Blue Jeans makes life convenient; it has room for improvement but they seem eager to work on that
December 12, 2018

Blue Jeans makes life convenient; it has room for improvement but they seem eager to work on that

Dara Naphan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with BlueJeans

We use Blue Jeans for a grant-funded research project. There are small groups of people meet biweekly members, and have been using blue jeans for the past 8 months or so every two weeks for about an hour and 1/2. We purchased the license last November and have been using it since then. We also use the program to meet with each other about the program, and with our external evaluator. Finally, our research group (separate from this project) uses it to meet virtually every now and then. For the program, I guess it's meeting the problem that not everyone is in the same place; it allows for people across the country to meet.
  • The scheduling is pretty easy, and straight forward. It's easy to invite people to the meetings. It's also easy for people who aren't on the account to just download the app, and the fact that it's on their computer, tablet or phone is pretty nice as well. Some of our participants have had to meet while in the car, for example, so being able to use the app on their phone is helpful.
  • I really like the screen sharing feature, and it works with a number of programs. When using Blue Jeans to work on a paper/publication with someone else, I find it's actually easier to have it right in front of you, as opposed to looking at someone else's screen if you were in the same room.
  • The quality of the videos is usually quite good. All of the actual functions when using the app have worked well for us.
  • It's nice you can record and share videos as well.
  • For our project (like I explained earlier) we have groups of people meet every few weeks, and they talk about very sensitive material, so, we decided (for assessment/research purposes) to not record the videos. Therefore, we decided we'd have the moderators of the meeting meet briefly afterward and debrief, and record THAT meeting, and share it with us, the research team. I believe we had to pay quite a bit to get this feature, and it unfortunately has not been very easy to deal with, because the coaches have to share the video with me. In the beginning, sometimes they would send it to me, and it was not download-able, or at least I thought, because the "download" button was not apparent on my screen (I had to widen the screen). I don't know why it's all the way to the right. That's probably a mis-step on my part, but you could just move that button to where it's visible. Also, I had to periodically nag these busy people to share their videos with me, and that was a bit of a pain. I was supposed to watch the videos immediately afterward to keep abreast of what was going on, and it just slowed us down. I guess what I'm suggesting is to give the option for an administrator (like myself) to access recorded videos in their enterprise. What we'll have to do next time around, is that I think I will have to be the moderator, schedule all the meetings and someone not "attend" the meetings (cancel my audio and video) and record all the videos. ALSO, I don't like that it's just shared through my email, I click on a link to get to the video, and that they actually DISAPPEAR after some time. Why can't they just appear in my recordings or something? They are hard to dig through my email again to find them. That's a silly feature that I would think could be fixed, and has been a source of my dissatisfaction for the software.
  • The internal control system for the admin is very confusing. For example, for some reason I thought that for people in my enterprise (my coaches) to share their videos with me, they had to be designated as administrators themselves. Recently, it turned out that one of the moderators of the sessions could not see her scheduled meetings, and for some reason one of the other coaches personal meetings was popping up in her list of scheduled meetings. All of her past meetings had disappeared from control board as well. She was very concerned about this for reasons of confidentiality related to our project. I have no idea what this was the only time, to my knowledge that this had happened for other coaches. Anyway, I talked to a customer service rep and he explained that videos disappear from the command center tab, and that you have to go to your profile on the main dashboard, then scroll down, click on a few things.. you get my point. I don't know why it's not more intuitive.
  • Customer Service has been annoying. Generally speaking, I get very frustrated that these types of jobs are outsourced to other countries, in part because I have a very hard time understanding the customer service agent. They are always incredibly nice, but the last time I called it should not have taken 45 minutes out of my day for me to figure out what was going on; it should have taken no more than 15 minutes in my opinion. Practically everything the last representative I talked to said I had to ask him to repeat himself, and it was very embarrassing for the both of us. I really don't know the solution here, it's just a source of frustration for me.
  • First off, I just want to say that there were quite a few things on that previous page that I didn't know about! What is Whiteboard? Polling? Maybe I haven't been reading my emails from Blue Jeans very closely but I was completely unaware of these features.
  • It has allowed us to carry out our grant-funded project and assessment of it. Of course this isn't the only software that would have allowed us to complete our work, but it was recommended to us by someone and we decided to give it a go.
  • For virtual meetings, it has definitely allowed our research group to stay on top of projects. Some of our team members are quite mobile and are frequently in other states so it has kept us working on projects whereas in the past (the 2000s??) this would not have been possible.
Honestly, I haven't used these platforms very much at all. Google Hangouts was awful, terrible quality audio and video. Zoom was fine- we used the free version but it cut off after 40 minutes and had to keep sending each other a link. So I'm not really sure. Skype-- Eh. I can never remember my password and I think I have like three Skype accounts and usernames. It's been a while since I've used them.
I think for non-admins it's much easier. They just download the app and attend the meetings. It's much more confusing for administrators, like myself, who are not very tech savvy and not patient at all! Joining the meetings is okay.Although, sometimes on my desktop the app would freeze, (several times this has happened) and it caused me to be late to a meeting.
I think it's well-suited for general online working meetings within small groups. It's great for people who need to connect and not be in the same place, obviously. If someone can't make it to a work meeting, it's nice to just link them in via Blue Jeans.
I'm not sure in what scenario it would be less appropriate, to be honest, but we haven't used it in larger meetings with 10+ people.

BlueJeans Meetings (discontinued) Feature Ratings

High quality audio
10
High quality video
10
Low bandwidth requirements
Not Rated
Mobile support
Not Rated
Desktop sharing
10
Whiteboards
Not Rated
Calendar integration
8
Meeting initiation
8
Integrates with social media
Not Rated
Record meetings / events
8
Slideshows
Not Rated
Live chat
10
Audience polling
Not Rated
Q&A
Not Rated
User authentication
Not Rated
Participant roles & permissions
5
Confidential attendee list
Not Rated