly investors meeting is tomorrow — what do you do?

The Rahi A/V and managed services teams are here to help, but you can save yourself some headaches (not to mention a spike in blood pressure) by taking a proactive approach. Recognizing that seldom-used A/V and conferencing systems often have problems, it’s important to regularly test your equipment. That way you won’t be scrambling to schedule service the day before your important event.

Often all that’s need is to “reboot” your equipment so that any components that had a firmware or software update can “resync” with the rest of the system. If that doesn’t work, or if you don’t know how to do it, then call the Rahi Systems help desk and schedule support with one of our A/V experts.

Ideally, the same procedures should apply to all of your conference rooms. Although conference and huddle rooms may be occupied every day — even multiple times a day — the A/V and conferencing equipment may not be used that frequently. Regular testing of that equipment can help ensure that teams have the resources they need when they need them, without calling for support.

Another option is to utilize Rahi’s remote monitoring services. The support specialists in our Network Operations Center can monitor your A/V and conferencing equipment and take action if a problem is detected. In some cases, we can also perform proactive maintenance to ensure that everything is working optimally.

If you’re experiencing frequent issues, or if your equipment isn’t delivering a high-quality user experience, it may be time for a refresh. Rahi’s A/V experts can assess your environment and recommend strategic upgrades that enhance your conferencing and collaboration capabilities while maximizing your existing investments. We can also help you standardize the equipment across your environment to streamline procurement, budgeting, management and maintenance.

Your board room, team meeting space, conference rooms and huddle rooms play important roles in the day-to-day operation of your business. By regularly testing your A/V and conferencing equipment and proactively engaging Rahi Systems, you can help ensure that every meeting goes off without a hitch.