Daily Conference Room AV Checks

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greenstarthree@reddit

This week:

“Can you come to the meeting room urgently, the conference screen isn’t working!”

“Ok, just checking, have you plugged your laptop into the docking station?”

“What?”

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We are at a weird stage of growth, decent size, multiple locations, but our jr techs are spread out at other sites. The spot I'm at happens to be where a lot of the executives are, so I find myself doing a fair bit of more menial tasks like this.

I think there is a balance. One of the things I always try and teach my techs is to take ownership of the office, if there is something that needs to be done even if it isn't directly your job, look for ways to take care of it. However, going too far is just a waste of time. I tend to make a pass to get all the screens on and signed into their teams rooms in the morning, but as far as checking all the devices that is just a huge time suck. We've got batteries easily accessible in each of the conf rooms, if a device dies they can swap it without losing function.

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Darkace911@reddit

Hire a dedicated Exec Tech and a dedicated conference room for them that only "Certain" Managers can use that is badge locked to enter and you have to be on the "List". It works great.

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I_T_Gamer@reddit

Right!? What happens if the batteries die mid meeting? "Did anyone call I_T_Gamer? Our batteries are dead..."

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Darkace911@reddit

Sound like they need to hire an AV Tech if the conference is so important. It's year 5 post COVID, you should be able to run a teams meeting at this point by yourself or we can find someone who just got let go from a Senior Management Position at Amazon to do it.

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smart_ca@reddit

Check Conferfly!

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secret_configuration@reddit

We use Logitech Rally systems for our conference rooms and they are very reliable. I generally do a walkthrough about once a month.

Rooms are also enrolled into Logitech Sync.

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ImmersedN3D@reddit

I end up getting invited to some of the larger meetings....just so I can make sure all the tech works! Daily checks don't prevent user errors. Users will still mess it up.

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ConspiracyHypothesis@reddit

If they want to pay you $70 an hour to do that instead of the $30 they pay the office manager... great. Sounds like a good chance to get in a cup of coffee and maybe schmooze with the other employees a bit too.

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llDemonll@reddit

Cute that you think people being asked to do this are making $70 an hour and not closer to $30. Business that have poor management and don’t have the capitol are the companies that do this, not companies who pay proper salaries.

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ConspiracyHypothesis@reddit

Any sysadmin making 30 an hour should find a new job. I pay my level 1 helpdesk techs more than that.

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llDemonll@reddit

I’m not saying I disagree with you on pay, but I think you’re off target on what a lot of this sub makes. But also remember a lot of this sub are working toward sysadmin and the salary is going to reflect that.

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ConspiracyHypothesis@reddit

My comment was about letting the company pay op to do it if that's what they want- its a waste, but its the company's money. The figures were just there as an example/hyperbole/whatever. The actual numbers don't matter except that one is higher than the other.

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I_T_Gamer@reddit

Not to mention all the anecdotal responses. So many variables to condider when talking salary. For example, in my area, I'm betting about 10% of local Sysadmins are pulling $70 an hour. These are the rockstars at the larger Fortune 500 orgs, running large instances of Azure, or AWS. Those of us in the trenches, ya $70 ain't happening.

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fucking_Windows98@reddit (OP)

They are actually that far off from my salary. But I'm not that one that would necessarily be my responsibility. Probably only on occasion. We are a non profit though so that all plays into it. The help desk people would probably be the ones doing this more than myself. My manager is also newer and came from a GIANT public entity so some of their ideas do not always align to our size and ability. We're more around 600 end users.

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Megafiend@reddit

We had to do this for similar reasons.
If you have a juniour or apprentice, that's great, A first line service desk agent, or very helpful reception, even a PA could perform this role.

Morning checks are pointless busy work, when you have systems and alerts setup but it does keep managers who dont understand the role happy.

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kennedye2112@reddit

I was a Sunday - Thursday help desker for a while so one of my Sunday afternoon tasks was to wander the building checking the conference rooms for dying projector bulbs or dead PCs (this was at the height of the Bad Caps era so we had a lot of orange-power-light OptiPlex 270s), but that was considered a helpdesk-level task rather than a sysadmin task.

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TheDawiWhisperer@reddit

Yeah we have this at our place. It's shit but it vastly reduces the number of tickets we get about the AV stuff because of stupid shit like someone taking the hdmi cable with them

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thernlund@reddit

I delegated this stuff to the receptionist. They were happy to be doing something besides answering phones and greeting people.

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dirtyredog@reddit

I'm a one man show without a ticketing system...this is how you get a ticketing system and I get a co-worker. Just FYI

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beritknight@reddit

I have two Microsoft Teams Rooms at my location, plus more at other sites I'm not often physically at. Out of long habit, when I get to work I wander into any meeting room that's not in use and make sure the presence sensor picks me up and all the screens fire up correctly. I don't test cameras and mics.

This mostly dates back to when we had cheaper, less reliable systems. These days I find myself mostly doing it for the warm feeling of "that all works, that's nice". :)

The nice thing about proper VC setups is there are no keyboards and mice that can go flat. For your setup I would consider moving to keyboard and mouse sets with built-in rechargeable batteries. That way it can be a Friday COB job to plug them into a charge cable in the corner, so you can be sure they will have the juice to run all week. Or, Logitech have some systems that they claim get 3 years battery on the keyboards and two years on the mouse, from AAs.

https://www.logitech.com/en-au/products/combos/mk650-signature-combo-business.920-011014.html

If you deployed those to each room and every January went around and replaced all the batteries, you should never have a flat mouse again.

Alternately, look at deploying the Logitech or Microsoft or whatever tools to your conferencing PCs, so that battery state is something you can check in a nice little GUI on the PC.

Outside of my location, I make the morning meeting room walk through the responsibility of the office manager. They usually do something like that anyway, tucking in chairs, taking away used water glasses, topping up the jug or water bottle stash in the room, etc. Just ask them to also confirm the screens all come on when they waggle the mouse too, and report to you if they don't.

Beyond that, monitoring is nice. Again with Teams Rooms systems we have monitoring and alerting in the Teams admin console, and we have Logitech Sync monitoring the VC hardware in the rooms.

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fucking_Windows98@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the detailed response. It's a semi complicated crestron system. 3 rooms that can be divided into one large room. Lots of moving parts which I think intimidate people even though everything is sensor based and automatic. I think we might be switching av companies sometime in the future so I might take up conversations about what can be done to better monitor things too.

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NoyzMaker@reddit

Sounds like whomever books those rooms should also coordinate with the IT team before the meeting or at the onset.

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NoyzMaker@reddit

That seems untenable. Monitor what you can and have it throw alerts where possible and everything else leave clear signs of how to call or contact support.

Personally I would be more concerned around the why. Are you really having that much failure in the rooms you need to check them daily? Are they even being used daily? Maybe offer an option to have IT meet them at the start of the meeting to make sure everything works.

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Primer50@reddit

This sounds like a cya scenario . Id make a log sheet and leave it in every conference room. I'm guessing there has been issues in the past. Sometimes you have to do the bs work to keep them off your back.

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fucking_Windows98@reddit (OP)

Yep. Nailed it. We had a big refresh a few years ago and there were a ton of issues. The av company got them sorted and even though it's much more reliable there are still some hard feelings here and there. It's been rock solid pretty much for years now but I think most people just get intimidated by the setup even though it's designed to be pretty easy to use.

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Primer50@reddit

I fisher price as much as I can . Color instructions with pictures step 1 turn on projector picture of the remote and arrow to the power button. Laminate it and make a binder.

I would also consider speaking with a manager and secure a backup non i.t. staff to train in case of an emergency. Also they can in turn train anyone willing . You might get out of having to do it all together.

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fucking_Windows98@reddit (OP)

Thanks. We have some really nice guides. So nice that people like to take them home with them. We also did training with our AV company years ago so all the admin people could be "super users". Seems we may have to do that again and possibly set some expectations. I do think it's good cya for us to do some checks but I also think others should bear some responsibility too.

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Primer50@reddit

I'd take those guides and chain them to something like a laptop cable lock.

Yup I would offer some logical examples where i.t. staff can be better utilized . Emergency situations, vacations , sick days etc, but ultimately it sounds like you're their guy,,, best of luck .

At least you don't have to go to your boss's house every Christmas to fix the WiFi on his piano .

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RCTID1975@reddit

If you check those things at 8am, what guarantee is it that it's going to work at 2pm?

How do you know the charge on the batteries? What if Bob pushes the wrong button, and then just leaves without telling anyone?

In order for this to be at all effective, you'd have to do it before every single meeting. Seems like a waste.

Put spare batteries in a drawer, have documentation on how to use the system, and do something worth while.

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fucking_Windows98@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the advice. Already doing a lot of this. Seems people walk off with our setup and troubleshooting guides which is just the most puzzling thing.

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Quigleythegreat@reddit

We check them first thing every week. Ever since we went full Logitech we really haven't had random issues the way we used to. Rarely even have to do anything, just good optics that we looked it over.

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nbkelley@reddit

lol it’s an easy check off the list before the day gets busy

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sneakattaxk@reddit

would really depend on your role at the org....for me it would be when i'm in-between things and looking to get up and go for a bit of a walk, take a poke at some of the conference rooms, poke the printers while i'm at it...usually might get one of those issues where the user has been sitting on something for a while and didn't want to bring it up, but you know since you are there

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Naclox@reddit

I used to be in charge of a university team that did this nightly. Granted we used student employees for it. Just be glad you're not being asked to clean the white boards and make sure the overhead transparency projectors are working like we had to.

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jazzdrums1979@reddit

Unfortunately this falls on IT. No matter what you do, people are going to take shit apart in conference rooms leaving us holding the bag.

Daily checks might prevent some of this from happening. If you can, it might be a discussion with your boss to identifying points of failure and troublesome rooms and replacing or redesigning so that they’re more simple and less difficult to fuck up.

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