Video Meeting Troubleshooting

There are three main errors which may occur:

“Cannot access your device due to a hardware error”

This means the webcam/mic are not ‘available’ for your internet browser to use.

Potential solutions:

If you did not ‘allow’ permission for your webcam or microphone to be used when prompted, you can use the blue ‘Video Settings’ button on this page to reset your preferences and allow you to approve these.
If you’ve recently had a Teams/Zoom meeting, make sure these are closed (even try a CTRL+AT+Delete to close them, or a computer restart). You may need to try a different computer/smartphone/tablet if you can’t find the cause to this error.
Lastly, make sure that the internet browser your are using does not have a webcam or mic icon in its website address bar which needs clicked on to ‘allow’ the browser to use your webcam/microphone.

If you do not have a webcam or microphone ‘installed’ on your computer, please use a different ‘device’ (computer, smartphone or tablet). Video meetings cannot take place without a webcam, or where you do not allow Parents Booking to use your webcam.

“The user did not give permission to access your media”

This often means the internet browser is blocking access to the webcam.

Potential solutions:

Look at your internet browser’s web address bar and check if the video symbol is ‘blocked’. If it is, unblock and refresh the web page.
Press the Video Settings button at the top of the video meeting page and Reset settings. This should give you another chance to approve your webcam and mic’s use by Parents Booking.

A grey box where you should be seeing yourself or the teacher, when the meeting should be taking place:

If your video meeting’s video area is still a grey box, even after your video meeting should have started, this means your computer is not able to connect to the video meeting.

When your video meeting starts, you should be able to see yourself (like a mirror) at least. If this is not the case, and you’re just seeing a grey box, there’s a problem connecting to our video server. This is most likely caused by your internet connection (home or work network) or, perhaps more likely, your firewall ‘blocking’ you joining the video meeting. It could also be your choice of internet browser, or some security settings on your device, but those are less likely.

Potential solutions:

Most likely situation: Your internet connection is blocking the video meeting, possibly because of your home or work firewall. If you think your firewall is strict, and this could be the reason, try using a device which will allow you to connect to the internet outside of your firewall, e.g. using 3G or 4G mobile data, to see if there’s a difference, and if so you know it’s your internet/network connection/firewall.
1. You could also try running the Twilio Network Test, which does take a moment or two. You can afford one of the top two items to fail, but not both. Similarly, you can afford one of the bottom two tests to fail, but not both. If 3 or 4 of these top two and bottom two tests are failing, it is a network/firewall issue, and the only solutions will be to NOT use the internet connection you’re on currently, or try to unblock your firewall if you feel confident in trying to do so. You’ll need to whitelist “twilio.com”, and allow the moist local IPs to you found here, e.g. Irish and German IPs if you’re in the UK or Europe, and USA IPs if you’re in America.
Your computer has some other sort of issue stopping it connecting (in which case we would recommend you try a different device, e.g. smartphone, tablet, computer).
Least likely situation: Use a different internet browser. E.g. Try Chrome instead of Edge, or vice-versa. Its possible you are using an internet browser that is incompatible (or might need ‘updated’)

Parent and/or teacher cannot hear each other

Potential solutions:

Sometimes the microphones on laptops / computers can be in “mute” mode. Hopefully this can be rectified via a setting in the internet browser (near the address bar?), and this is sometimes ONLY found when looking via “Classic control panel” could this be seen:

Steps: