Forum Discussion
Polycom RealPresence Trio 8800
I'm looking at using the Polycom RealPresence Trio 8800 as a replacement for some of our smaller conference rooms. We are currently using a combined traditional conference phone with a Surface tablet ...
My experience with this Polycom product has been a complete disappointment. It's advertised as being a plug-and-play device. In my experience, it's anything but that. Configuration is a nightmare and tech support doesn't exist. I've reached out to Polycom support four times about this product and all I get back in response is "so sorry you are having problems" and then they email a bunch of support people, none of which ever call me. One sent me the same manual that I can get online. Am I supposed to be writing code in order to make this unit work? If so, that was never mentioned in the plug-and-play promo. I even told Polycom support that I would pay for someone to come onsite and set up this device. I have received no response. I'm serious. Zero. Zip. None at all.
Here's my list of problems:
1. It keep dropping the connection to Microsoft cloud phone system. I have to go into the phone's setup and tell it to reconnect. It doesn't seem to try reconnecting on its own.
2. When displaying a shared computer screen the display will suddenly freeze for 10 to 15 seconds. This happens four of five times in a 20 minute meeting. Completely unacceptable. I finally purchased a HDMI cable that goes directly from the computer to the HDTV because of all the Visual+ issues.
3. Scheduling a Skype meeting is crazy difficult and sometimes Skype cannot "find" our Polycom device. And why share the screen if it's going to freeze on you?
4. We are currently subscribing to five different Microsoft cloud services in an effort to support this product at a cost of $500.00 a year. That wasn't mentioned in Polycom's promos.
I'll try to remain positive so I'll say that when it is working as a conference phone the sound quality is good.
I honestly don't know how Polycom continues to sell this product other than excellent marketing. After a year of no satisfaction, spending hours of my time in research, with no tech support from Polycom, and lots of frustration we are getting rid of it and going with another product.
We had a similar screen freezing issue with our Visual+ which turned out to be a Firewall issue (Sonicwall), a call with support found some ports were being used that were not listed by Polycom/MS, once they were whitelisted for the visual+ all was well.
My trio experience has been a little disappointing as well although some of that can be the way we have our conference rooms setup, they sound great though.
- I'm curious which ports were not listed as well.
Richard, did you find any media ports outside of the ranges outlined in this article?
http://blog.schertz.name/2017/11/media-port-range-behavior-on-polycom-devices/
I've had good success with the Trio without Visual+. I don't believe Visual+ is a device that's certified by Microsoft for use with SfB.
https://partnersolutions.skypeforbusiness.com/solutionscatalog/metting-peripherals
We have had good luck with both the Trio 8800 and 8500 in a SfB 365 environment. Trio's are associated with the room calendar so when you book a meeting in a conf room the Trio is part of the SfB meeting by default. Simple. One touch join on the Polycom when the user wants to start the meeting.
Updates to SfB and the Trio now have the screen sharing using VBSS instead of RDP and the performance and reliability is very good.
Drew
