Item: BlueJeans Events (discontinued)
Rating: 7
Author: Steven Carmean

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

BlueJeans is used across WGU for a plethora of reasons. From student to staff, with staff creating the meetings. I would imagine our Enrollment and Course Mentoring would use this project the most, since those groups can reach across the United States. The problem that other departments face is that they seek something they are more familiar with. Our company as a whole is pushing towards Microsoft Teams.

Pros and Cons

In many instances we have used BlueJeans Events for a monthly Town Hall. It has served 4,000 attendees at a time with only a small percentage of issues.
BlueJeans has done well with moderation controls. A moderator has the power to change the meeting as seen fit for the needs of the meeting with recording, booting attendees, approving Q&A, locking meetings, and more.
BlueJeans also does well with Administration. We have the ability to change SSO certificates at will, push permissions to users at a large rate, and step into live meetings to assist on demand.

Many people don't yet prefer BlueJeans in our company due to the lack of breakout rooms, PPT uploads, and the requirement to upload videos to play them.
Using the SSO login doesn't give me the control of manually provisioning accounts. I have to call their customer support line if there is an issue with SAML provisioning.
The service charges for events in customer hours watched. This racked up a large bill as the company scaled.

Return on Investment

The amount of travel for meetings has increased overall.
Communication from executive to general staff has increased.
An overall decrease in phone usage for meetings (about 2-3% less)

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Unified Communications as a Service, Adobe Connect, Skype for Business, Join.me, Zoom and WebEx Meetings

BlueJeans is a great competitor for these other UC platforms. Zoom still carries favor within some of our depts, however.
As Skype for Business is phasing out, many people have chosen to work with BlueJeans. We are looking into Microsoft Teams as well.
Cisco WebEx favored well with Cisco hardware, but we enjoyed the many conferencing solutions that BlueJeans was compatible with as well.

Usability

This rating comes from end user experience. When they step into a meeting, they get asked to put in SSO credentials if the meeting is restricted. In many cases, the meeting is open to anyone and staff needs to enter a name to continue. Some staff will forget to add a name and come in as a Guest. Call in options will only provide the phone number for the person calling in on the participant roster.
This overall can be a little confusing for some, but to others this is a great service.

Likelihood to Recommend

For meetings between company associates or interviews outside of the company, this product can do very well.
If there is an education system where staff are reaching out for methods of displaying educational content, this platform can feel limiting.
For people who are willing to test out new software platforms, BlueJeans does very well. There is enough of a learning curve for its use that higher education staff can feel hesitant.

BlueJeans against 4 other UC platforms. Does it hold up?

Overall Satisfaction with BlueJeans Events (formerly Primetime)