Polycom Troubleshooting

Owned by Josh Walawender
Last updated: Jun 10, 2020
3 min read

For polycom troubles (regardless of whether this is a polycom call or a polycom connection to a Zoom meeting).

General Polycom Trouble

  1. Have the station with the problem disconnect from the call, then call in again.

  2. Have the station with the problem disconnect from the call, reboot their polycom, then call in again.

  3. For polycom calls, connection order sometimes matters. This is a known problem with the USRA polycom calls (from the pre-Zoom era). In that case, hang up all calls, then call to the trouble site, then have the other sites connect either by calling them or having them call us.

Call Asks for a Passcode

If you've tried to call in to a Zoom meeting from a Polycom and the system is asking for a passcode, it needs the meeting ID number (which are the 10 digit numbers listed on our Zoom info page). If calling from a polycom, you can bypass this by entering the meeting ID with the Zoom IP address (again, see the Zoom info page for details).

One or More Sites Show a Blue Screen

If one or more Zoom clients shows a blue screen rather than video (the client will typically still have audio connection), the problem may be related to the video codec in use. Supposedly if the blue screen station is using old hardware then when they call a meeting already in progress, the clients in that meeting will have already negotiated a video codec for the meeting. If that is incompatible with the newly joining station, it will show a blue screen. This may be fixed by disconnecting all sites and having the blue screen site call in first, then have others call in.

We have not experienced this directly, but have heard it reported by others, so we will update this entry if it is seen during a Keck session.

Note that we have seen stations show a blue screen for (presumably) other reasons. In those cases, it was solved by rebooting the offending polycom without doing anything to the other sites, so was not the exact problem described above.

Mixed Polycom and Zoom Calls

If you see general oddities from a Zoom meeting, make sure all participants in the call have called to Zoom, rather than using a polycom to polycom call (the old way of connecting). A mixed set of calls sometimes works, but usually ends up being odd in some way. If needed, hang up the offending site and have them call back to the Zoom meeting. If the polycom call is connected to your station, you can see it in the call list if you press the hang up button on your local polycom, then you can choose the non-Zoom call in the list to hang up on. If you only see Zoom in the polycom call list, then this is not the issue.

In one case, this showed up as one of the sessions being connected via audio, but showing a black screen (no video from that site). The black screen was a proper Zoom call, not the offending polycom call, so which call has apparent problems may not tell you which is the actual offender.

This is also something you can usually tell from the screen layout. The way Zoom shows multiple screen is a bit different than polycom (for example, Zoom calls have a blue background around the individual call windows, while polycom has a black background), so it should be easy to recognize once you are used to looking at Zoom calls.

Too Many Polycoms

Keck has purchased a total of 8 Zoom polycom "connectors" which means a total of 8 polycoms can be connected to our meetings at any time (total across both K1 and K2). This limitation does not appear to be strictly enforced however as we have exceeded it in the past (we used to only have 4 connectors). If you run in to trouble which you suspect is due to running in to this limit, try disconnecting non-critical polycom calls (i.e. Remote Ops if no one is there) using the instructions above.