Do more than cope with the future: collaborate, with GoToMeeting

Since the enforced lockdown that most people have had to experience over the last few months, working remotely for most has become a daily reality. Whether or not this mode of business becomes the day-to-day pattern in the future or not remains debatable. The shape of the so-called “new normal” has yet to emerge.

But what many people have found is that their remote working tools have fallen short of providing the type of experience that has enhanced their day-to-day routines. In many cases, the available software and hardware systems have been, at best, “OK,” or “just good enough.” But going forward, companies with an eye to the future are considering the next logical step and thinking about using the new generation of remote working platforms, regardless of what proportion of their business activities will happen in cyberspace.

A stand out among the choices has to be the GoTo suite of products. The GoTo Collaboration Cloud – featuring solitions for online meetings, voice, rooms, webinars and training – brings the fastest, easiest and most innovative UCC products together under one roof. So whatever lies around the corner for your company, the GoTo suite has the power to make your workforce more productive, despite conditions that might be very different from the way they were at the beginning of 2020.

The GoTo Suite from LogMeIn has proved its worth in the last few months; its daily use by millions of end-users every day is testament to its power and versatility. In most cases, it’s only now that we can begin to look up and “peer over the parapet” and see how we might like to shape our future working lives. But one product within the portfolio, GoToMeeting, stands out from the rest.

Meeting to conference to collaborate

The fact that online meetings are organized and held virtually gives organizations significant possibilities to extend the “traditional” meeting’s features. With GoToMeeting, every word can be recorded (no limits on the length of recordings), and participants can download automatic speech-to-text transcriptions for easy minute-taking or even pulling out key quotes.

Plus, presentations’ slides will be merged into a single PDF, so there’s no manual requesting and waiting for .pptx files to be sent around the group. Instead, that’s all handled by the meeting application’s software. In a similar vein, collaborations happen smoothly in real-time, with screen sharing and people being able to draw onto slides or shared screens. There’s text chat, too, across the whole “room” or just between individuals.

The small savings become big paybacks

People in your organization already share calendars, so it makes sense that the meeting platform extends this capability from the get-go. GoToMeeting integrates with your calendar apps, with plug-ins to access schedules right from Outlook 365 or Google Calendar. Plus, every subscriber gets a personalized meeting room, where the URL never changes. The “when can we meet?” question-and-answer round-robin is bypassed, and “meet in my room” now means there’s no need to head for the corridor!

There are mobile apps too for GoToMeeting, with distraction-free display of the proceedings, which is perfect for commuters on the go, with a seamless transition to their desktop application once they come to rest. Meetings can be organized and started from the mobile app, so users don’t even need to access their desktops to begin work, and colleagues can even ask Siri to start or join a meeting for them.

Extensible equals sensible

Every organization’s unique characteristics and working methods can be mirrored in the GoTo suite by means of a modular and extensible range of features that can be chosen from. For instance, the CallMe addition to the GoToMeeting platform allows participants to be called by the app, and they can join just by a screen tap or mouse click. That makes the spinning up of a quick, collaborative session a simple matter, with call recipients not needing to hunt around for links, and having to paste long, complex URLs into a browser or app.

The GoToRoom hardware and software bundle is designed for the existing office or workspace, and lets businesses quickly turn any physical conference room into an extension of a virtual space. People can gather physically and participate with remote colleagues, as if everyone were sharing a single room, albeit one that can hold 250 people or more with no seating issues!

GoToMeeting is currently available as a free 14-day trial, so as your organization begins to transition to what may or may not be “the new normal,” getting people and ideas together in any mix of the real and virtual worlds is simple, and without any need to hand over a single dollar to test the waters.

To learn more about how your organization can work better, together, get in touch with the GoTo team to talk through your many options. There’s a platform waiting for you and your colleagues today.