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How Kollective Solves for Hybrid Work

CMMA Blog

How Kollective Solves for Hybrid Work

In our previous article in this series , you learned about the difficulties of hybrid work as laid out by Microsoft’s study on the effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers. Microsoft’s researchers found that businesses need to adopt flexibility in their operational models and equip themselves with the technology to enable efficient collaboration and communication in hybrid work environments.

In this article, we examine why ECDNs are critical for enabling the hybrid workplace and explore how Kollective’s ECDN Platform and advanced analytics offer businesses an edge over other ECDN providers.

ECDNs Deliver Reliable Communications to Hybrid Offices

In hybrid work environments, collaboration and communications are more important than ever. Achieving a consistent user experience for high-quality video regardless of where employees access streams is essential to ensuring messaging is received and workflows remain productive. ECDNs address these concerns, delivering flawless communications to remote and in-office employees, facilitating collaboration between teams, and keeping employees engaged.

Without an ECDN, the benefits of communication platforms like Microsoft Teams cannot be fully realized. As more companies adapt to this new model of work, those who do not equip themselves with the proper technology risk falling behind the competition.

Dependable Stream Quality

Over the course of the pandemic, workers have grown accustomed to high-quality video streams that most in-home networks provide. With fewer people in the office, many businesses have reduced their bandwidth needs. As more employees begin returning to the office, corporate networks are primed for failure. Company meetings with large viewership; including All-Hands, trainings, CEO addresses and more, can create strain on networks, resulting in jittery streams, buffering and a failed live event. This often leads to low levels of employee engagement and delays essential messaging, reducing output and creating potential bottlenecks.

Happy Leadership

Businesses dedicate lots of time, money, and manpower investing in high-quality streaming events. As such, CEOs expect them to be executed flawlessly. Live events and one-to-many communications performed without an ECDN have a high-risk of overloading your corporate network. Unsuccessful and failed events will set your business behind, resulting in operational delays and frustrated leadership.

Effects on Business Applications

With companies directing more of their critical applications to the cloud, corporate networks have become a lifeline for most businesses. Simultaneous video requests without an ECDN can rapidly overload a network, causing mission critical applications (e.g., financial systems, sales tracking, project management tools) to fail.

Scaling Live Events

Enterprises with large amounts of bandwidth, but no ECDN still struggle to deliver live events at scale without suffering issues to their network, stream quality or both. We have witnessed that even a low percentage of in-office employees watching simultaneous streams can wreak havoc on networks. ECDNs offset this load, enabling businesses to deliver live events and VODs securely at scale to their global workforce.

How Kollective’s ECDN Solves for Hybrid Work

Kollective is the only ECDN platform to offer a comprehensive delivery solution: Agent-Based Peering, Browser-Based Peering, and EdgeCache. This suite of solutions, the logic that connects them, and the unified analytics they provide, set Kollective apart from other ECDNs. The Kollective Platform provides best-in-class coverage, and when combined they address an array of use cases your business is likely to encounter during day-to-day operations. Let’s explore how the Kollective Platform addresses the essential concerns of hybrid work.

Complete Coverage

Henry Ford famously said, “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, working together is success.” Enabling teams to work together is one of the main goals of Kollective’s ECDN platform. Consistent communications that are free of delays are key to replicating in-office collaboration. This is the primary focus of Kollective’s ECDN: we provide reliable coverage regardless of your network’s complexity. Kollective’s solutions are easy to test and can be implemented in minutes. Kollective is also the only platform on the market to connect peering and caching technology through intelligent logic. This allows our solutions to communicate with each other to determine the most efficient content delivery method each time a request is made.

China and Remote Locations

Any company with regular business ties to China understands the headaches caused by delivering content through the “Great Firewall of China.” Kollective’s new EdgeCache solution helps alleviate this by essentially bypassing the firewall. By placing one of Kollective’s EdgeCache virtual applications inside of your network in China, users no longer have to request content from outside the “Great Firewall of China.” Instead, they can source live video and video on-demand (VOD) directly from the EdgeCache. This reduces the load on your internet gateway and more effectively delivers content to your workforce.

The same is true of remote office locations, like oil rigs or manufacturing plants. Kollective’s EdgeCache keeps your offices connected and informed, regardless of location.

Real-Time Analytics and Business Intelligence

Businesses have had to constantly assess and adapt their hybrid work strategies since the beginning of the pandemic. Kollective’s advanced analytics platforms, Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics , supply the telemetry leadership needs to understand the current state of hybrid work across the enterprise. They also provide the intelligence required to determine the best solutions moving forward. Learn Kollective’s real-time analytics can benefit your hybrid strategy here .

Accelerate Your Hybrid Work Strategy With Kollective

Kollective provides best-in-class support to customers no matter where they are in their video journey.

  • Not ready for an ECDN? Try Kollective Free Analytics to determine whether your communications strategy could benefit from an ECDN.
  • Need help developing a video strategy? Contact our EVS team for a free consultation.
  • Need help getting started? Kollective offers 24/7 global support through our in-region and in-language teams.

The post How Kollective Solves for Hybrid Work appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Performance Monitoring in Real Time

analytics

Performance Monitoring in Real Time

Real-time analytics allow businesses to quickly detect and address issues as they arise. It empowers your IT and network teams with faster decision-making capabilities and affords your business greater operational agility. In this article, we’ll show you how to monitor key performance metrics of your live events in real time using our advanced analytics platforms, Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics .

This is our second article in a series of posts on real-time analytics. If you haven’t read the first article, explore How Real-Time Analytics Benefit Your Communications Strategy here .

Monitor Stream Quality in Real Time

Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics provide several ways to track the stream quality of your event in real time. In the analytics dashboards, stream quality is represented by QoE (Quality of Experience). Start with the “Reach by QoE” tile in the views and experience dashboard. The donut chart displays the percentage of viewers experiencing each level of QoE, from excellent to bad.

Reach by QoE

In the example above, we notice that 1.35% of our audience has experienced bad streaming quality at some point in this event. Rather than waiting for our event to end, we can explore this data while our event is still in progress. Simply click on the section of the Reach by QoE chart you want to examine to bring up detailed statistics broken down by user. Clicking on the “bad” section of the chart reveals new data fields to help you diagnose potential issues (see below).

Reach by QoE analytics

While there are many columns in this report, highlighted are five of the most useful:

  1. Locality – The viewer’s country
  2. External IP – The viewer’s external IP address
  3. Number of Buffering Events – The number of separate buffering instances the viewer experienced
  4. Total Buffering Time – The amount of time spent buffering during playback
  5. Total Playback Time – The amount of playback time without buffering

Reviewing the detailed statistics on “bad” QoE scores reveals a series of users experiencing varying degrees of buffering. Some users are experiencing lengthy buffering delays, while it appears others abandoned the stream early perhaps in response to buffering problems. Looking at the most severe cases, we notice that most of these users are located in Canada and share the same external IP address (note: IP addresses have been obscured for privacy purposes).

In a few quick steps, we’ve determined that employees at a Canadian office are having buffering problems. Armed with this information, we can contact IT at this office to resolve the issue while our event is still running. We can also send the event as video on demand (VOD) to all employees at that location as soon as the event ends to ensure essential messaging isn’t missed.

Identify Buffering by Location in Real Time

The delivery and consumption dashboard in Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics provides another method for monitoring stream quality in real time. In the previous example, you learned how to analyze groups of viewers that experienced the same QoE and identify potential geographic trends. In this example, we’ll start with geography and show how to quickly and easily detect issues.

Before diving into the example, let’s review the delivery and consumption dashboard. The primary areas of concern for this dashboard are the delivery map on the left and the four bar graphs on the right. The map contains a series of circles that represent event viewership for a given location (larger circles equal areas of greater viewership). The bar graphs list the top ten areas of viewership broken down by: external IP, locality, country, and city. Each field on the bar graphs has a corresponding QoE dot that represents the average streaming quality for that location.

Delivery Map Free Analytics for Microsoft Teams

Starting with a high-level overview, we see that all countries listed in the top ten have good QoE scores except China. Notice in the Views by City graph that the Shanghai office is performing poorly. Click on the Shanghai bar graph to explore this data or zoom into the delivery map to select the Shanghai office, excluding any nearby remote viewers.

Delivery Map City Example - Free Analytics

Since these graphs provide a quick QoE reference for the ten locations with the highest event viewership, it’s often the fastest way to detect buffering and stream quality issues for events in which ten or less offices are participating. However, with events streaming to more than ten locations it’s best to use this dashboard in conjunction with the “Reach by QoE” tile discussed in the first example of this article.

Track Microsoft 365 Video Performance in Real Time

Are you using Microsoft Teams or Stream to deliver live and on-demand video? Gain real-time insights into event performance and employee behaviors with Kollective Free Analytics today.

The post Performance Monitoring in Real Time appeared first on Kollective Technology .

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Microsoft Teams Live Events vs. Teams for Webinar vs. Teams Meetings with Overflow: Which is Best for Internal Comms?

CMMA Blog

Microsoft Teams Live Events vs. Teams for Webinar vs. Teams Meetings with Overflow: Which is Best for Internal Comms?

Today’s solutions for corporate communications are more robust than ever and Microsoft remains a top player by continuously innovating the Microsoft Teams video platform . New product features are amazing but can often confuse the end user. Do you know when to use a Teams Live Event vs. Teams Meeting with Overflow vs. Teams Webinar? The Enterprise Video Strategy (EVS) team at Kollective will help you navigate the best solution for your particular use case.

Microsoft Teams Live Events

Teams Live Events are an extension of Teams meetings that allows users to deliver video and other content to large audiences. It’s Microsoft’s primary one-to-many communication tool and is ideal for events where the host needs complete control of the content being presented – like a CEO Town Hall or All Hands Meeting.

In a Teams Live Event, presenters and producers handle sharing audio, video, or their screen with the audience and only one presenter can be active at a time. The audience can interact with presenters via moderated Q&A sessions or in Yammer. Attendees who are unable to watch the event live can view the recording after in Teams, Stream or Yammer.

Another benefit of Teams Live Events is that they fully integrate with enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) technology. An ECDN enables organizations to scale high-quality live and on-demand video behind the corporate firewall by optimizing bandwidth consumption. This is especially important for enterprises and small and medium businesses (SMB) with offices challenged by network capacity, remote locations and/or bandwidth limitations.

What are the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Teams Live Events?

Pros

  • Host up to 20,000 attendees through December 31, 2021
  • High production value
  • Equal access of features
  • Full ECDN functionality

Cons

  • Limited interactivity
  • Takes some training to understand how to use

When to Use Microsoft Teams Live Events

Teams Live Events remain the gold standard for large-scale, one-to-many communications. Choose to host a Live Event for meetings where audience interactivity is not necessary and executive polish is required.

Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow

While typical Teams meetings allow you to host up to 250 participants, Teams Meetings with Overflow expands that, now enabling up to 10,000 attendees to join your meeting. The first 1,000 users that join get to enjoy the same Teams Meeting experience they know and expect: they can share their own audio and video, view shared content, and interact in chat. Attendees that join after the 1,000-user capacity is met enter in view-only mode with reduced interactive capabilities.

View-only attendees cannot take part in chat or view PowerPoint Live files, or files shared using individual application shares. They are also not included in the event analytics, making it difficult to gain full insight into meeting performance.

The only way to know more about your Overflow attendees and their quality of experience is by deploying an ECDN. When used during a Teams Meeting with Overflow, an ECDN scales content and collects analytics for all view-only users.

What are the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow?

Pros

  • Higher attendance capacity than a standard Teams Meeting
  • Collaborative environment
  • Easiest set up of Teams video solutions

Cons

  • No analytics collected on overflow attendees without Kollective ECDN
  • ECDN only scales Overflow viewers
  • Technical limitations

When to Use Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow

Microsoft Teams Meetings with Overflow should only be used when you require the same level of interactivity as a standard Teams meeting with over 250 users. If your network does not have the capacity to scale live video to 1,000 employees, opt for a Teams Live Event instead.

Microsoft Teams Webinar

Micrsoft recently released its new Webinar tool for Microsoft Teams . Designed to compete with top virtual event platforms, Teams Webinar offers many of the same benefits, including event registration pages, breakout room configurability and a dashboard that displays attendance data relative to registration details.

Teams Webinar does support ECDN functionality, scaling video for viewers behind the corporate firewall. An ECDN also supplies advanced analytics for all attendees, so you know who, what, where and when your Webinar was consumed.

What are the Pros and Cons of Microsoft Teams for Webinars?

Pros

  • Host up to 1,000 attendees
  • Registration page integration
  • Disable/enable cameras and microphones (globally or individually)
  • Configuration of breakout rooms before the meeting
  • Breakout room timers, room retention, and attendee reassignment
  • Dashboard displays registration and attendance data

Cons

  • Focused on external customer engagement, not internal use

When to Use Microsoft Teams for Webinars

Microsoft Teams for Webinars is best for meetings where you want a high-level of interactivity and tracking for up to 1,000 attendees. While Webinars can be used internally, it is especially useful for external communications and marketing activities.

Choose the Right Tool for the Task

To determine which option in the Microsoft Teams ecosystem is right for you, consider the purpose of your event and how you want your attendees to engage. For events where a high-level of interactivity is needed, consider Webinars or Teams Meetings with Overflow. However, for one-to-many communications and large-scale internal broadcasts, Teams Live Events will serve you best.

Learn more about Microsoft Teams video solutions and virtual event best practices from our team of experts. Sign up for a FREE one-hour consultation with Kollective’s Enterprise Video Strategy team. We will review your requirements, help you navigate the platform and help you choose the right Microsoft Teams video solution.

The post Microsoft Teams Live Events vs. Teams for Webinar vs. Teams Meetings with Overflow: Which is Best for Internal Comms? appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

How Comms and IT Can Work Together to Streamline High-Quality Video Distribution

Best Practices

Leading a Communications team at an enterprise organization means you work cross-functionally with multiple departments, including the IT team. Although your goals may be different, when it comes to corporate communications, you share a common objective: Achieving a high-quality meeting experience for all employees on your network and ensuring delivery of a clear and concise message to your organization. In order to meet those goals, Kollective Technology recommends that both teams work together to make a few important decisions when it comes to your tech stack.  

Using the Right Tools 

With so many innovative workplace communication tools to choose from, it can get overwhelming if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. From applications like Microsoft Teams, built for seamless collaboration and communication, to your basic email or instant messaging program, there’s quite a long list to choose from.  

Sometimes these tools can be more of a burden than a benefit, especially if they’re not streamlined. Your team may primarily communicate big updates with your organization via email platform A, but when it’s time for a company-wide all hands meeting, your team prefers to run communications on Platform B because it has a live video function. When you use multiple communication platforms, it’s easy for employees to miss messages and get frustrated. More than half of workers say they feel overwhelmed by having to use multiple communication platforms , which is something that can be easily avoided.  

Selecting a single tool like Microsoft Teams allows for inter-department collaboration. With a single tool, you can deliver your message in a high-quality format and meet the needs of both the Communications and IT teams. After you’ve done your research, get in touch with your organization’s lead network architect and work together to select the video communications tool that meets your organization’s needs.  

Setting Expectations 

Not all departments “speak the same language” but if you want your company-wide communication to be successful, you’re going to have to find a way to effectively work with your friends in IT. One way to do so is by setting expectations up front. 

Examine what kind of user experience (UX) you want for your employees. UX is critical to the success of video communications because it asks things like:  

  1. Was the viewer able to watch event with limited interruptions? 
  2. How was the video and audio quality of the meeting? 
  3. Did the viewer understand the message that was being communicated?  

When both your Communications and IT teams have to report back to executive sponsors on the success of the event, UX is something you’ll need to include. But level setting UX expectations can be tricky, which is why Kollective has a formula that will help cross-functional teams work together to manage executives’ expectations. Kollective takes variables like time zones, survey response rate, job title, family, and attendance history into consideration when calculating expectations.  

It’s important for the Communications and IT teams to collaborate on expectations for live video events, setting clear roles and responsibilities ensures the best live video event experience for your employees. After you’ve set expectations and executed your first event, it’s time to dive into analytics .  

Diving into Analytics 

Analytics are critical to successful enterprise video strategy because they identify both wins and opportunities for improvement. To get the most detailed look into live event performance, you want a tool that gives you real-time analytics. These are the metrics that will provide the greatest insight: 

  • REACH SCORE: Sum of the number of reported users who viewed the content and the number of anonymous viewing sessions. Reach score provides insight into the total number of unique individuals reached by a live event.  
  • AVERAGE VIEW DURATION: The average amount of time a viewer was reported to have watched the event. Average view duration helps gauge company engagement when compared to baseline metrics.  
  • QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE (QOE) SCORE: Time spent displaying video relative to the total time spent both displaying video and buffering. It quantifies the quality of a live event giving insight into buffering and network bottlenecks.  
  • PEERING EFFECIENCY: Normalized percentage of bytes delivered via peering measures how efficiently network-connected devices transmit live video. 
  • BANDWIDTH SAVINGS: Percentage of bytes delivered via peering highlights ECDN effectiveness and network capacity.  
  • GEOGRAPHIC CONSUMPTION: Country-specific video deliveries displayed as a percent of total deliveries for all content on a scale of 0% to 100%. This figure gives global enterprises the opportunity to see how messaging is received globally.  

For your Communications Team, analytics like reach score, geographic consumption and average view duration are most helpful when breaking down what content employees engaged with and how engaged they were based on location. For the IT team, learnings from QOE score, peering efficiency and bandwidth savings will help quantify how well the meeting tech worked and give insight on what improvements need to be made for next time.   

Set Your Enterprise Video Strategy 

Now that you’ve picked a platform, outlined expectations, and know which analytics are important, you’re ready to finetune your enterprise video strategy. Kollective offers organizations with 1,000+ employees a free one-hour virtual workshop with one of our Event Services Consultants. During this session, you’ll learn: 

  • Live event best practices to ensure success 
  • Advice and links to helpful live event resources 
  • And, if you are a Microsoft O365 customer, a copy of the Kollective Live Event Playbook for Microsoft Teams Live Event 

Streamlining your workplace communication tools and working with your IT team is imperative for curbing burnout and running an efficient business. Let Kollective show you how your Communications and IT teams can strategize and work together to deliver successful, high-quality live events today.  

The post How Comms and IT Can Work Together to Streamline High-Quality Video Distribution appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

What is Virtual Event Coaching?

CMMA Blog

With a record number of employees working from home now and for the foreseeable future, virtual events will continue to be the best way to communicate with a distributed workforce. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or brand new to virtual events, a coach can help identify areas of improvement and work with you to achieve your goals. Here’s what to expect in your first virtual event coaching meeting.

Virtual Event Preparation

If you’ve never hosted a virtual event before, preparing for your first can be daunting, but your coach will help make it easier. They’ll work with you to identify and define:

  • Video message strategy
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Production requirements
  • Location, audience and budget
  • Set look and feel
  • Equipment configuration
  • Content readiness testing
  • Network readiness testing
  • Contingency planning

A virtual event coach will also provide a simple-to-follow playbook to ensure the process is repeatable for future events.

Executing Virtual Events

Once you have the basics out of the way, it’s time to test your equipment and get ready to go-live. Your event coach will help with:

  • Setup and testing
  • Video and audio review
  • On-camera coaching
  • Remote technical support

Remember, just like an in-person event, practice is the most critical element of virtual event preparation. Your speakers and event team need to be familiar with your broadcast equipment, platform and have a backup plan for if something goes wrong on the big day.

Post-Event Analytics

The work isn’t over when the camera turns off. In fact, post-event analysis is critical to the ongoing success of your corporate communications strategy. After your virtual event, your coach will help you:

  • Review post-event analytics
  • Analyze process and execution
  • Operationalize
  • Drive greater adoption
  • Increase viewership
  • Review metrics and KPIs

Understanding how your event performed gives insight into how to optimize future events.

Advanced Virtual Event Coaching from Kollective

At Kollective, we offer a number of advanced workshops to help you take your virtual events to the next level.

Corporate Communications Message Strategy

Learn, develop and apply the “Message House” structure to your communications. Construct key performance indicators based on this structure.

Adoption Strategy

Build executive and employee adoption of video into your communication strategy.

Operationalize Live Event Process

Review your live event process and discover your strengths and opportunities. Further define roles and responsibilities to ensure repeatable successful events in the future.

Business Storytelling

Learn business storytelling principles and practice storytelling techniques from well-known experts. Half day workshop includes content development work and presentation techniques.

Learn What “Good” Looks Like

Create a data-driven approach to managing executive expectations and define what “good” looks like for your enterprise video content.

Kollective FREE Virtual Event Coaching Workshop

If you’re new to video, getting started with virtual event coaching is easy – and FREE. Kollective offers enterprise organizations with 500+ employees a free one-hour workshop to learn the basics of virtual events. Our team of Enterprise Video Strategists will provide you the knowledge you need to communicate effectively at scale.

The post What is Virtual Event Coaching? appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

How to Schedule a Microsoft Teams Live Event [Video]

CMMA Blog

Don’t know where to start when it comes to scheduling your first Microsoft Teams Live Event? It’s easier than you think. Kollective Director of Channel Sales Chris Gower shows you how in this quick video.

More Teams Live Events Content

Whether you’re new to Microsoft Teams or simply need a refresher on best practices, we have you covered with tips on everything from planning and presentation to execution and analysis.

[Webinar] Live Events in Microsoft Teams Made Easy : An introduction to Microsoft Teams Live Events for enterprise audiences. Presented by Kollective and Combined Knowledge.

[Blog] How to Plan Your First Live Event in Microsoft Teams : Step-by-step instructions for planning your first Live Event in Teams.

[Blog] Prepare to Succeed: Microsoft Teams Live Event Best Practices : Learn the difference between planning and preparation and how each plays a role in Live Event strategy.

[Webinar] Learn to Present Authentically with Live Video : Tried-and-true tips to become an expert presenter while learning to communicate authentically. Presented by Kollective and Interact Authentically.

[Blog] 6 Metrics You Need to Know to Analyze Live Video Performance : An introduction to the metrics that define Live Video success.

[One Sheet] Quick Guide: Live Event Analytics : The most important Live Event Analytics at your fingertips.

[Webinar] What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events : Deep-dive into Kollective IQ to learn more about what analytics can teach you about Live Events. Presented by Kollective and Microsoft.

[Blog] Maximize Microsoft Teams ROI with Kollective Technology : Learn how Kollective’s Microsoft ECDN can help improve employee engagement and how it relates to revenue generation.

[Press Release] Kollective Technology to Demonstrate Scalability of Microsoft Teams and Stream Live Events at Microsoft Experience and Technology Centers Worldwide : Leveraging the Kollective Demo Portal, Experience Center visitors can not only learn how ECDNs scale live events but also immediately start a free trial, enabling them to evaluate peer-assisted video delivery within their own Microsoft 365 tenant.

Schedule a free microsoft Teams Live events workshop

We’re offering a free one-hour workshop with Kollective’s Enterprise Video Strategy team. Our experts will teach you Microsoft Teams Live Events best practices, provide helpful resources and answer any questions you may have on how to scale Live Video across the enterprise.

The post How to Schedule a Microsoft Teams Live Event [Video] appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here