Solving problems during online communications

So if you are setting up communication with a video meeting, for example, you need to make sure that everything is working correctly. Now, if there are problems, there are a few things you can do to try and rectify those problems, depending on what it is. Now, we are talking generally now about the Zoom meeting or a meeting like that, but these will go for anything if you are having trouble sending or receive emails, or access to the internet or even the computer turning on. So the first thing we are going to look at is the power side, so if you are looking at any problems with the computer, first off, look to see, is the power on? Is it lit up? Now, if the computer is all lit up and the light of the screen, then at least you know the power's all okay. Now if you do have other monitors connected up, is the power connected to those. If you are having trouble seeing people in this meeting on a second monitor, then you are going to make sure that that monitor is turned on and also got the power connected to it.

Other things you need to check are your internet speed. Now, if you put in Google or any search engines, what's my internet speed? Just as a search term, there are lots of programs that will come up and they will be able to tell you what your internet speed is. You just hit the button to test it, it takes a few seconds to run through and it will give you what your test speed is, your upload and your download speed. So it's important then to check that against what you should be expecting, so if you look at whatever your provider is promising you, you should find that's pretty much the same. Now, if there is a problem with the internet speed, then it may be something you need to talk to your internet service provider, so that's the first check. Now, when you are doing video conferencing, if there is a poor connection, often in the meeting, a message will pop up on the screen and it will say poor internet connection.

It's not to say that people cannot see and hear you, but it's just indicating that there could be a problem. Now, if it is an internet speed issue and there's nothing you can really do about it, then it may be just by turning your video off means that it can speed up and just have enough speed to still do audio. So just bear that in mind. If people are having trouble seeing you or you are freezing up, then that's something that you might want to look at. Now, small freezes or small sound issues do happen with any video type meeting, if the connection is not 100% perfect. But just have a look at the speed, because that could be a major issue. If you are hard-wired in rather than on WiFi, then it may be that the cables come loose or there's a connection problem, so always check the cables as they go into your computer and also check all the cables going into your router. If you are on a mobile device, make sure you are not on aeroplane mode or you have not got any of the settings turned off, particularly if you are not on WiFi, you are relying on 4 or 5G, make sure the settings on your phone are there so that you have got a good internet connection.

Other things can have a problem, the main thing when you are dealing with video-type meetings is someone cannot hear you, and nine times out of 10, it's because you are on mute. So if you have a look down onto your settings, whichever provider you are using, with Zoom it's on the bottom left-hand side of the screen, others have it in slightly different places, but you will see the red line through, and it will tell you if you are on mute, so the first thing you need to do if someone cannot hear you, is check whether you are on mute. If they cannot see you, check that your camera's not frozen or turned off. If they have just got an image of you there, it might mean that the camera's turned off, so again, just go down and check the settings to make sure that's turned on.

Now, if you are using secondary cameras, so maybe rather than use the camera that is built into your computer, you are using a second one, it may be that you have the wrong one selected. So it may be you need to just change the settings so down by the camera icon, you can just click an icon and it will change it from the computer camera to an external one.

The same might appear if you are dealing with a second sound, maybe a different sound system built into your computer, again, you might well, need to change the settings of where that actually goes to. Generally, otherwise, if you are working through a problem, is think about what the problem is, and usually with computer faults, especially on Zoom meetings and things, it's just quite a straightforward fix, but sometimes people do get very panicky and not deal with the problem, they miss the simplest of things, so just stop and think about what the problem is, try and backtrack where it is, did it work before? Have you done everything correctly? And then hopefully, you will be able to get the thing up and running very, very quickly.