Wo what’s your least favorite meeting tool, and why? Mine is currently Microsoft Teams: We have a few groups that favor it over Webex and it’s just different enough to be annoying.
We use Teams for internal meetings or direct chats, and everything in between.
One of our larger business units used to use Zoom before they were acquire and. just. won’t. drop. it.
No one else needs or uses it, just them.
Between the two I like Teams better. One, it’s the tool we use day-in, day-out so we know the how-tos.
Two, anyone can mute anyone. So if someone shows up chewing on the bag of chips, I can slap them into silence with one little click.
In Zoom we all have to put up with the meeting lead repeating : “If you’re not talking could you mute yourself?” I get it that they’re busy doing meeting stuff and shouldn’t have to see who it is that’s making the noise, so I love being able to help.
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I don’t know if it’s all Teams or the way my org has it configured but I’ve had to help the boss by jumping on calls because we can’t dial in via phones for some reason.
I have one vendor that uses Zoom so it’s familiar-ish.
I have one group of users that uses Amazon’s tool. Didn’t know they had a video solution. Neither did I until a month or two back. I think they kind of have to use it since they talk to Amazon people regularly.
I don’t like any of them. GoToMeeting seems to be the worst of what I’ve used lately.
They all suck.
Teams sucks the worst.
Zoom is tolerable when it’s not killing itself to install updates.
Teams by default is not set up for dial-in. An admin has to add that to each person who will be holding meetings that needs that capability.
Zoom’s had more than a few security issues in the lead-up to these tools being essential. I’m amazed at how well they’re doing, but I guess it helped that they got a lot of the market from people that needed a tool for individual private groups.
Teams is a part of our locked down, baked in corporate infrastructure, so we use it for everything. For a workplace tool it works pretty well for us. Video/audio chatting is easy. Screen sharing is helpful. I’ve never run a meeting, but have been in several where inline management was necessary and those in charge seemed to have a handle on what they needed to do.
I’ve never used anything else, honestly. Work, or otherwise.
BlueJeans by Verizon. Its is horrible.
My current employer apparently used to use BlueJeans, but mainly for big meetings.
We’re currently migrating to be a Teams shop, but apparently some group is investing in Zoom-based technology. For good or ill they’re the ‘Xerox’ of videoconferencing, and have some weight in that I guess there’s third party tools written around them.
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You guys are lucky they will do online meetings. I can’t convince my partner that we can do our doctor meetings online; therefore we never have Dr meetings because we can’t get everyone together at the same time. So on the rare occasion we do they end up being those 6hr marathons that don’t actually accomplish anything bc we are all so exhausted. 
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Just make an appointment for an online meeting and send it out to those involved. Make it as easy as you can for everyone to attend. Hold the meeting at the appointed time for everyone who can make it. The next one will get more/all(?) attendees when they hear how easy/useful it was.
Just do it and don’t discuss it. Don’t discuss an alternative. Set the meeting and stick to it as if that is the standard.
If only I were in charge of it. I can almost guarantee that most if not all (minus one) of us would prefer it this way. Sadly, the minus one is the one in charge. So wee have a meeting once or sometimes twice a year. I can’t imagine why people feel like communication isn’t great.
BlueJeans is the name of the software?
What in the he…
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Yes. We tested it at my previous employer before deciding to go with WebEx (when Zoom was right there, WTF).
There’s also BlueTie
WebEx and MS Teams have the advantage of pretty deep integration options to a level I haven’t seen with Zoom.
They all suck, but it’s kind of picking your poison. Teams is actually working reasonably well for a current need, which is long calls a large group is on all day that people are dropping in and out of.
WebEx has something like a half-dozen different clients and back ends, some of which are compatible and some are not. I took a class over the summer which sued a special education version which was horrible in its own way. (I think the Mac client for same is so outdated it’s still ‘brushed metal’ and may be 32 bit only.)
If Zoom has any real integration with other tools I haven’t seen it. I’ve heard of some third party add-ons for recording and such, but that’s about it.
Zoom’s got the mindshare, though. People not in IT have heard of Zoom, so it’s the big winner.
It definitely does, the pharma company I support has a Veeva CRM integration for remote video meetings between the sales reps and the doctors that uses Zoom as a base tech.
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I attended a virtual conference last year that was all Zoom on the back end but had a custom front-end for attendees.
I think I dated her.
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