IT Setting

Has this ever happened to you? You work at a multi-national company, and it is time to have one of those monthly teleconferences with staff from, let’s say, Ireland, China, and the US. It’s your turn to set up the meeting. Oh great. You are dreading this because setting up these meetings has NEVER been uneventful - regardless of which fancy new teleconference system you’re using.

You begin by dutifully sending out meeting announcements and multiple reminders. You are in the US and, considering all time zones, you’ve agreed to kick off at 6:00 AM.

Come meeting day you arrive at 5:00 AM, a full hour beforehand to ensure setup goes right this time around. (At least the commute was better this time of the morning.) You walk in to the conference room and hit the lights. The video monitors are in different locations than usual - one of them looks like a different model than before. There are cables strewn around the room, half of them are disconnected. Where are the microphones? There seems to be a missing power strip or two. Looks like a worse-case scenario, again.

No need to panic just yet: you scour the room for the user manuals on the monitors, camera, microphones, and other setup documentation that is usually scattered around. You find one manual for the camera but it seems to describe a completely different model. All other documentation has walked off somehow, again. Where is documentation when you need it?

OK no documentation and you start fumbling around on your own. You last did this about a year ago so you have a vague recollection about how things are supposed to go together. As meeting time approaches people start trickling in, and one-by-one they join the setup effort. There is a lot of head-scratching and a lot of hmm’s. Try this, try that. Stress levels are rising. Eventually folks from Ireland and China call your cell, wondering if the meeting is still on. Yes, the meeting is still on, we have some technical problems.

Twenty minutes after the scheduled start time the meeting is finally ready to kick off - unfortunately without video this time, but there is audio. Some teleconference. This kind of thing happens a lot in business and it results in costly losses in productivity.

The PXT Portal could have eliminated these problems. Corporate IT easily could have programmed a transponder to provide detailed information on setup and operation.

The PXT Portal could be locked in a cabinet within the conference room, or placed above the ceiling tiles or some other secure, out of the way place. It becomes part of the room. It’s always on, always available, always right where you need it.

Employees with PXT Probe software on their smartphones can quickly access all the latest information.

If and when the teleconference components change or there are changes to usage policies and procedures, IT can simply update the content accordingly.

This is just one example where corporate IT departments can use PXT to improve productivity. There are all kinds of other complicated office machines, production and lab equipment, and workspaces that could benefit from this technology.