Connecting with your colleagues when you work remotely doesn’t have to be a pain or a struggle. Today companies strive to a more efficient collaboration between their employees. Having the right video conference room equipment can help boost collaboration between different offices or streamline processes and improve productivity. Connecting colleagues that work remotely with teams that work from the office is easy with video conferencing tools like Google Meet. What do you need to experience an optimal video conferencing meeting? Imagine if you could equip the office with a turn-key solution to make video conferencing even smoother. In this article, we’ll cover the baselines of remote work communication, the apps, and tools that you can use for keeping in touch with your colleagues and partners.
If your employees are traveling, working in the office, or just temporarily working from home, using a video conferencing tool like Google Meet is a great way to collaborate and to maintain their “in-person” relationships. Holding those virtual meetings will help to keep your people connected wherever they are.
As an IT leader, improving your company’s meetings falls under your purview. In today’s digital workplace more companies are turning to I.T. to answer the question, how do we get better at meetings?
If you are using huddle rooms, or like to incorporate stand-up meetings, your meeting rooms should be equipped accordingly. Is your team distributed or you have attendees coming in virtually? Ensure your equipment is set up so that no one misses out on important parts of the meeting. Looking for solutions to create a better video meeting experience for your employees? Google Meet Hardware is the answer.
We’ll take a closer look at what the Google Meet hardware is and what the different features of this easy-to-implement solution are. One thing is sure: it will make your meetings more qualitative.
Video conferencing with Google Meet
With one click on a unique URL dedicated to a specific meeting, everyone can easily join from the road or from home and work together just as if you were all in the same conference room.
Users can join a video meeting through:
- Their browser
- Mobile app
- Google Calendar invite
- Meeting link URL
- Via the Google Meet code.
- They can also dial-in by phone or through Google Meet hardware, Chrombox, and Chromebase for meetings.
What is Google Meet
Google Meet is part of Google Cloud’s G Suite workplace cloud collaboration tools. You also can use it in a conference room with Meet hardware and Chromebox and Chromebase for meetings. We’ll discuss this later in this article.
Depending on the G Suite package you have, you can invite up to 250 participants to join one video conferencing meeting. Here’s the breakdown of that:
- G Suite Basic and G Suite for Education: up to 100 participants
- G Suite Business: up to 150 participants
- G Suite Enterprise and Enterprise for Education: up to 250 participants
However, Google is making features from the Enterprise version of G Suite’s Google Meet available to ALL Google Cloud customers until Sept. 30, 2020, for free. This includes these features:
- Meetings with up to 250 participants
- Live Streaming
- Recording
More information on this here.
Managing a Remote Team with Google Meet
Looking for ways on how to use Google Meet for remote working, must-have meetings, and keeping projects on track? Keep reading.
Consider taking some of these steps to maintain the collaborative environment you enjoyed in the office with your team.
- Schedule one-on-one meetings with your team. These regular touch-bases are important at the office but also when your team is working remotely. It may be helpful to meet even more frequently.
- Organise regular “stand up” meetings. This quick daily “stand up” can help maintain your team’s focus and ensure that everyone is adjusting and working together.
- Don’t limit yourself to email and your intranet. If you find yourself in a back-and-forth email conversation, try using Meet instead.
More Google Meet Resources
Don’t forget to check out our recap below for links to our new how-to videos and blog articles that will show you how to start and join video meetings, collaborate in them and manage the settings so you can learn how to use Google Meet in a way that works best for you and your business.
- Youtube how-to video’s: Learn the different ways to start and to join a video meeting, such as from a Calendar invite, meeting link, or conference room.
- Discover how to organise a video conferencing meeting in G Suite with Google Meet
- Discover the new video meeting functionalities of Google Meet
- Security & privacy in Google Meet Video Conferencing
- To which diverse elements to you have to pay attention in order to have a successful meeting. Discover the 6 tips to become a pro in online meetings.
- Our 5 tips for a successful video conference from home with Google Meet. Make Meet a productive place to discuss your work and push projects and meetings forward.
How do you create a better video meeting experience for your employees?
To simplify your meeting workflows (no more difficult meeting codes or tracking down a conference room) you need Google Meet Hardware.
What is Google Meet hardware?
Google Meet hardware is a video meeting solution designed for businesses that want to enhance communication and create the best video meetings experience (for partners and employees).
It’s a videoconferencing solution for standard-sized rooms or large rooms. Includes the Chromebox, touchscreen, camera, and speakermic.
With the Meet Hardware Kit, you can easily set up a meeting room at your office via the touch display. With this kit you bring the same easy-to-join video conferencing experience to your meeting room. Participants collaborate with each other within Google’s user-friendly Meet environment.
Why Google Meet Hardware?
You’re looking to equip your small and/or large meeting rooms with the right Meeting Room Equipment system? You want to connect this system with your G Suite accounts? Google Meet Hardware is the most reliable and intelligent system that is suitable for you. It helps your users to lead productive and inclusive meetings.
Most of our customers use Google Meet hardware because they can rely on it. It’s simple to use for everyone in the organisation, and it just works to get the video meeting job done.
We strongly believe that a video-first culture is essential in the digital workplace and modern way of collaborating. That being said, let’s dive in and take a look at the different features of Google Meet Hardware.
All you need is a domain name
All you need is to own your own domain name, as in www.yourcompany.com. We’ll ask you to verify your domain. After that, you’re ready to use your Chrome device.
Voice
The speakermic gives a crystal clear and rich sound. It eliminates echoes and background noise.
Grid-view
Based on the number of people in the meeting room, the Meet hardware automatically zooms and crops the screen so that we can see up to 16 participants.
For every conference room
The Google Meet hardware scales to any size of meeting room. There is a wide-field-of-view camera and an optical zoom in the camera. The autozoom camera control detects the faces of all meeting participants and crops and zooms to create a more personal meeting experience.
The G Suite administrator needs to turn on this autozoom camera control in the Admin console.
Direct sync with Google Calendar
This video conferencing solution is ideal if the organisation uses the G Suite environment. You plan your meetings directly in the Google Calendar so that all invitees have all the information immediately.
Smart security
Google Hardware provides multilayered security via apps and built-in security keys. This way the IT admin can protect their employees against current threats. The Admin is always in control due to remote device monitoring and management features.
Simplified management
Manage numerous devices from one central console to set company policies and deploy a fleet of devices remotely.
HD Meetings
Thanks to the set of components you engage with your colleagues, partners, or customers through HD meetings.
Present your screen
You can share your screen to present content during a video meeting. For example, you can edit in real-time a document with the feedback from other meeting participants or look at figures in a spreadsheet.
Thoughtfully engineered
Google Hardware is lightweight and portable. It has a long battery life and a versatile design. It can be scaled up or down according to your needs. As such, it can be used for large conferences, with several teams coming together from different corners of the world but also for smaller Team Meetings.
Jamboard integration
You can pair your board with the Google Meet hardware device. Learn more about setting up Jamboard for videoconferencing here.
Schedule video meetings via Outlook
Organisations that don’t have a G Suite account (and use Outlook) can use it as well. If you want to schedule a call with other Outlook users, use the Google Meet add-in for Outlook.
How do you equip your meeting room with this hardware?
- First, you need to purchase the hardware via a Google partner. The Google Meet Hardware is only available to Chrome Enterprise partners such as Fourcast.
- Like G Suite, Google Meet Hardware requires the purchase of a yearly licence.
Finally, don’t forget to mention the G Suite domain so that they can connect it to your brand-new Hardware.
Setup options of Google Meet Hardware
You simply use the Google Admin console to manage rooms & devices and to assign a calendar to a device. Once you set up and enroll that Google Meet device, users in your organisation can easily schedule and join meetings using Google Calendar.
Google Meet Hardware is a great videoconferencing system to enable the people in your organisation to meet and collaborate with colleagues, no matter where they. The Chrome devices have a lot of great features like Google Calendar integration, device management, screen sharing, and other features. This hardware helps to reduce the time your business spends on spatial planning, as well as complicated installation and training. This solution is affordable and scalable for every meeting room. Google is clearly on top of the game in offering businesses a variety of solutions for business collaboration spaces like meeting rooms.
Interested in improving your video meetings with easy-to-use Google hardware?