Highfive

Highfive is a highly intuitive video conferencing software. You can join an existing meeting in seconds, with or without a Highfive account, via a simple link. This is especially useful when scheduling meetings with clients outside of our company.

I specifically enjoy the Google calendar integration - you can link up Highfive with your Google email account, and when you open the Desktop app, any meetings scheduled in your Google calendar that were scheduled with a Highfive room will appear in a bottom bar. Just click the meeting in the bottom bar and you're in.

I also appreciate the "Show Everyone" feature - the ability to see everyone in a meeting, regardless of meeting size.

About once every few days, joining a Highfive work meeting fails on me, and sets my internet connection offline altogether. I have to restart my internet modem, and then I'm able to join once the connection is remade. I'm still unsure if this is due to my internet or Highfive, but I don't seem to ever have issues joining meetings using other video conferencing softwares, so something tells me it's a Highfive issue.

It hosts the recording in their cloud, so it doesn't take up your space, and it holds it for 1 year.
Has most features that you need for a typical video conferencing software for business use.

- It doesn't do well when 100 people join.

- When I invite people outside the company to join, they struggle to figure out how to connect if they aren't used to videoconferencing systems - instructions are lacking, it's frustrating.

- The room system always displays the view super zoomed-out, and makes it look like we're a lot further than we are. So the other participants can feel a lot more disconnected and not be able to read the mood. Particularly with interviews, it's a major drawback, cause it makes it harder to build rapport.

- When using it with the hardware to display your presentation on the highfive screen, when in the same room with the participants, it could be made easier to setup correctly (e.g. you need to mute one microphone, but leave the other one on, etc). There always are problems.

- When presenting something to the room via the Highfive-station, it updates the screen much more slowly than a connection via a cable. Frustrating.