Intel Unite makes meeting rooms easy!
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We needed a simple solution for turning our meeting rooms into easily utilized spaces for vendors as we were doing a major systems implementation that affected the entire hospital and had tons of groups coming and going. HDMI cables were getting lost/broken, people didn't travel with the appropriate dongles for their equipment and would end up stealing ours afterwards, and it was becoming a problem getting them set up to use the space. Unite allowed us to let them wirelessly connect to the display screens as well as share multiple screens from other users at the same time, which helped with training. No more dongles, just electricity needed to keep the laptops going and once they were done, we didn't have to worry about the state of the equipment afterwards.
Pros
- No dongles needed any longer for connections, it's all through a local wifi (or the corporate one depending on how you set it up). You can stream from mobile devices too.
- Simple set-up - laptops connect very easily, mobiles connect quickly with an app.
Cons
- The initial setup was a bit of a pain - when we started they required specific hardware to make it work (Intel vPro), which wasn't on the PC used for presentations at the time and we had to change hardware out.
- Software versions are difficult to find on the Intel website - it's a bit of a jumble and not clear as to what needs to be installed and where.
Return on Investment
- For us, this has been a creature comfort primarily as it has allowed us to simplify connections in meeting rooms for infrequent staff.
- We had a lot of theft of dongles from meeting rooms due to presenters snatching them when they packed up for the day. [Intel] Unite let us allow presenters to connect wirelessly to the display screens, and no more dongles to hand out in the first place!
Alternatives Considered
GoToMeeting and Webex Meetings
Other Software Used
Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365)