At Lifesize, we have long understood that IT administrators are the stewards of not only the ideal meeting experience, but the success or failure of most technologies in the enterprise. They are often our greatest champions and are unceasingly one of our most important customer focal points.

Today, we introduced significant enhancements to our Lifesize Admin Console — mission control for those customers’ video conferencing data and insights — to better serve admins with real-time reporting and live meeting statistics.

Three screens of the Lifesize Admin Console with live meeting stats.

Admins can take immediate action and make an immediate impact through these improvements in analytics and reporting, but the more integral bottom line is that they empower admins to better understand, manage and justify their video collaboration investment.

Understand Video Usage Across the Organization

When promoting adoption of a new — or even established — technology across the business, the toughest part can often be stepping back to understand exactly how stakeholders are using the product or solution, and what that means for technical requirements. Extracting those insights helps determine what types of devices need to be supported by IT, how networks should be set up, how much bandwidth is required and more.

For example, from the new Lifesize Admin Console live meeting statistics, an admin can deduce whether a meeting participant called from the Lifesize mobile app, desktop app, web app or a meeting room system as well as whether the device is running iOS, Android, Mac or Windows. That, in turn, gives admins an indication of what devices they will need to support across their entire video conferencing deployment. Or, if admins leverage the new real-time interactive reporting graphs to monitor video and audio bitrate, packet loss, video and presentation content resolution along with any interruptions, they can draw defensible conclusions and make decisions to adjust network configuration accordingly.

Ensure Collaboration Without Complications

Perhaps an IT admin’s top day-to-day responsibility is to make sure technology works seamlessly, and when there are issues, to fix them rapidly. That’s easier said than done if a video conferencing deployment can’t be centrally managed. The Lifesize Admin Console’s superior live meeting statistics and real-time reporting make managing an entire (potentially global or distributed) multi-site video implementation possible for even the most resource-constrained IT team. Take it from Mike Hellings, multimedia manager at Kansas City University, who participated in our customer test group for these new features:

“We use live meeting dashboard views almost daily to monitor video streams, meeting rooms and classes we actively have on Lifesize across our campuses and beyond, including where and what devices students call in from. The Lifesize Admin Console already allows us to remotely manage all our meetings and Icon room systems from a lone IT office, and we look forward to using even more advanced capabilities in the future.”

These analytics and reports also allow admins to identify potential issues in real time, troubleshoot proactively and avoid technical disruptions, guaranteeing that cloud video communication experiences run smoothly across the organization — every meeting, every time. If the technologies underpinning meetings aren’t performing at their peak, admins can take swift action, often avoiding further complications.

Preserve the Value of Video Conferencing

Nothing brings a technology investment under scrutiny faster than when it becomes a hindrance to communication, productivity and time management, rather than an enabler. It’s imperative that admins be able to consistently and objectively justify the company’s investment in video conferencing services and meeting room systems through a data-driven story about meeting quality. Soon, we will add automated call quality ratings for participants in both live and past meetings, informing admins about a meeting’s overall technical health. With just a quick glance, admins can feel confident that video collaboration is doing what they bought it to do: make meetings more efficient and enjoyable, improve face-to-face communication with team members, customers and partners, and increase productivity.

Comprehensively understanding, managing and justifying a video conferencing deployment leads to protecting that investment while serving up the best possible meeting experience to all users, something we strive to help IT admins with every day they’re on the job. To learn more about the Lifesize Admin Console, real-time reporting, live meeting statistics and how they can make admins more empowered, effective and efficient, here’s today’s press release: Lifesize Debuts Real-time Reporting and Live Meeting Statistics to Empower IT in Supporting Video Conferencing at Scale.