Microsoft Teams Rooms vs. Watchitoo StreamingPro

We use Microsoft Teams Rooms across all of our main conference suites. This ensure our staff have consistent meeting experiences in out part of the education sector - meetings generally become hybrid fairly frequently and can even extend to pupils or staff working from home. We did try some of the poly equipment in a classroom environment but due to noise levels and the amount of pupils and staff it quickly became a non starter. We were advised to stick with participant numbers aligned to our purchased hardware before we tried this.

Incentivized

I think Watchitoo is a product that is great for many different use-cases for internal programming, one-on-one teaching, e-learning, live web chats, town halls, etc. The company is also very innovative in that updates are constantly being made to the platform and I've seen feedback immediately reflected in a new feature or button.

• Camera view selection is a nice feature which allows remote users to choose the camera feedback to select for better experience.
• Live reactions like hand claps, thumbs up, raised hands,etc can be used to indicate to presenters that a meeting attendee has a question. This is cool.
• We can connect our laptop seamlessly to the Microsoft Teams Rooms to share our content or presentation which makes things very simple.

Incentivized

• Simplicity of interface and basic features to get non-technical speakers to enable camera/adjust microphone and preview their feed.
• Complexity of potential programming and special settings that can yield a rather high production quality using external camera, studio switchboards, and any other fancy bells and whistles you want to integrate from other media/communication equipment.
• Customer service was always on point with their responses to technical questions and exhibited great diligence when assisting live programs. They were good about being open about other customer experiences and troubleshooting methods learned from others using the platform.

• Improve AI Camera to frame participants in large rooms
• no translation captions in real team for multilingual teams
• new elements to introduce quizzes and help with engagement

• The lower bandwidth environments often had trouble participating in Watchitoo StreamingPro so a custom "low bandwidh" theme was created. I feel like Watchitoo could offer more to more people if they catered to those with lower internet speeds and slower computers, or shoddy mobile service.
• The external media search functionality is great and can add a lot to a program, but it could be more user-friendly and a bit more configurable. I like to narrow my searches for specific content, colors, file types, shapes, sizes, formats, etc. Watchitoo peaked into the Internet, but I often had to search, find, download, save, upload instead of pulling directly into the program. NOTE: I am typically more particular in my media searches than others.
• Lastly, I'd say combining a ZUI (zoom user interface) would be a potentially interesting feature to add to Watchitoo. The idea in my mind is a multi-point feed show where folks are in relation to one another in the world. Somewhat how Google Earth toggles between points, but also like how Prezi presentation can have content spread out over a larger map area.

Microsoft Teams Rooms has been very useful for our small business. As mentioned, it has allowed us to connect with our team more regularly, share important information, and keep productivity up by allowing our team to get on remotely and not have to commute to be together in person.

Incentivized

I consider MTR better because it first allows integration with all the Microsoft apps and is more cost-effective, considering all the included services such as the Office app, Cloud Storage, and email.

Incentivized

Adobe Connect is a tried, true and trusted platform given the Adobe name is widely recognized everywhere. Watchitoo offers a bit more of a start-up feel and are often much more responsive in term of customer service. Account managers were open to multiple modes of communication and constantly making themselves available, even to support ad hoc programs. Larger platforms would re-assign new account liaisons and technical support staff. Knowledge Management with respect to our use of the platform and previous troubles/lessons learned was much more fluid with Watchitoo

• Increase in Staff confidence to use meeting equipment
• less "device failures" during meetings
• More and more staff have reduced the need to travel to each of our sites for a meeting.

Incentivized

• Better customer service; it improved production quality and allow for a custom look-and-feel that was missing from other platforms in use.
• Enabled more participation; through the mobile features and easy connection procedure, users felt empowered using a simple program whereas other platforms were requiring special technician help.