BARRY SCHMELL: Welcome to Meet the Expert.
I'm Barry Schmell with the Google Cloud Learning Services
team.
And I'll be your host for the special webinar series designed
to help you make the most of Google Meet
to work remotely with your teams and your customers.
This second webinar session is for everyone
in your organization.
We'll discuss the best practices for running video conferences
using Google Meet, as well as all of the features.
The basic format is I'll spend about five minutes
presenting some slides.
I'll start a live session with my remote team
and walk through the various settings
and answer the common questions that
come up from our customers.
Also, please join Meet the Expert website
to get the full schedule and be informed of any upcoming
webinars.
So let's get started.
Here's our agenda.
First, we'll discuss the best practices, and then
the impact on the end user.
We'll demo the user experience and features,
how to record a Meet session, how
to livestream, locate online resources to support
your organization, and get answers
to your common questions.
After the event, we'll post the links
to the comment online resources so you can reference them
later.
So I've been at Google for over 12 years.
And we believe that video is the best
way to collaborate with others.
Video promotes higher engagement and consequently improves
productivity.
Even before the current situation,
I've always used Google Hangouts or Meet to work effectively
with my teammates.
Every Monday morning I meet with my teammates
in London and Paris while working together
in a doc to plan on our week's activities.
It's very effective.
But especially now, Google Meet is even more significant
while we're all working from home and remotely.
We're able to work together with our colleagues,
conduct meetings, build our relationships,
and in many cases nurture our relationships.
So by now, I'm sure we've all heard that through September
30, 2020, all G Suite customers get access to the advanced Meet
features.
The three enterprise features every customer gets
are up to 250 participants per call
or Meet session, record meetings, and save to drive.
So this one is really significant with so many people
working from home in different time zones
in different circumstances.
So you want to be able to record those sessions
and watch them later.
Recording, though, is off by default in the admin console,
so be sure your sysadmin turns it on.
We covered that in the first webinar last week.
The most common question we get about recording
from our customers is who can start and stop
recording the event.
The answer is the organizer or anyone
in the domain or company of the organizer can start and stop
recording.
The recording is then stored as an MP4 file in the Recording
folder of the organizer.
That file can be shared with anyone the organizer wishes.
The organizer also receives an email
letting them know what the link is to that MP4 file.
And then finally, livestreaming for up to 100,000 viewers
in your domain or company.
This is great for scheduling an all hands meeting or company
wide meeting where you want to stream the live event.
Livestreaming is also off by default in the Admin console,
so be sure your sysadmin turns it on.
Remember, we covered that in last week's webinar.
The most common question we get about livestreaming
is who can view the event.
The answer is anyone in your company or domain,
but no one external to your company.
That's why it's perfect for all hands company meetings.
So what makes meetings ineffective?
Well, maybe we should reword that
to what makes an effective meeting.
Nothing worse than an unorganized meeting,
so make sure you have an agenda addressing
why you're having the meeting so all participants are aware.
Poor video.
So make sure you're using a headset
like I'm using right now which will help your speaking,
especially if you're moving around.
I will also talk about some other audio options
when I get to the live demo.
And then finally, poor video.
This is usually attributed to network or Wi-Fi bandwidth.
And once again, when we get to the live demo,
I'll show you some options that you have.
So let's spend a few minutes on some of the best practices
and considerations when using Google Meet.
First off, my home workspace does not look like that.
It actually looks more like this.
So what are some of the things to consider
when working from home?
So let's get a little bit real here.
So if you're doing a fancy presentation, the backdrop,
maybe that's really significant like I did my office here.
But does it really matter when you're
doing something more casual?
Usually I'm having my meeting sitting
on the sofa in my living room.
The laptop is really important, so make
sure it's somewhere steady.
There's nothing worse than someone
walking around and talking during a meeting.
And then noise also is something to be aware of.
Having a headset really helps with that quite a bit.
So for example, even though I'm talking right now,
there's an airplane that you're probably not hearing
because I'm using a headset.
And network bandwidth is probably
the most critical item.
The best practice here is using the fastest Wi-Fi
that you have available in your home.
Some of you may have multiple speeds,
so make sure that you're using the faster speed.
Also working close to the router where the Wi-Fi is located
is important.
So once again, for my presentation
today I'm situated in the room closest to the router
so that I'm able to stream the best experience.
But a lot of times I'm usually working down the hall
in my living room that's further away.
If necessary, attach the physical ethernet cable
to the network to give you the best connection.
This is another one for us working from home.
We're sharing devices.
We're sharing bandwidth in your Wi-Fi at home,
so making sure that people turn off their other devices
or they're not streaming other events or movies while you're
having an important meeting.
We'll also see that with Google Meet
you're able to adjust the video setting.
I'll show that in the live demo.
And also sometimes using an external phone
for your audio versus your built in mic
can give you better quality, especially
if you're the speaker.
And I'll demo that when we get to that.
And then finally, if necessary, turn off the camera
if you're not the presenter, because the camera consumes
the most bandwidth.
And it also can use CPU, so that can slow things down
on your computer.
It also consumes battery.
So now we're going to move into the demo.
And I'm going to walk through the various features
that you're probably expecting in Google Meet.
So let's start by first creating an event, a Meet session.
So there's several ways of doing it.
If you're like me, most of the time I'm
scheduling an event with my teammates.
So maybe this is going to be something
I'll call a quick sync up.
And notice I can add the Google Meet videoconferencing here.
Notice that all that really is is a URL.
It's a link that includes a meeting code.
These 10 characters that you see separated
by dashes, that's actually the meeting code.
And with every event, there's also a phone number
that people can dial in via the audio,
and also a PIN number that they can use.
I do want to point out that the phone number that you
see listed here is local to me.
I'm based in the US, so it's giving me a US phone number.
I do want to point out that we do also
have international numbers.
So if I'm inviting someone from my Paris office, which
is located in France, when they get invited on their calendar,
they'll actually see the number local to France.
Notice the PIN number is the same, however, for this event.
OK.
And then, of course, I can invite people to this as well.
I do want to point out that if this was actually
a livestreaming event, if this was an all hands company
meeting, notice how easy it is to add livestreaming.
Notice that the livestreaming that people will actually watch
is actually a different link.
It starts with stream.google.com,
and then there is this long ID number.
So this you could easily copy.
And you could share that with the rest of the company,
either in another calendar event,
it could be via email, or other methods.
I'm not going to actually create that.
And if I want to join a session, it's very, very easy.
Notice I can just click Join.
I'll do that in a moment.
The other way of creating and joining a Meet event
is through Gmail.
And this is something we recently
announced a few weeks ago, so I thought
it would be nice to spend a moment or two on that.
So once again, I can start a meeting.
This brings a pop-up window that for some reason
we can't see at the moment.
And then you can actually join that as well by clicking here.
You may find this on the right side of your Gmail window,
depending on what you set as your preferences.
OK.
And then finally, the third method is actually
going to the Meet service.
So I can either click that here from the App menu,
or I could just type meet.google.com
and it will bring up the Meet service here.
And it tightly integrates with my calendar.
So notice how it's actually listing the two events
that I have going on here today, the live event
and my daily sync.
So once again, I can click on that one or this one
and join them, or I can click Join and Start a New Session.
So maybe I'll just call this one quick sync.
I have a lot going on on my computer right now.
And it's getting ready.
And then I'm able to join that session.
And I'm also able to invite other people to that event,
as well.
So we've covered several ways that you're
able to actually start a meeting.
So now I'm going to actually move over to the live session
that I have going on with my teammates.
Can everyone wave and you can say hello?
Great.
Hey, everybody.
For some reason, just in case you can't hear them,
one of my favorite features is turning on the captions.
So you'll notice if any of them start talking--
hey, say something somebody.
RITA ALAOUI: [VERY SOFT] How's it going, Barry?
BARRY SCHMELL: OK.
We can actually see that there.
I really like this feature, because if you
have a lot of people talking at the same time, maybe
it's easier to read what they're saying.
OK.
And we also have the chat window here,
which is another way of communicating with everybody.
So if anybody wants to say hello through the chat window,
that's a great option, too.
And I can actually type something in the chat window
with everyone.
Hello, everyone.
So if you're trying to get feedback from everyone
and you tell them to mute their line,
that's another way of communicating.
And then the other common question we get from customers
is not only do you want to be able to see people,
but you may want to add additional people.
So I have my core friends here, but maybe we're missing Andrea.
So I'm able to invite him real quickly here.
It does integrate with the rest of G Suite,
so it should autocomplete that.
But I can also type in his email address
and then I can invite him this way as well.
So this is a nice feature.
And then I can invite some other individuals.
And once again, it's autocompleting that.
And I can invite them on the fly very quickly.
So let me spend a couple of minutes
walking through some of the common settings
that we see here.
And probably the one that we're all excited about
is changing our layout, so let me go through that one first.
So by default, what Google Meet does,
it does something called it auto layouts.
It figures out what the best layout is.
So if I'm presenting, it will spotlight me.
Some people like this, where the featured presenter is
in the middle and then the participants are on the side.
The other options we have is spotlight, which case
it would only feature me.
And then the new tile view.
There's only a few of us here.
But it could actually tile up to 16 participants.
I know we're working on a newer version that can actually--
I think I saw up to 49, which will be a seven by seven grid,
but that's not available yet.
OK.
So let's go back to the menu here.
And once again, one of the top questions we get from customers
is not just who can record a meeting,
but how do you do that?
There's this great Record button that we see here.
If I click on that, it will announce automatically
in the Meet session that it's about to start recording
so everyone is aware of that.
OK.
Notice I can turn off captions from the settings.
And once again, I can turn it back on from there.
So those are some other common settings
that our users walk through.
And then if we go to the Settings menu itself,
it allows me to adjust or change my audio.
Maybe I have different mikes that I'm working with
or different speakers.
And then we do want to spend a few minutes talking
about video.
As we mentioned earlier, one of the things
that we want to be conscious of, especially working from home,
is the quality of the video.
What Google does by default is it starts with the higher
quality, and then if it doesn't feel
that that's good enough, if it's slowing down the bandwidth,
it'll go to a lower resolution.
So one of the things you can do if you wish
is you could actually have it go from high definition
to standard definition, or you could even
turn off the video totally and say you just
want to go to your audio, in which case
you'll notice I'm no longer seeing those individuals there.
I just see a little picture of them
because I went to audio only.
So this could help with your experience.
Obviously, if you're running into a lot of issues,
you could actually turn your video off totally,
which I just did here.
So they're no longer seeing me, because we're not
transmitting my video over the internet,
but I am able to see them.
So those are some of those common settings
we get questions from.
Let's see if I missed anyone.
Oh, yes.
So using a phone for audio.
So my personal experience is that if the video isn't great,
that's OK.
If it's lagging a little bit, that's OK.
But there's nothing worse than poor audio, when
someone's trying to talk and you can't hear what they're saying.
So one thing you could do is rather than using the audio
from your computer, you could actually
put in here, for example, maybe my cell phone.
And I'll have it call my cell phone.
And now I'll talk on my phone and the audio
will come through my cell service
instead of through my computer.
Because, once again, the situation is maybe
my bandwidth on my Wi-Fi is poor and I get better audio
transmission through my phone.
So it will actually call my phone if I click Call Me.
And don't worry.
That's not really my phone number.
So if you dial it, you'll be calling someone else.
But those are some of the common options that we see there.
Oh, it looks like someone else is trying to join the meeting.
So that's another one.
If you're inviting external participants,
if they were not invited and they
try to enter-- for some reason they have the link,
it's very, very secure.
You're able to deny entry or you're
able to admit their entry.
So some of you may have seen that, especially when you're
working with external guests.
So you have full control.
OK.
So I think that's the end of the demo here.
So I'm going to deny entry for this particular individual
so you can see how secure our service actually is.
OK.
So thanks, everybody.
I really appreciate your joining us for the session.
You all look great.
We're all wearing Google Cloud t-shirts so we all
look like we're matching.
There you go.
Have a great one.
So I do have a couple of more slides
that I do want to go over.
So I do want to remind everyone that we
do have many resources that are available to you.
We have included these on the Event page,
but this is probably one of my favorites.
It takes you to the learning center for G Suite.
And not only do we have some great resources for your end
users to get started with Google Meet,
we also have great resources by every product
that we have available.
I'm not going to click on all of these,
but we do have documentation on how to work remotely.
There are some great resources.
There's the cheat sheet that's available that you
can share with your users.
There's also the YouTube channel itself
that has some great resources.
And I also will remind everybody about the education resources
that are available and the Edu on Air livestreaming events
that go on as well and some great resources we have
available for our teachers.
So I want to end with just a few additional top questions
we get from our customers.
I think I answered a lot of them as we
were walking through the tool.
The first one we get, can external participants
join in a call?
And the answer is yes, if they're invited.
And you'll notice in my case where someone was external,
I had to admit them, so they couldn't just bomb the event.
They actually either had to be an invited guest or they
had to be admitted to attend.
Is the meeting content secure?
The answer is absolutely yes.
As you know, all of our G Suite services
are encrypted at rest, encrypted in transit.
And we also use the G Suite authentication
to authenticate users as they are
joining the meetings as well.
Is a third party service required for dial-in access?
The answer is no.
If you remember when we were looking at the events,
we noticed that Google provides a dial-in phone number.
We also have international numbers
that are available for other countries outside of the US,
as well.
So that's it.
I want to thank everybody and remind
you to join the Meet Expert website to get
the full schedule and to be informed of any upcoming
events.
Stay healthy and stay safe.