GoToMeeting - Great for Web Presentations, Room for Improvement for Conference Calls
February 04, 2014
GoToMeeting - Great for Web Presentations, Room for Improvement for Conference Calls
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction
GoToMeeting is used organization wide at my company, however, I can only speak to my experience from within my department, in which we highly utilize the platform. We frequently host both webinars for large audiences via GoToWebinar, or utilize GoToMeeting for smaller conferences, sometimes as few as 1-3 attendees, but often times up to 25 which is the max attendee capacity. It helps us both set up a secure conference line for remote meeting participation, as well as provide a platform for presenting PowerPoint decks in real time.
The software itself is fairly intuitive, making the set-up of these meetings and execution fairly straight forward and simple. I find the ability to swap presenter/organizer privileges helpful, and very rarely have I experienced any interruptions from the software while conducting meetings - however I have experienced a few instances where there have been audio connection failure error messages while utilizing the recording function. I only have two issues with the software that I regularly encounter and wish the company would improve upon.
Issue number 1: Invitees are permitted to dial into the meeting, without logging onto the presentation portion of the meeting. While this in itself is not an issue, as a moderator, I am unable to track who has dialed into the call in the Attendees portion of the menu. This requires verbal roll call, and hope that non invited attendees haven't somehow accessed the call for risks of security/privacy.
Issue number 2: Moderators are unable to utilize the conference call only portion of the software unless someone physically enters the web portion of the event and logs into the presentation. It would be easier/more convenient, especially when on the road, if we could utilize the conference call portion on its own, without having to set up the online portion.
Other than those two issues, GoToMeeting is an easy, accessible forum for conducting meetings.
The software itself is fairly intuitive, making the set-up of these meetings and execution fairly straight forward and simple. I find the ability to swap presenter/organizer privileges helpful, and very rarely have I experienced any interruptions from the software while conducting meetings - however I have experienced a few instances where there have been audio connection failure error messages while utilizing the recording function. I only have two issues with the software that I regularly encounter and wish the company would improve upon.
Issue number 1: Invitees are permitted to dial into the meeting, without logging onto the presentation portion of the meeting. While this in itself is not an issue, as a moderator, I am unable to track who has dialed into the call in the Attendees portion of the menu. This requires verbal roll call, and hope that non invited attendees haven't somehow accessed the call for risks of security/privacy.
Issue number 2: Moderators are unable to utilize the conference call only portion of the software unless someone physically enters the web portion of the event and logs into the presentation. It would be easier/more convenient, especially when on the road, if we could utilize the conference call portion on its own, without having to set up the online portion.
Other than those two issues, GoToMeeting is an easy, accessible forum for conducting meetings.
Pros
- GoToMeeting helps conduct meetings for remote participants to join in the presentation from their own office.
- GoToMeeting records presentations visual and audio portions for later reference for those unable to attend.
- GoToMeeting is fairly intuitive, so users/participants who have never accessed the software are typically able to figure out how to access the meeting without any instructions or prep work.
Cons
- GoToMeeting does not identify attendees who only use the dial-in feature - making it difficult for the moderator to capture attendance for those who did not join the web portion of the presentation. Risks security issues.
- Moderators have to log into web portion of GoToMeeting in order to access/set up conference line, making it inconvenient when on the road.
- The audio portion of the presentations has a tendency to disconnect while recording presentations - most times users do not notice and are able to still access the presentation hassle free after the fact via the recording, however, it raises red flags for moderators while recording/facilitating the event.
- Positive impact: higher participation in advisory board meetings - with increased attendance/participation from a very busy audience, this helps us accomplish our goals more so than strictly in-person attendance.
- Positive impact: increased employee efficiency - employees/team members are able to effectively communicate and continue progress on team projects while remote/working from home, instead of having to reschedule due to conflcits.
I used WebEx at my last job. GoToMeeting seems to have a friendlier interface and is easier to log in, record presentations, as well as tracking attendees froma moderator perspective. I like that GoToMeeting will automatically create an Outlook invitation to forward onto attendees, whereas I used to have to manually create an invitation via WebEx - although to be fair, I had used an older version of WebEx some years ago and am not 100% sure of their ease in 2014 models.
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