There are three reasons you might receive this error:
1. Your camera or mic is not being recognized by your system. - Try to use your camera with another application in this computer. (e.g. Zoom) - If it doesn’t work, read more on case #2 below. - If it works, then read more on case #3 below.
2. Your camera or mic is not connecting
- Double check your cable connection. - Try plugging it to a different port. - Try connecting it to a different device. Does it work there? If it does, maybe the camera / mic is not recognized by your system. Read case #1 below.
3. Your camera or mic is not being recognized by Tandem Tandem not detecting camera / mic. Error: NotFoundError
- If you’ve tried all the steps above, please report the call to us so we can investigate the call logs (see screenshots below)
Even though Tandem gives you a lot of presence context about your teammates, (if they're in a meeting, what they're working on right now, if they're away from their computer) it's still sometimes difficult to know if they're open to chatting. Waving is a great signal that you'd like to say hi and chat but it's not super urgent.
When you wave at a teammate, they receive a little wave notification. They can choose to click on it to initiate a call with you, or they can wave back at a later.
Experiment with co-working room types
One of the things teams love about Tandem is the fluidity of hanging out while working alongside your teammates.
Try out a few different approaches (you can tell your team how the room should be used in the title or the room description) and check in with your team afterwards to see what strikes the right balance between feeling connected without being too distracted. Here's a few models:
Silent co-working
Turn on your video but keep your mic off by default unless you have a question.
Music + co-working
If you and your teammates have Spotify premium, you can create a music room and one of you can DJ for the rest of the team while you work together.
Audio only co-working
Mic on and camera off! Pro tip: click on the three dots in the call box to access the volume slider for Tandem if you need turn down the volume of the call
Active co-working
Create a room title that is themed to an area your team tends to collaborate around frequently. Hop in there when you're working on that project/topic and others can join to check in, collaborate, answer questions etc.
Use crosstalk while co-working
If you have a group of folks working independently and want to ask someone a specific question without distracting everyone else, you can use Crosstalk to speak with them directly. Everyone else will be able to hear your convo at a reduced volume, and they can always join your Crosstalk if they wish!
To initiate a crosstalk, hover over a teammate's video square and click on the avatar icon in the upper left hand corner. At that point, they'll hear you at full volume but others in the call will only hear you at a reduced volume. Once they accept the crosstalk, others will only hear both of you at a reduced volume.
Keep Tandem open
Tandem only work effectively when your team has it open, so here are some tips so you can keep Tandem open without feeling like it's distracting you
Turn off room notifications for rooms you're not interested in (click on the three dots to disable notifications) so you won't get pinged when people join those rooms
Set a Do-Not-Disturb schedule in Tandem preferences so Tandem is offline when you're not working
Try out Tandem for meetings!
Teams that host their internal meetings in Tandem tend to have more water cooler conversations, quick calls before and after meetings, etc. because they have the app open and are using it regularly throughout the day.
If you're listening to music with bluetooth headphones and the audio quality sounds poor, it's probably because your bluetooth headphones are in "call mode." In call mode, your headphones are optimized for conversation as opposed to listening to music so music sounds pretty compressed and terrible. Here are two solutions.
Use a different mic
The simplest workaround is to adjust adjust your Tandem audio input (or you can change your default mic at the system level) so you don't use the mic from your bluetooth headphones. Using your build-in laptop mic is a great option. That frees your bluetooth headphones to disconnect from call mode and playback music at optimal sound quality while other people can still hear you speak.
Toggle bluetooth music mode on
On a per call basis, if you click on the caret in the upper right hand corner of the speaker icon you'll see an option to turn on Bluetooth music mode. This allows you to use the same bluetooth device for your speaker and mic, but deactivates your mic when you mute yourself so you can hear music properly.
In practice, this means that when you're unmuted and speaking to your teammates, music will sound bad but as soon as you mute, music will return to proper fidelity. There is a bit of a lag with muting and unmuting when using this setting.
Mic bleeding (in Music Rooms) solutions
This is specific to Tandem's Music rooms which use Spotify's API to synchronize the Spotify apps on each of your teammates' computers.
Because we use Spotify's API, music isn't being streamed from the DJ's computer to the other computers in the room. However, if one of your teammates aren't using headphones and their mic is active, the music coming out from their speakers COULD be streamed to your computer which would cause you to hear the music twice.
The solution here is to make sure that your teammate either has their mic turned off or uses headphones to listen to music.
Think of rooms in Tandem as always on themed meeting spots that you can join with a click of a button to connect spontaneously with your team.
Rooms work great for collaboration sessions, casual chats, long form co-working, or getting real-time support from your team.
Call mechanics
When you join a room you enter the call audio is turned on, and other people who are signed up to get notifications for that room will see that you that you joined, which can function as a gentle invitation of sorts. You can easily disable notifications for rooms you're not interested in.
While in a room you can do all the things you would expect to be able to do in a call in your room: turn on your video, share your screen, send chat messages etc.
Rooms can be easily created and edited, and you can tailor room membership if you wish which will still allow others to find join the room if they wish but won't show for them in their room list by default.
If you and your teammates each have Spotify premium, you can use Tandem's music rooms to listen to music together. The first teammate to join the room is the DJ, and when other's join and press play on their Spotify app Tandem will synchronize their player to the DJs.
If the DJ would like to make someone else the DJ, they can do so by hovering over their name.
To call a teammate directly, simply click on the talk button next to their name.
Calling a teammate activates your mic. If the answer the call you can turn on video, share screens, collaborate etc.
You can easily add others to a call and teammates are able to join your conversation if they wish. You can always lock a conversation or room if you prefer to avoid interruptions.
Sometimes you just want to say hello to a teammate but don't want to interrupt them if they're busy.
Waving at a teammate send them a friendly notification which they can click on to chat. If they're busy they can wave back at a later time or they can reply with a quick message.
Integrating your Google Calendar allows for temporary meeting rooms to surface for your scheduled internal meetings in Tandem.
Meeting rooms make it really easy to see what your whole team is working on. You can tell at a glance if someone's previous meeting is running over, remind people who are late, and get notified when your meetings are starting.
It isn't currently possible to update your email address associated through the Tandem app, but this can be accomplished in two different ways.
Request an update
Message us in the app or email us at support@tandem.chat with your new email address and we will update it for you! If your company recently changed domains, this is the ideal route.
Invite your new email address to your Tandem team
If you want to use an entirely different email address you can either message us to update it or invite your new email address to your Tandem team.
From the main app, click on the + sign to the right of the team section and invite your updated email address to the team.
Because you will then have two of you in Tandem, you'll want to remove your older user. Admins can do this in the team settings by clicking on the three dots next to the user. If you are an admin, you'll want to make your new self an admin as well.
You'll then want to sign out of Tandem on your browser and the app.
