Linked: Remote Access and Video Conferencing
I haven’t seen a lot of what John refers to below, but I can believe it.
“The device has to be able to “see” you and “hear” you. Your office machine can’t do that if you are working from home. That’s why many of us are looking at an empty desk chair or why we can’t hear your speak.”
I have seen too many similar issues in the past to believe that there aren’t people who would do such a thing. The issue really seems to be that everything that happens on a computer screen is basically magic to some people. There’s not a lot of understanding as to how, and where, work is getting done. They’ve been told that they have to connect to their company VPN to get work done, do so, maybe open up a Citrix environment, and then use that to connect to various cloud-based resources that they could access without the VPN/Remote connection, and then wonder why something like printing a document takes so long, or why they can’t just print it to the printer in their home without any other setup. They simply don’t understand how they are connected and where the work is really being done.
If I could take this time to sit down and teach users anything during this time of them all working at home, this might be one of the most valuable, if not the most basic, things that they are missing. There’s a lot of wasted time sending information, and in this case video, from hop to hop to hop, that could have been accessed directly if the user had understood how they’re connected.
John’s example is spot on. A user is so used to connecting to their office network through a remote desktop that they don’t realize that they should just connect directly on their local computer to a Zoom meeting. In my world it’s the user accessing a cloud-based review platform through a similar connection and finding it a bit slow, or impossible to print from, or downloading a document to that remote machine and not being able to find it on their local machine after disconnecting from work.
These are all results of a basic misunderstanding of how the connection works. Understanding that would help remote workers make better choices.
I guess we can take comfort in assuming that everyone at least gets that they have to connect to the internet before the VPN now, right? That’s something.
https://youritconsultant.senseient.com/2020/04/remote-access-and-video-conferencing.html
