Rainbow further improves its video conferencing experience

It goes without saying that last years accelerated enterprise digital transformation deeply changed the way employees work, and sometimes even impacts the vision of their own job: with remote working set in place to enable business continuity, employees are now establishing new habits and expect to pursue their own way of working.

These users are now actively benefiting from digital collaboration tools and thus, their expectations grew from simply enabling business continuity to actively benefiting from and boosting overall company productivity while having their new work requirements met. Not only are these users used to leveraging collaboration tools, but they are now looking to get even more out of it.

That is the reason behind the Rainbow team pushing its limits and deploying even more video conferencing capabilities than before – the grid 49 view, supporting 49 concurrent video streams.

How does the grid 49 improve video conferencing?

The Grid 49, or Mosaïc 49, is a new video conferencing layout available during an active video call on Rainbow, enabling all attendees to display up to 49 concurrent video streams. Not only does it significantly improve the way you experience a video conference in itself, but it also lets you explore new ways of collaboration by integrating this capability with other systems. The grid 49 will be made available in all other Rainbow products as well, the most interesting one maybe being Rainbow Classroom.

How does the Grid 49 video conferencing work?

It’s very simple – the new feature is activated dynamically.

At the moment, Rainbow users are able to choose between 2 options when it comes to video conferencing layouts:

• Grid 12 – with an evolutive layout which will dynamically adapt depending on the number of connected users, from 2 up to 12 visible on the same screen.
• Grid 49 – the brand-new layout that will break the above boundaries, enabling you to display up to 49 video streams simultaneously.

During a conference, users will be able to switch from Grid 12 to Grid 49 at any time, allowing for more comfort during their virtual meetings. To round this off, users will also be able to navigate between different screens in Grid 12 view, thanks to the latest pagination feature. It’s represented by buttons on each side of the screen enabling you to switch from one set of colleagues’ video streams to another when the number of attendees goes beyond 12.

Explaining Grid 12 and Grid 49 in a real-life situation

Use case: 55 people are connected during a monthly team meeting of ABC Company, and 35 of them have their cameras on.

Attendees may choose between the following display options:

• Grid 12: See 12 colleagues on 1 screen at the same time, either with or without their cameras on, and use the navigation buttons on the left and right side of the screen to change which set of colleagues you want to see. Grid 12 showcases all users, regardless of if they have their camera on or off.
• Grid 49: See up to 49 video streams on one screen. In our use case, it means that all the 35 attendees who have switched their cameras on will be visible on one single screen.

Why this video conferencing improvement is so important

To sum it up, this update won’t just deliver quality of life enhancements and provide convenience. It will boost productivity significantly and, what’s even more important, introduce new ways of collaboration on third-party platforms either derived from or integrated with Rainbow. As the only globally competitive vendor with a European headquarters, Rainbow is now providing the same level of features other big names offer, levelling the playing field and ultimately providing the only truly sovereign, enterprise-grade hybrid collaboration platform on the market.