How to make the most out of your OneConsultation Pilot

This guide is based on successful approaches to customer pilots that we’ve seen so far.

Define your Pilot services

The ideal use cases or services within your organisation to pilot OneConsultation with are those that have existing, defined workflows that OneConsultation can easily be built into. For example, a mental health service that already sends their patient appointments via email would be an ideal use case.

Encourage your O365 users to test OneConsultation

Encouraging your O365 users to test out both the admin and public portals will ensure they are familiar with the end to end process before they begin to use the technology with real service users. Modality can offer a short training call on OneConsultation for your O365 users, which can be recorded for future use.

Find some public user volunteers

Try to find a range of public user volunteers who are familiar with video calling, as well as those who may have rarely or never used video calling technology. This will give you a broad range of feedback during your pilot.

Assess your network connectivity

OneConsultation enables both patients and clinicians to join the video consultation anywhere. This flexibility brings challenges in terms of ensuring sufficient network connectivity. Modality recommend assessments your internal network ahead of a pilot of OneConsultation. Whilst great strides have been made to optimise the performance of video conferencing, it will still be an additional load on your network which may affect the call quality in certain areas.

Send some pre-consultation guidance

It’s a good idea to send out some guidance to both your O365 users and your public service users on how to have a good quality video consultation. Feel free to use the information below in any comms that you use internally/externally.

Top tips for video consultations – O365 users

• If you are a Microsoft Teams users, before you use OneConsultation for the first time, please make a test video call to testcall@onecvideo.net. We also recommend setting your default SIP application to Microsoft Teams.
• Before you use OneConsultation, perform a test consultation with a colleague, with one person using their O365 credentials and one person using a personal device, acting as a public user. This allows O365 users to experience the online consultation process before a live appointment.
• If you are a Microsoft Teams user, you can blur your background, which can reduce distractions on the call
• Your location: As you may be having confidential discussions, try to make sure that you are in a secure and private location to take part in your virtual consultation.
• Lighting and environment: Try to make sure that you are in a quiet, well-lit location (ideally not directly in front of a window).
• Internet connectivity: Without a good internet connection, you may experience a poor quality virtual consultation, where your audio and/or video freezes or drops.
  • A wired ethernet connection to the internet is recommended wherever possible.
  • Where wired connection is unavailable, try to ensure that you are on a good wifi connection.
  • If you are using your home wifi, make sure that nobody else in the house is streaming games or TV, as this will impact your experience.
  • If you find you are having a poor quality call on your home wifi connection, try moving closer to the router, as this may improve the call.
  • If wifi is not available, a minimum of 4G is required. In some areas, a 4G connection may provide a better experience than public wifi.
  • The same advice above on internet connectivity can be given to public users.
• VPN: If you are working from home and you usually use VPN, we recommend turning this off for using OneConsultation. VPNs can cause poor quality calls because the video traffic has further to travel.
• Your equipment: If your device doesn’t have a camera or microphone built-in, make sure you’ve followed the manufacturer’s guidelines for setting up any microphones or webcams to use with your device.
• Your device and browser: You can check out a list of supported devices and browsers on the OneConsultation technical documentation site here: https://docs.oneconsultation.net/browsers.html - please note that Internet Explorer is not supported, and Apple users should ensure they are using Safari.

Top tips for video consultations – Public users

• Your location: As you may be having confidential discussions, try to make sure that you are in a secure and private location to take part in your virtual consultation.
• Lighting and environment: Try to make sure that you are in a quiet, well-lit location (ideally not directly in front of a window).
• Internet connectivity: Without a good internet connection, you may experience a poor quality virtual consultation, where your audio and/or video freezes or drops.
  • A wired ethernet connection to the internet is recommended wherever possible.
  • Where wired connection is unavailable, try to ensure that you are on a good wifi connection.
  • If you are using your home wifi, make sure that nobody else in the house is streaming games or TV, as this will impact your experience.
  • If you find you are having a poor quality call on your home wifi connection, try moving closer to the router, as this may improve the call.
  • If wifi is not available, a minimum of 4G is required. In some areas, a 4G connection may provide a better experience than public wifi.
  • The same advice above on internet connectivity can be given to public users.
• Your equipment: If your device doesn’t have a camera or microphone built-in, make sure you’ve followed the manufacturer’s guidelines for setting up any microphones or webcams to use with your device.
• Your device and browser: You can check out a list of supported devices and browsers on the OneConsultation technical documentation site here: https://docs.oneconsultation.net/browsers.html - please note that Internet Explorer is not supported, and Apple users should ensure they are using Safari.

Skype for Business / Microsoft Teams technology

To ensure O365 users have the best experience using the OneConsultation service, ensure that they are comfortable using the video calling functionality in Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams.

Ensure O365 users are using a Microsoft approved audio device when using Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams for their calls.

Ensure O365 users have an up to date Skype for Business or Microsoft Teams client version.

Gather feedback

To help you gather feedback during your pilot, we can apply any web-based survey to the post-consultation screen. This means that as soon as a public service user disconnects from a OneConsultation call, they’ll be automatically routed to your web-based survey straight away. This immediate follow-up can help to gather feedback while the experience is still fresh.

Issues? Let us know

We’re really keen for your pilot of OneConsultation to go smoothly, so please do contact us if you have any issues with the service.