The virtual equivalent of knocking on your colleague’s office door

[James Brennan (James_Brennan)]

“Do you have a minute to chat?”  How many times have all of us had this or a similar message pop up in an IM as we go about our work day? 

Thanks to the proliferation of Unified Communications tools like Microsoft Lync, most of us will see this at least a few times a week.  It has become the virtual equivalent of knocking on your colleague’s office door.  And while it is a great tool, it has its limitations:

• The recipient may be working on 2-3 other things and only giving you half their attention when they respond
• For more than a quick/simple question, back and forth asynchronous typing is not efficient
• IM's can often be taken out of context because, even with the cutest emoticons ( ;-p ), we miss out on tone, facial expression, and body language

Enter video.  And obviously along with video comes voice.  With a simple right click in most UC clients, we can now extend that quick virtual door knock into a full fledged virtual hallway meeting.  And with another quick click, we bring in another colleague for a virtual team huddle.  More formal meetings can easily be scheduled using Outlook and include everyone from mobile users on smartphones and tablets, to those in conference rooms, or even full-blown immersive telepresence rooms.  All can easily collaborate over video.

Take a look at Polycom's quick 20 minute webinar discussing “The Top 5 Reasons to Add Video to Your Lync Deployment”. 

We shared trends and highlighted how organizations from all sorts of industries and markets are improving their organization with video collaboration.  No sales pitches, no boring product specs – just 20 minutes of great examples and Q&A about Lync and Polycom video.

Find out more and register for the webinar here.