OCS End User Experience – my devices are bad…

I had a meeting today with my team of which we all work remote (Washington State, Colorado, Ohio, North Carolina, New York, Denmark and Switzerland). Obviously we all work with Office Communications Server technology and thus know quite a bit about doing things right. To add to this my work this year is to help with various end user experience issues within the company as well as with customers.

This actually started yesterday when I was dropped from a call and connected back with my mobile phone. There was a brief comment about a better device this time. The other device was one listed on the optimized device list but when I use it there is almost a comment about echo or being in a tunnel. I unplugged the device and threw it in the draw.

So today it was a bit embarrassing to have folks say they stopped hearing me despite me hearing them. So I ran the audio tuning wizard and all seemed ok until it happened again. The suggestion was to remove the webcam given we are working over home DSL connections (and wireless for me). Doing that showed that somehow it was the audio device despite the tuning. This webcam was not listed on the optimized device and I knew it but I haven’t purchased a supported webcam given how infrequent we need them.

Both devices have been properly placed in the trash today. I no longer want to hear about problems. This leaves me with my Jabra GN 2000 headset but I will be asking our admins if other devices are available including a webcam. I would choose a High Definition model but I don’t have a quad proc laptop :)

The one thing that troubles me most is I don’t know if my logs are helpful in this situation or not so I will be investigating. Get an optimized device and if you keep hear reoccurring comments on one, maybe your setup just isn’t right for it (speakerphone) so consider another one. 

TomL LCSKid