While the emphasis from Crestron earlier in 2020 was very much on stepping up to support working from home and wherever users found themselves in lockdown, as the world prepares for the ‘new normality’ their focus has shifted. Remote working has suited some better than others, and with many knowledge workers around the world keen to get back to the office, safe ways of doing this are urgently needed.
Back to the office in safety
I spoke with Director of Sales, Andrew Gross, to understand how Crestron is tackling the challenges of making shared offices and meeting spaces safe again.
“It has to start before you enter the room itself, with visual indicators in the hallway — so I can easily see without touching anything which rooms are available, by a green indicator or a red indicator. Once I approach a green room, I'm presented with a scheduling panel, which will tell me exactly what's going on in that space.”
Gross explains that users can interact with that scheduling panel without touching it, via their mobile phones through Outlook. From there, they can easily schedule a meeting directly for that room. And then, within seconds, it shows that the room has turned red and the user can walk in and take their meeting without anybody interrupting them.
Once inside, as the room detects presence via ceiling-mounted motion detectors, the low touch /no touch orientation continues, with full meeting room control enabled via the users personal devices — which the experts do tell us are covered in germs, but only our own!
“Instead of me going to the device in the room and having to press to start my meeting, I can just plug in my laptop, and I can use that as my meeting controller. And beyond just allowing it to join say a Teams meeting, now I can join any meeting”
Users have the ability to join Zoom meetings, Google meetings, WebEx, and more. When they connect to one of the X series devices from the Crestron Flex line, the family of products allow bring-your-own-device (BYOD) capabilities — so that now the camera, speakers, and mics in the room are being leveraged for the meeting, not the basic ones on a laptop.
Organizations can be rest assured that Crestron’s Room Scheduling panels deliver a cost-effective alternative to consumer tablet devices and employ enterprise-grade networking with robust security features.
Other products under the Crestron portfolio that enable collaboration and productivity in a safe and effective manner include AirMedia wireless presentation system, which allows users to share their content directly from a personal device without the need to touch a screen and Crestron XiO Cloud, an IoT based software for safe remote assistance and management of Crestron and third party technology. Coupled with a camera with built-in people counting technology, such as the Huddly IQ™ camera, which is part of the Crestron Flex UC system, XiO Cloud can be set to automatically send an alert when the meeting room occupancy exceeds the set limit.
